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I've Got a Secret

As the Bush administration has dramatically accelerated the classification of information as "top secret" or "confidential," one office is refusing to report on its annual activity in classifying documents: the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
...
Explaining why the vice president has withheld even a tally of his office's secrecy when offices such as the National Security Council routinely report theirs, a spokeswoman said Cheney is "not under any duty" to provide it.

-- Cheney won't tell how much he keeps secret, April 30, 2006

This is an old story - almost a year old - but is getting new play because the Veep's office says the regulations don't apply to the vice president, as he is both legislative (president of the Senate), and executive - as in vice-president of the United States. (More here)


This strikes me as:

• Not terribly surprising, give the current administration's bent for privacy.


• Huh? Does that mean he's a fourth branch of government? (Executive, Legislative, Judiciary). WTF?


• Arrogant - he'd just be supplying stats (X docs classified; Y unclassified and so on)


• The VP's office doesn't want to release stats, as this will lead to other questions ("Why the 10-fold increase in classifications?", "Can you supply us with the names of the documents classified?"). This could lead to uncomfortable responses, to understate.

Or maybe I'm just cynical...