June 23, 2007 (LPAC)--Not surprisingly, the White House has defended Dick Cheney exempting himself from oversight of his office's handling of classified information. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters on June 22 that both the President, as the author of the executive order, and the Vice President, are exempt from oversight, and that it only applies to all other agencies of the government. "This is a bit of a non-issue," said Perino, because George Bush, as the enforcer of the executive order, "gets to decide whether or not he (Cheney) should be treated separately, and he's decided that he should."

Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the second ranking Democratic member of the Senate, charged that Cheney is distorting the plain meaning of the executive order. "Vice President Cheney is expanding the administration's policy on torture to include tortured logic," Durbin told the Washington Post. "In the end, neither Mr. Cheney or his staff is above the law or the Constitution."