It’s not news that Dick Cheney takes an expansive view of executive privilege. But one passage from the just released Plame interview documents makes clear just how far he took it.
When asked if he ever advised Libby that the president had decided to declassify the NIE, the vice president declined to answer in view of his concerns about sharing potentially privileged conversations between himself and the President. it was clarified for the Vice President that he was not being asked to comment on the substance of his conversations with the President, but rather, only whether he’d ever told Libby that he’d had such a discussion with the President. In response, Vice President Cheney repeated his assertion that he must refrain from commenting to the investigators about any private and/or privileged conversations he may have had with the President.
In other words, not only could Cheney not talk about any conversations with the president — even to federal law enforcement. He couldn’t even talk about any conversations with an aide about conversations with the president.
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