Media Relations: our permanent record/ June 25, 2007:
... Put it another way: Part of what libraries are doing is responding, slowly and reluctantly but steadily, to patron demands for access. Putting items on microfilm is all very well and good, but as noted, most people don't have the desire or patience to deal with it. Some microfilm equipment is getting obnoxiously expensive, sometimes difficult to maintain (depending on what it is) and takes a great deal of justification to administrators in a way that digital does not. We can only resist what people want just so far ... and honestly, part of our job is to preserve, but more of our job is to provide information and access. Give 'em what they want, and when they want it, and let 'em have it just that way, as the song says. We are, after all, largely a customer service profession. How does it provide service to maintain things in a way that people hate, for what will seem to them a terribly esoteric reason?Chances are, a lot of the stuff we do now and in the future isn't going to be available to future generations. There may not be multivolume sets of the letters of our once and future presidents, not because they're not writing but because it will have all went with the digital wind, so to speak. That's just ... life, I guess. No doubt people railed in a prior age against the movement from stone carving to vellum and papyrus, arguing that it wasn't as durable. (And, hey, they were right about that, too. Does better in earthquakes, though, and it's easier to read a book or scroll in a building rather than reading the building itself, after all.)[...]
That above paragraph slightly wrongs the National Archives, which is charged with preserving the digital archives from the various government branches. Of course, where the Archives will find and keep equipment and software capable of reading everything in their archives, and how they'll maintain it ... well, that's another question, isn't it?
That said, one wonders how much of this administration's electronic documentation will be preserved in any event. They use unauthorized accounts to prevent things making it to the public record, they delete with wild abandon ... one suspects that, where official documents are concerned, the administration of Bush II will be an effective black hole of lost information.
Cheney's moves on secrecy stir storm over office's dual role
The vice president argues his office is exempt from executive branch classified-data protocol.
By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Washington
from the June 26, 2007 edition
Is Vice President Dick Cheney's office an executive branch agency? Or is it a Washington hybrid that works for both the executive and legislative branches of the US government? That's the underlying issue in a new controversy over Mr. Cheney's lack of cooperation with a government office charged with safeguarding national security information.
The whole matter sounds arcane, and in many ways it is. After all, it involves paperwork, classified information, and the filing of reports. But Democratic lawmakers say it is a serious matter that reflects on the vice president's penchant for secrecy – and that they might even hold up the funding for his office as a result. "That might not be a bad idea," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California about cutting Cheney's budget during a broadcast interview on June 24.
At issue is the work of the Information Security Oversight Office – a small part of the National Archives whose job it is to oversee the government-wide security classification system. As part of that work, the office collects data on how much US material is classified and declassified. Per a signed presidential executive order, agencies of the executive branch are required to hand this information over. Cheney's office provided this information in 2001 and 2002. Then it stopped. Prodded by an outsider's complaint, last spring the National Archives sent letters to Cheney's office requesting the classification data. It received no response.
Administration officials say Cheney's office is exempt from the executive order, since it has both executive branch and legislative functions. Per the US Constitution, the vice president serves as president of the Senate, and may vote to break ties in that chamber.
On June 22, White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said the executive order didn't intend Cheney's office to be treated as an administration agency. "He's not exempt from following the laws of the United States," said Ms. Perino. "He's exempt just from this reporting requirement in this particular executive order."
Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California rejected this assertion as absurd. Representative Waxman is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the classification matter. In general, Waxman has been a thorn in the side of the White House since the Democrats gained control of Congress. "The vice president can't unilaterally decide he is his own branch of government and exempt himself from important, commonsense safeguards for protecting classified information," said Waxman on June 22....
Bush claims oversight exemption too
By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 23, 2007
The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney's office, President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information.
An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.
The issue flared Thursday when Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) criticized Cheney for refusing to file annual reports with the federal National Archives and Records Administration, for refusing to spell out how his office handles classified documents, and for refusing to submit to an inspection by the archives' Information Security Oversight Office. The archives administration has been pressing the vice president's office to cooperate with oversight for the last several years, contending that by not doing so, Cheney and his staff have created a potential national security risk. Bush amended the oversight directive in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to help ensure that national secrets would not be mishandled, made public or improperly declassified.
The order aimed to create a uniform system for classifying, declassifying and otherwise safeguarding national security information. It gave the archives' oversight unit responsibility for evaluating the effectiveness of each agency's classification programs. It applied to the executive branch of government, mostly agencies led by Bush administration appointees — not to legislative offices such as Congress or to judicial offices such as the courts. "Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their government," the executive order said.
But from the start, Bush considered his office and Cheney's exempt from the reporting requirements, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said in an interview Friday. Cheney's office filed the reports in 2001 and 2002 but stopped in 2003. As a result, the National Archives has been unable to review how much information the president's and vice president's offices are classifying and declassifying. And the security oversight office cannot inspect the president and vice president's executive offices to determine whether safeguards are in place to protect the classified information they handle and to properly declassify information when required....
So let me get this straight-ish:
The White House in toto, including both the president and the ol' veepster, and which is THE executive branch agency, if you think about it, purports to be exempt from an order governing all executive branch agencies, despite the fact that the order says no such thing.
Well, all-righty, then!
It will be interesting to see if Congress possesses the political will to bring the vice-president's office into compliance by withholding his budget. I wouldn't be surprised if the president declines to sign the executive branch budget authorization if Cheney's budget isn't included. What I also wonder if if Congress possesses the political will to take this where they should, and refuse to authorize any white house/executive branch budgets at all until the White House acknowledges that the order applies to them. Given the way they've caved on Iraq, I rather think that they won't follow through, but we can hope.
Posted by iain at June 25, 2007 05:40 PM
