June 27, 2007 (LPAC)--Facing the cutoff of his office's financing by Congress as early as today, a sinking Vice President Dick Cheney has been flushed out of his policy of silent stonewalling, into a losing argument sent by his chief of staff, David Addington, to Congress yesterday evening. The letter means, according to Administration sources cited by The Hill and Politico, that Addington and Cheney are trying to hastily abandon their outlandish argument that the vice president's office is not part of the Executive Branch of government or subject to its regulations. Politico's GOP sources said that Cheney was now putting out that this argument came from his lawyers, but not from him!

The immediate issue is secrecy, and Cheney's misuse of classified intelligence, which he wants his office to be free to do, with no oversight that it is following classification rules.

EIR raised the subject at Tuesday's White House briefing, and spokesman Tony Snow would not defend this strange argument, which Cheney has also put out in previous cases of oversight.

That argument caused a Congressional backlash: A vote is possible today in the House, on an amendment to a Fiscal 2008 appropriations bill by Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), which would refuse to fund Cheney's office at all. At the same time, Republicans--as well as Democrats--are focusing on how to get Cheney out of office, as reported in an Op-Ed in the June 26 Washington Post.

But the new argument in Addington's letter sent to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)--that an executive order of President Bush governing the handling of classified secrets by Administration offices did not apply to Cheney's office--appears to be a loser. The Washington Post reported that the director of the Secrecy Oversight office created by Bush's order, J. William Leonard, explicitly rejects this "exemption" argument from Addington. Representative Emanuel, as well, said that the vote on his amendment would go ahead despite Cheney's swerve. And Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) still intends to introduce the same funding cut-off of Cheney's office, into the Senate.