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The White House has defended Vice President Dick Cheney's decision not to cooperate with a US govt office charged with safeguarding national security information and also denies Cheney from other charges.
The other charges the White House denied is that the Vice President suggested the agency be shut down.
Despite objections from the National Archives, Cheney's office has exempted itself from a presidential executive order that seeks to protect national security information generated by the government.
Under the order, executive branch offices are required to give the Information Security Oversight Office at the archives data on how much material they classify and declassify.
Cheney's office provided the information in 2001 and 2002, then stopped.
Cheney's office claims it does not have to comply with the order because it is not an "agency" or "entity" within the executive branch, according to Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the matter.Waxman on Friday scoffed at the assertion as "an absurdity for the ages."
"The vice president is pretending he isn't part of the executive branch and the White House is pretending that the rules for protecting classified information are being followed," he said in a statement.
"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," he said.
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