"Tricky Dick Cheney" Is Trying to Hide All the Evidence

9 Oct 2008 // Back in 1978, in the aftermath of Watergate and the first US president to resign in disgrace, the legislature passed a bill called the Presidential Records Act (PRA) in order to avoid future problems of the Executive Branch destroying their records at the end of their terms.

The bill required the president and the vice president to preserve and deposit their papers (today, that also includes e-mails, text messages, recorded messages and their appointment schedules) in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). This act was passed so that the public could review how the past administration performed in their responsibilities. This could then be easily done after the executives had left their offices.

Unless Cheney can be stopped by an official court order (which he might just ignore), it is expected that on January 20, 2009, Dick Cheney will try to escape from Washington with the records that he created as the US Vice President.

You may recall that some time ago, Cheney made a claim that as the American Vice President is also the "President of the Senate", regardless of what the US Constitution says, he has said that he is not a part of the Executive Branch of the government.

Now "why" you may ask would "Tricky Dick" want to make such a strange claim?

Well, while he and President Bush have been serving their terms in office, they have also used the power of the Presidential Signing Statement to amend the PRA for their benefit.

The changes that have been made in the PRA, if they were to stand up in court, could possibly exempt the "President of the Senate" from complying with the law.

Fortunately, The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have been on top of this issue and they filed a federal lawsuit early last September. The suit seeks an injunction against Cheney´s intention to sequester his eight years of government documents.

Ms. Anne Weismann, chief counsel of CREW is the attorney for the lawsuit. The plaintiffs for the suit include the Organization of American Historians, the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations and well known historians; Stanley Kutler and Martin Sherwin.

Due to Cheney´s well know pattern of secrecy, the lawsuit also seeks a preliminary injunction requiring the preservation of all documents pending the resolution of the suit.

Up to this point, there have already been many claims of the "loss" of e-mails regarding the origins of the War in Iraq. Investigators have already stated that whatever happened to these so called "lost" e-mails, they were "lost" by experts that knew how to lose them without leaving a trace.

All of the known restoration methods were used in order to restore the e-mails. However, the disk drives that had held the e-mails had not just been "erased", they had been re-formatted. Re-formatting a disk drive is not a simple task and when it occurs, it´s virtually like throwing the old disks away and replacing them with new, blank disks.

In addition, Cheney has consistently refused to allow NARA to inspect his office to confirm that he has complied with the classification requirements. He continues to refuse to provide information, as the ethics laws require, about political travel that was funded by outside sources. He has also refused to even provide Congress with a directory of his vice presidential staff.

As stated by the prize winning author and historian; Martin Sherwin; "The president and the vice president´s actions are not privileged secrets that they have a right to control. That is how dictatorships operate." Sherwin also states; "It appears that the vice president, who purports to be the great champion of democracy abroad, cares little about sustaining at home the openness that the democratic process requires".

Many of us will be very happy when this disgraceful group is finally out of the White House.

I´m just hoping with crossed fingers that the trend to change the political party in the White House and the drive to increase the dominate parties in both of the houses continues on up to November 4th.

We´ve all had almost 8 years of a dreadful example of "How NOT to run a government! " It´s time to regain our democracy.