White House Officials Had Lengthy Debate Before Deciding To Call Visitor Records Confidential

WASHINGTON (AP) _ A newly disclosed effort to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's visitor records secret is the latest White House push to make sure the public doesn't learn who has been meeting

Friday, June 1st 2007, 7:35 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ A newly disclosed effort to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's visitor records secret is the latest White House push to make sure the public doesn't learn who has been meeting with top officials in the Bush administration.

Over the past year, lawyers for President Bush and Cheney have directed the Secret Service to maintain the confidentiality of visitor entry and exit logs, declaring them to be presidential records, exempt from a law requiring their disclosure to whoever asks to see them.

The drive to keep the logs secret, the administration says, is essential to assuring that the president and vice president receive candid advice to carry out their duties.

Cabinet officers often don't want to give up their meeting calendars to journalists. They have no choice under the Freedom of Information Act, which provides public access to some records kept by federal agencies.

But the FOIA disclosure law, which doesn't apply to Congress, also doesn't apply to presidential records.

The Bush administration has exploited that difference, triggering a battle in the courts.

The administration is seeking dismissal of two lawsuits by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, demanding Secret Service visitor logs.

In trying to get the cases thrown out, the Justice Department has filed documents in court outlining a behind-the-scenes debate over whether Secret Service records are subject to public disclosure. The discussions date back at least to the administration of President Bush's father and involve the Justice Department and the National Archives as well as the White House and the Secret Service.

The government's court filings show that the Bush White House focused on the issue in the months before Election Day 2004.

Discussions moved into high gear when the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal prompted news organizations and private groups to demand that the administration turn over Secret Service records of visitors to the White House complex and the vice president's residence.

There was precedent for the demands.

During the Clinton administration, Republican-controlled congressional committees obtained Secret Service visitor logs while conducting investigations of the president and first lady.

Christopher Lehane, a former special assistant counsel to President Clinton and press secretary to then-Vice President Al Gore, points out the political implications of the Bush administration campaign to close off access to the records.

``The question it raises is 'what are these guys hiding?''' said Lehane, now a Democratic consultant. ``They can live with it because they've only got a year or so left, but it doesn't do a lot for public confidence in open government.''

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Thursday, ``I can't comment on a case in litigation, and I can't speak to the decisions made by other administrations.''

The Bush administration says it is standing on principle.

``It is important that the president be able to receive candid advice from his staff and other members of the administration,'' Fratto said. ``To ensure that he receives candid advice, it is essential as a general matter that the advice remains confidential.''

In a declaration filed in court a week ago, Cheney's deputy chief of staff, Claire O'Donnell, stated that ``systematic public release of the information regarding when and with whom the vice president and vice presidential personnel conduct meetings would impinge on the ability of the OVP (office of the vice president) to gather information in confidence and perform its essential functions, including assisting the vice president in his critical roles of advising and assisting the president.''

In May 2006, the Secret Service and the White House signed a memorandum of understanding designating visitor records as presidential.

They are ``not the records of an 'agency' subject to the Freedom of Information Act,'' says the agreement that was not disclosed until months later, in late 2006. The records are ``at all times under the exclusive legal custody and control of the White House.''

Four months after the memorandum of agreement, Cheney's counsel wrote the Secret Service, stating that visitor records for the vice president's personal residence ``are and shall remain subject to the exclusive ownership, custody and control of OVP.''

The Sept. 13, 2006, date on the Cheney letter coincides with requests by The Washington Post seeking records on the vice president's visitors under the Freedom of Information Act.

The law enforcement agency ``shall not retain any copy of these documents and information upon return to OVP,'' stated the letter to the Secret Service's chief counsel.

``If any documents remain in your possession, please return them to OVP as soon as possible,'' the letter added.

The Justice Department filed the Cheney letter last Friday in one of the lawsuits brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is invoking the FOIA law in seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited the White House complex and the vice president's residence. The group, which represents Valerie Plame and her husband in their lawsuit against Cheney and other key administration figures in the leak of Plame's CIA identity, also is seeking White House visitor logs in the Abramoff scandal.

According to government documents, the Secret Service routinely destroyed five of eight categories of information relating to visitors to Cheney's residence. Of the records it retained, the Secret Service regularly turned over handwritten visitor logs to Cheney's office.

The Secret Service stopped the destruction in June 2006 because of lawsuits by various groups, according to the court papers. The law enforcement agency also is retaining copies of the material, contrary to the directive in the September 2006 letter from Cheney's counsel.

The court filings by the government show that:

_On three occasions late in the administration of the first President Bush and during the first term of President Clinton, the Secret Service proposed treating copies of White House visitor documents as non-presidential records. In its court filings, the current Bush administration opposes releasing details of the Secret Service proposals, saying this ``poses a substantial risk of creating public confusion'' because the proposals were never adopted.

_In January 2001, as Clinton prepared to leave office, White House lawyers proposed the transfer of visitor records from the Secret Service to the White House. The proposal was entitled ``Disposition of certain presidential records created by the USSS,'' or the Secret Service. The records are now at the Clinton library in Little Rock, Ark., the National Archives confirmed Thursday.

_In September 2004, a lawyer for the Bush White House and a special assistant to the director of the Secret Service proposed ``informal views on one way to address the disposition'' of visitor records, according to court documents. The unnamed associate White House counsel and the Secret Service assistant jointly authored a July 29, 2004, document bearing the same title as the Clinton administration document from 3 1/2 years earlier.

_In July 2005, the Secret Service gave a presentation on the issue to the White House counsel's office, the Justice Department and the National Archives.

_On May 11, 2006, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel provided a legal opinion on the issue, which is among the many documents the government is refusing to disclose. Six days later, the White House and the Secret Service signed the agreement designating the records as presidential.

Presidential records are released starting five years after a president leaves office. Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, non-classified material is disclosed first, with classified documents and advice to the president released later after review by federal agencies, the White House and the former president.

Under an executive order President Bush signed in 2001, the archivist of the United States cannot unilaterally release the records without the permission of the current president, former presidents and their representatives.

``The scary thing about this move by the vice president's office is the power grab part of it,'' said Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, a private group which uses the FOIA law to pierce government secrecy.

``We're looking at a huge problem if the White House can reach into any agency and say certain records have something to do with the White House and they are presidential from now on,'' Blanton said. ``This White House has been infinitely creative in finding new ways and new forms of government secrecy.''