www.economist.com

BEFORE the first American war against Saddam Hussein, when Dick Cheney was secretary of defence, he had to brief King Hassan of Morocco about the brewing Operation Desert Storm. As the meeting was about to start, the king placed a small silver box in his translator's hand and briefly spoke with him in Arabic. Mr Cheney asked what the ritual meant. The king replied that the box contained a fragment of the Koran and he was swearing his translator to secrecy on pain of death. Mr Cheney says he thought: "Damn, I need one of those."

The vice-president is famously fond of secrecy. He stores his papers in man-sized safes and labels even unclassified memos "Treated As: Top Secret", a designation his office appears to have invented, according to a recent Washington Post series for which Mr Cheney refused to be interviewed. Even with friendly journalists, such as Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, he is clam-like. Mr Hayes spent nearly 30 hours in one-on-one interviews with Mr Cheney for his new book, "Cheney: the Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice-President", yet many of his queries were rebuffed.

www.crooksandliars.com

Washington Post has a four part (Pullitzer prize winning) series on Dick Cheney's shadowing dealings -- This man makes Nixon look like a saint.

So clandestine is the Vice President's work that he has created a new secret document designation: "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI."

That's not all: the piece also reveals that Cheney keeps man-size' Mosler safes on hand for "workaday business" and has destroyed all Secret Service visitor logs, in addition to already refusing to comply with a national security directive issued by President Bush.

Not only does he refuse to give the names of his staff, Cheney won't even disclose how many people he employs.

"Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency," the Post article says. "Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs."

"Stealth is among Cheney's most effective tools," the piece adds. "Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI."

"Experts in and out of government said Cheney's office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to "sensitive compartmented information," the most closely guarded category of government secrets," the Post adds. "By adding the words "treated as," they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause "exceptionally grave damage to national security."

The Post intimates that Cheney's office is like a black hole everything goes in, but nothing comes out.

query.nytimes.com

In a ringing victory for special-interest lobbyists, a federal court in Washington has thrown out a lawsuit seeking access to the records of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. In reaching its conclusion the court dismissed the investigative authority of the General Accounting Office and, by extension, of Congress.

thehill.com

Vice President Dick Cheney has won his battle to withhold records from the public despite efforts by Congress and other critics who say they should be open to scrutiny.

The Democrats are conceding defeat. The party's top investigator in the House of Representatives acknowledges that there is nothing more he can do to force the vice president's hand.

"He has managed to stonewall everyone," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "I'm not sure there's anything we can do."

Waxman said that despite Cheney's turning this administration into "one of the most secretive in history," there's not much he or anyone else can do because the administration has only a few more months left in office.

Cheney argues that, as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, he is not exclusively part of the executive branch and therefore not subject to the public-records standards that have been applied to past administrations.

nearing.newsvine.com

on April 4, 2001, representatives of 13 environmental groups were brought into the Old Executive Office Building for a long-anticipated meeting. Since late January, a task force headed by Vice President Cheney had been busy drawing up a new national energy policy, and the groups were getting their one chance to be heard.

A confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress.

In all, about 300 groups and individuals met with staff members of the energy task force, including a handful who saw Cheney himself, according to the list, which was compiled in the summer of 2001. For six years, those names have been a closely guarded secret, thanks to a fierce legal battle waged by the White House. Some names have leaked out over the years, but most have remained hidden because of a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that agreed that the administration's internal deliberations ought to be shielded from outside scrutiny.

(Anyone ready to defend the smarmiest most VP ever?)