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Vice President vs. National Archives

Challenging Cheney. Newsweek Web Exclusive (Updated: 12:57 PM ET Dec 24, 2007) By Michael Isikoff.

J. William Leonard learned the hard way the perils of questioning Vice President Dick Cheney. The veteran National Archives official challenged claims by the Office of Vice President (OVP) to be exempt from federal rules governing classified information. His efforts touched off a firestorm–and a counter-strike by Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington, who tried to wipe out Leonard’s job….

Now, Leonard is quitting as director of the Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO)–the unit that monitors the handling of government secrets. He tells NEWSWEEK that his fight with Cheney’s office was a "contributing" factor in his decision to retire after 34 years of government service.

…"The global struggle that we’re engaged in today is more than anything else is an ideological struggle. And in my mind….that calls for greater transparency, not less transparency."

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.


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