Kristol Defends Cheney, Williams Says He’s Creating A ‘Secured Undisclosed Bunker Of His Mind’

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol defended Vice President Cheney’s decision to exempt himself from an executive order designed to safeguard classified national security information.

Kristol said the exemptions for the president and vice president were “reasonable enough.” He called it “a pain in the neck” to have “some bureaucrat” from the National Archives “come and inspect your safe to see whether you’re locking it up properly each night.”

NPR’s Juan Williams snapped back, noting that there is no text in the executive order that actually exempts Bush or Cheney. “This is all a dodge, this is a game,” Williams said, in order to “keep Dick Cheney in some kind of secured undisclosed bunker of his mind so he can’t let the American people know what’s going on with their government.” Williams charged, “He won’t tell people who’s visiting his house, who’s visiting his office. Scooter Libby is letting people know who works for the CIA as an agent. This is ridiculous.”

Watch it:

Kristol was the only member of the Fox News Sunday panel to defend Cheney. Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume called the White House explanation a “dumb excuse,” and NPR’s Mara Liasson said it “doesn’t make any sense.”

Transcript:

WALLACE: Al Gore complied with this. So did Dick Cheney for the first two years. Why on earth would they make a fight over this?

KRISTOL: They like to fight to fight to preserve the prerogatives of the White House. And it is a pain in the neck having some bureaucrat from the bureau of archives come and inspect your safe to see whether you’re locking it up properly each night. I remember that when I was the vice president’s chief of staff, and I complied. But if the president wants to exempt his own office and the vice president’s office from that, that’s reasonable enough. There’s no reason the archivists have to investigate the security procedures in the vice president’s office.

WILLIAMS: Maybe they have a reason because he stopped complying with the law.

KRISTOL: There’s no law.

WILLIAMS: Yes, there’s an executive order —

KRISTOL: The president understands to have exempted his own office and the vice president’s office.

WILLIAMS: The president has not written anything about this, as Brit has said. He didn’t amend the law. And so what you have is, not only is it that there’s classified documents — we don’t know where they go, what happens to them. E-mails disappear in this White House, and you say, what happened to the e-mails? ‘Oh, no, we have a private account.’ This is all a dodge, this is a game, in order to, I guess, keep Dick Cheney in some kind of secured undisclosed bunker of his mind so he can’t let the American people know what’s going on with their government and how decisions are made. He won’t tell people who’s visiting his house, who’s visiting his office. Scooter Libby is letting people know who works for the CIA as an agent. This is ridiculous.

HUME: One of the more compelling indictments i’ve heard. Well done, Juan.