Cheney refuses to turn over his records to Bush library David Edwards and John Byrne

Published: Tuesday April 7, 2009





Print This Email This It appears that Vice President Dick Cheney's penchant for keeping things close continues even beyond his term.



The former deputy commander-in-chief won't even turn his records over to the library of President George W. Bush, though he originally appeared to be willing to do so.



"As the Republican Party searches for meaning in the political minority, one of the men who put them in the political memory, Dick Cheney, does not want his records out of his clutches, especially if they were to go to the George W. Bush presidential library in Dallas anytime soon," MSNBC's Rachel Maddow reported Monday evening.



Bush's number two says he needs his records to stay in Washington so he can tap them for his memoirs.



Last year, one of the architects of Bush's library wrote to the National Archives that "we received a call from [George W. Bush Foundation president] Mark Langdale that the Vice Presidential holdings will now be located at the GWBPL [George W. Bush Presidential Library]" and asked for assistance in revising the library's blueprints.



But according to the Dallas News , there was a "miscommunication."



Keeping vice presidential records at the National Archives is not unusual -- Al Gore opted for his records to remain there after leaving office. But Cheney's obsession with secrecy and control have raised liberal eyebrows over the revelation. A 2007 article in The Washington Post revealed that Cheney's obsession with controlling information goes so far as to involve the purging of Secret Service visitor logs.



"Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency," the Post's Barton Gellman wrote . "Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs.



MSNBC's Maddow delivered the news tongue-in-cheek.



"This means that the space set aside for Vice President Cheney's official and personal records in the Bush library will remain empty, a void where information should be," she remarked. "You know, that's how I'll always think of him."



"It made more sense and was more convenient to keep them in D.C.," a Cheney spokesman told the Dallas News.



This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Apr. 6, 2009.









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