Our guest blogger is Micah Zenko, Fellow in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In an interview with Fox News last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney announced that he had “formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos,” which reportedly demonstrate the “success” that enhanced interrogations had in compelling high-value Al Qaeda operatives to provide intelligence that helped to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. Shortly thereafter, an unnamed senior U.S. intelligence official told Politico.com that “The Agency has received no such request from the former Vice President.” This led to a further revelation from Cheney’s daughter Liz that the former Vice President had actually requested the CIA memos from the National Archives. At some point last Tuesday, the National Archives finally forwarded the request to the Agency, where it probably should have arrived in the first place.

Yesterday, on Meet the Press, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs noted that Cheney’s request is “in the very same process that if somebody else determined that a memo should be declassified…It’s a process that takes about three weeks. “ As anyone who has ever made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for CIA documents knows, this is an unprecedented time-frame, especially for memos that contain such highly sensitive raw intelligence. All of which raises questions about how and why the Obama administration is expediting the former Vice President’s request at this time.

In the experience of this analyst, CIA FOIA requests take anywhere from six to eighteen months to receive a formal ruling of whether the document can be declassified (often in redacted form), or whether it should be exempted on national security grounds.

The three weeks that Robert Gibbs described refers to the language in the FOIA law, which requires federal agencies to “determine within twenty days (excepting Saturdays, Sundays, and legal public holidays) after the receipt of any such request whether to comply with such request and shall immediately notify the person making such request of such determination and the reasons therefor (sic).” What this means in practice, is that a month after filing a CIA FOIA request, which can only be done via snail-mail or fax, you receive a letter that provides a case number and notification that your request is under review. Over the following months, you can call one of two CIA Public Liaison officers, who are friendly and responsive to voice mails, at 703-613-1287 in an effort to expedite the process, but they generally will only re-remind you that your request remains “under review.”

It is not clear under what authority former Vice President Cheney’s FOIA request for the CIA memos has been awarded fast-track preference by the Obama administration. Executive Order 12958 (as amended in 2003), allows for “Access by Historical Researchers and Former Presidential Appointees” for individuals who have “previously have occupied policy-making positions to which they were appointed by the President.” While this might apply to providing an open channel for Cheney to reference classified information as he writes his memoirs, it should not speed up what is the normal declassification process.

There should be greater transparency over the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs that were created after 9/11. The CIA memos requested by Cheney should eventually be declassified in the normal time-frame as part of that process. They should not, however, be rapidly declassified to score points on one side of the ongoing and intense political debates about the legality and effectiveness of the CIA programs.

Foreign Policy magazine “asked some of the best foreign-policy minds in Washington and beyond” to rate President Obama’s first 100 days in office. “The result? 11 As, 16 Bs, 7 Cs, and a D,” Foreign Policy noted. Some of these “best foreign-policy minds” also included a number of neoconservatives and President Bush’s staunchest defenders. Surprisingly, not all of them trashed Obama’s first 100 days:

– Meghan O’Sullivan, Bush’s deputy national security adviser: Grade – B+ “President Obama deserves the high marks for his treatment of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in his first 100 days. [...] On Iraq in particular, he deserves kudos and gets an A-.”

– Robert Kagan, Carnegie Endowment fellow: Grade – A-/B+ “President Obama scores high on Afghanistan and Iraq. [...] His policy toward Iran makes sense, so long as he is ready with a serious Plan B if the negotiating track with Tehran fails. His policies toward Russia are sound.”

While Kagan’s opinion of Obama’s Iran policy appears slightly enhanced from just last month with the added caveat of “a serious plan B,” he later said he would have given Obama an A- had he not “thrown a bouquet” to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the summit of the Americas last week.

But the rest of the Bush loyalists on Foreign Policy’s list weren’t so friendly. Much of their displeasure with Obama seemed to center around the notion that Obama has somehow been spending his first 100 days in office apologizing to the world:

– Elliot Abrams, served on Bush’s National Security Council: Grade – D “The ‘apology tours’ are not the administration’s worst offense, and would only merit a C. The D reflects the abandonment of brave men and women throughout the world fighting for human rights and civil liberties.”

– Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute: Grade – C “Some will be tempted to inflate their grade, as Obama has fashioned himself the anti-Bush. But ‘I’m not him’ is not a foreign policy, nor is an almost pathological proclivity to apologize for American power and leadership. [...] Obama looks increasingly desperate.

– Peter Feaver, Duke University Professor: Grade – B- “What will matter is not whether Chávez says nice things about Obama, but whether the revived soft power brings real results. And it will get harder and harder to win applause lines by apologizing for the policies of your predecessor when you continue them in important respects.

“I think it expresses confidence,” Vice President Joe Biden said of Obama’s interactions with Chávez during an interview that aired last night on 60 Minutes. He also specifically took issue with critics who say Obama is apologizing to the world for the U.S. “I don’t know what he’s apologized for. For example, saying we should close Guantanamo is not an apology. That’s not an apology saying…we don’t engage in torture. He didn’t go out and say, ‘Oh, my God, the fact that the last administration did these things — we’re so sorry.’ He did say – he just said, ‘We don’t do torture any more.’”