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 WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House on Friday defended Vice President Dick Cheney's decision not to cooperate with a government office charged with safeguarding national security information — and denied that Cheney ever suggested the agency be shut down.
Despite objections from the National Archives and others, presidential spokesmen say Cheney's office is not bound by certain sections of 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.
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