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Smokin!

The National Archives official who challenged Dick Cheney’s handling of classified documents and whose office Cheney then tried to abolish is quitting. And furthering our knowledge of Cheney’s machinations as he exits.

Ever Vigilant

J. William Leonard headed the Information Security Oversight Office [ISOO] at archives, which tracks Executive Branch practices dealing with classified material. When he discovered Cheney had stopped complying with the security regulations he went to the Justice Department seeking a ruling that the Vice President follow the law. Cheney’s office responded by trying to eliminate the budget for the ISOO.

Leonard spoke to Newsweek on how Cheney’s people made up their own make-believe classification system, which they claim they don’t have to report:

A number of people have noted that the vice president’s office stopped reporting to you and complying with ISOO in the fall of 2003 when the whole Valerie Plame case blew up. Do you think there was a connection?
I don’t have any insight. I was held at arms length [from that.] But some of the things based on what I’ve read [have] given me cause for concern. A number of prosecution exhibits [in the Plame-related perjury trial of I. Scooter Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff] were annotated, ‘handle as SCI.’ SCI is Sensitive Compartmentalized Information, the most sensitive classified information there is. As I recall, [one of them] was [the vice president and his staff] were coming back from Norfolk where they had attended a ship commissioning and they were conferring on the plane about coming up with a [media] response plan [to the allegations of Plame's husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.] That was one of the exhibits marked, ‘handle as SCI.’

These were internal communications about what to say to the press?
Let me give you some the irony of that. Part of the National Archives is the presidential libraries….So we’re going to have documents [at the libraries] with the most sensitive markings on it that isn’t even classified. If I were going to do a review [of OVP], that would be one of the questions I would want to ask: What is this practice? And how widespread is it? And what is the rationale? How do we assure that people don’t get this mixed up with real secrets?

But in the spirit of the holiday season, let’s all enjoy another laugh about the Clinton papers and UFOs.

At least it has pillars.

The prolonged negotiations with Southern Methodist University have had no public result, and a man needs a place for his junk.

The National Archives has rented this handsome warehouse outside Dallas for the interim Bush papers dumping ground, a holding action until the finished library opens, somewhere.

The warehouse lacks even the limited romance lent by Bush Senior and Bill Clinton’s initial locations, a bowling alley and a former car dealership.

Nearby neighbors include a Spirit Halloween Superstore, whose national sales for John Kerry masks outsell their Bush Mask.

That may not be a negative for Bush. The surprisingly life-like Cheney outsells him too.

I’m Back!

The Maine artist whose Bush and Cheney murals were yanked from a Kennebunk art exhibit has won their return.

Painful local discussion panels to still follow.

The Offenders

Flag Desecration OK, but don’t offend the Bushs.

We will probably have to wait until the next even numbered year for a stormy Congressional Flag Desecration vote, but George H.W. Bush’s inland neighbors in Kennebunk Maine are focusing instead on what really matters: caricatures of the current President and Vice President.

Artist and apparent local crank G. Bud Swenson makes paintings in part from cut up flags. A Kennebunk Free Library show was fine with that after some hesitation, but at the last minute demanded he yank two paintings.

The Library’s director told seacostonline that the paintings “crossed the bounds of acceptable community standards.”

The show went on without our leaders’ portraits, and the library hopes to bore everyone into silence with two “public forums” and a little dialoguin’