Obama Administration to Cheney: Request Denied

[jefferson_dem]

Sorry about the wingnutty Weekly Standard link. Seems they are the ones who broke the story and have the most details.

Obama Administration to Cheney: Request Denied

The Obama administration has turned down former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request for the declassification of two CIA reports on the effectiveness of the Agency’s detainee program, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned. A letter dated May 7, 2009, from the CIA’s Information and Privacy Coordinator, Delores M. Nelson, rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.

“In researching the information in question, we have discovered that it is currently the subject of pending FOIA litigation (Bloche v. Department of Defense, Amnesty International v. Central Intelligence Agency). Therefore, the document is excluded from Mandatory Declassification Review,” Nelson wrote in the letter to the National Archives, the agency responsible for handling Cheney’s request.

The rejection of Cheney’s request will almost certainly intensify the public back-and-forth between the former vice president and the current administration. The contentious debate over enhanced interrogation exploded on April 16, when Obama authorized the release of four memos on interrogation prepared by the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. In a statement accompanying the release, Obama pointed to “exceptional circumstances” surrounding the memos that required their declassification and release. Four days later, in an interview on Fox News, Cheney revealed that he had requested the declassification of two memos that demonstrate that the techniques were effective.

White House officials have told reporters and members of Congress that the Cheney memos do not bolster the case for enhanced interrogation, as Cheney has suggested. But they have nonetheless refused to release them. President Obama has the legal authority to declassify the documents “with the wave of his hand,” according to one expert.

Initially, Obama administration officials seemed open to releasing the Cheney memos. Representative Frank Wolf asked Attorney General Eric Holder about the Cheney memos during at House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on April 23. Holder said he had not seen the documents. But added: “It is certainly the intention of this administration not to play hide and seek or not to release certain things in a way that is not consistent with other things. It is not our intention to try to advance a political agenda or to hide things from the American people.”

<SNIP>

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/05/cheney_request_denied.asp

[HopeOverFear]

1. ha!

[Cha]

2. "Memos Involved in a court battle"..the first

thing I saw on the msn "news" right night was " as cheney siezes the spotlight many in gop wince".