In June, Dick Cheney made the shocking claim that because he was an official of the Legislative Branch in his capacity as president of the Senate, the office of the vice presidential (OVP) in the Executive Branch is exempt from oversight to ensure that he and his staff are properly handling classified documents.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel threatened to take Cheney at his word that the OVP is not part of the Executive Branch and remove its $4.8 million operating budget. Within a few days after Emanuel’s threat, Cheney agreed to the oversight. Or so we thought.

Because Cheney has a record of betraying government secrets — it was he who directed his minions, including Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, to forfeit a secret CIA program that tracked the blackmarket for terror weapons in 2003 — without oversight, how can we be sure that Cheney and his staffers are not handing over secret documents to enemies of the United States such as al Qaeda and Iran?

Last summer, soon after Cheney announced that he was exempt from security oversight, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) threatened to take Cheney at his word that the OVP is not part of the Executive Branch and de-fund its $4.8 million operating budget. Very quickly after the threat, Cheney agreed to the oversight.

Or so we thought:

The Office of the Vice President is not an “agency” for purposes of the executive order on classification and therefore its classification and declassification activity no longer need be reported to the Information Security Oversight Office, the Justice Department finally informed ISOO Director Bill Leonard in a newly disclosed letter.

In a January 9, 2007 letter to the Attorney General, Director Leonard had questioned the OVP’s refusal since 2003 to submit to normal oversight. He was following up on a complaint filed with ISOO by the Federation of American Scientists, which was also forwarded to the Attorney General.

The OVP’s position is not consistent with a “plain text reading” of the executve order, Mr. Leonard wrote to the Attorney General at that time.

Be that as it may, the President’s intention is that the Office of Vice President should not be considered an “agency” for purposes of oversight, Steven G. Bradbury of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel wrote to Mr. Leonard on July 20, 2007 on behalf of the Attorney General. He cited another letter to that effect from White House counsel Fred Fielding…

Paging Rahm Emanuel. Red phone, please!