By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com

Why, in 2003, did Vice President Cheney suddenly become so dead’set against reporting how his office handled government secrets?

Cheney’s refusal to abide by reporting requirements that apply to everyone else in the Bush administration — and the audacity of his excuse, that because he is also president of the Senate, his office is not really within the executive branch — led to a bunch of unflattering front-page headlines this morning.

But let’s assume there’s a method to his madness. Perhaps Cheney is rejecting this oversight because he doesn’t want people to know what he and his aides have been doing with classified information. Or perhaps he believes in principle that he shouldn’t be subject to constraints that apply to others in the executive branch. Maybe both. I’m betting on both.

Cheney’s particular sensitivity to releasing information about his handling of government secrets is not exactly surprising. And while he apparently had no problem filing reports in 2001 and 2002, he stopped doing so in 2003 — a game-changing year in a lot of ways.

As I wrote in my March 31, 2006, column, investigative reporter Murray Waas has developed a compelling case that the use and abuse of classified information has been key to the White House’s success not only in contriving a bogus case for war in Iraq, but in keeping charges of deception from becoming a major issue in the 2004 election — and, arguably, to this day. Time and time again, in a strategy that most likely owes its existence to Cheney, the White House has selectively leaked or declassified secret intelligence findings that served its political agenda — while aggressively asserting the need to keep secret the information that would tend to discredit it.

Also, starting in early 2003, Bush granted Cheney broad new powers to personally classify and declassify material, as I wrote in my Feb. 17, 2006 column. Bush’s move, ironically, came in the very same order that Cheney is now in part resisting.

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