By Kenneth J. Theisen, 5/30/07
As any one who follows the Bush administration knows,
secrecy is paramount with the regime.
From denials of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to keeping
secret who met with the Vice-President’s energy task force, the administration
likes to keep the public in the dark. This penchant for secrecy now includes
information about who visits Dick Cheney at his official residence.
In a September 13, 2006, one of the VP’s lawyers wrote a
letter to the Secret Service telling the agency to eliminate data on people who
stopped by to see Cheney. The lawyer claimed that such records are subject to
the Presidential Records Act (PRA). If protected by the PRA, the regime does
not have to disclose such information to the public.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
had filed a lawsuit seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders
who have visited Cheney. On May 25th, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed the
letter in the lawsuit in an attempt to deny the request to divulge this
information. Along with the letter, DOJ also included an 18-page Secret Service
document disclosing the practice of destroying visitors” logs to the VP’s
house. But because of this and other lawsuits, the Secret Service now claims it
is keeping visitor logs.
Why is the Bush regime so concerned about the public knowing
who visits with the VP? What are they
trying to hide? Past visitors to the
White House have proved to be embarrassing. Remember Enron head, Kenneth
Lay. Or Jack Abramoff? When scandals broke concerning these Bush
regime supporters, the White House said Ken who and Jack who? Unfortunately
visitors” logs showed frequent visits which made it hard for the regime to
plausibly deny the connections between the regime and these scoundrels.
Last year during the height of the Abramoff scandal, several
FOIA requests were filed with the Secret Service seeking White House entry and
exit logs trying to determine how often Abramoff and his associates visited all
those people they did not know at the White House. In May 2006 the White House and Secret
Service secretly signed an agreement stating that these logs were protected
under the PRA in an attempt to keep them secret.
I am not sure why Cheney wants to keep the names of
Christian fascists who visit him secret from the public. It certainly is no secret that the Bush
regime is intimately involved with these scum.
But then any information disclosure is verboten to this regime.