Cheney: Accountability to the American People Is A Threat to National Security

Josh Gerstein for the New York Sun reports Dick Cheney's claim that the American public having knowledge of who has met with the Vice President - such as lobbyists - constitutes a threat to national security. Last month, a federal judge in Washington, Ricardo Urbina, ordered the Secret Service to disclose two years of visitor logs to the Washington Post immediately or explain in detail why the records are exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act. The Justice Department has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to block Judge Urbina's order to allow the parties to present more extensive legal arguments about the dispute. "Disclosure of the records at issue could reveal an ever-expanding mosaic that would allow observers to chart the course of vice presidential contacts and deliberations in unprecedented fashion," government attorneys argued in a brief filed yesterday. "Such an unwarranted intrusion into the most sensitive deliberations of the vice presidency cannot be countenanced." Via Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker, who explains "mosaic theory" (the premise behind the reference to "ever-expanding mosaic" in the Cheney argument.)