Or, more precisely, Cheney vs. the Information Security Oversight Office ("Learn why Democracy Starts Here"), a 25-person subunit of the National Archives that handles the handling of classified documents. Cheney and his legal puppet-master, David Addington, don't think they have to submit to ISOO checkups because the executive order delineating the jurisdiction of the sad little mini-bureau applies only to executive-branch entities -- but ha!, they craftily contend, the veep's office is both executive and legislative (presidency of the senate, dig?). Cute, really.
But don't believe for a second that this dispute is playing out in the information quibble- or skirmishspace. Oh no: it's battlespace for sure. After "block[ing] [in 2004] an on-site inspection by [ISOO] that was routinely carried out across the government to check whether documents were being properly labeled and safely stored," Cheney & co. tried to get rid of the process of appealing interagency tussles to the attorney general (a process ISOO was attempting to use to break down the vice-president's informational battledoor) and tried to get rid of Information Security Oversight altogether. Didn't work out, though.
A lot of the time I think they engage in these shenanigans less to conceal anything in particular and more just for the hell of it. It doesn't seem like they had a lot to lose by submitting to the Archives; they just didn't feel like it. They weren't about to fall for the spell of false necessity; there was no non-human reality compelling them to do anything.
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