By Editorial, The Toledo Blade, June 6, 2007

6 Jun 2007 // WHAT do they have to hide? That should be the overriding question involving newly disclosed efforts by the Bush Administration to zealously keep its visitor logs secret from the public. It's only because various groups have legally challenged the infamous secrecy of the White House that the aggressive moves by the President and vice president to conceal their visitors have been exposed.

The latest revelation shows Dick Cheney's plan to avoid public scrutiny of meetings he had with visitors at his residence. The visitor logs kept by the Secret Service were, by law, required to be disclosed to whoever asks to see them.

During the Clinton administration, Republican-led congressional committees investigating the President and First Lady asked for and obtained them. But the Bush Administration found a way to circumvent the disclosure law by declaring the logs presidential records exempt from public access. The excuse for arbitrarily concealing the visitor records of top government officials was that high-level meetings needed to be conducted in confidence to ensure candor.

News organizations and others began to demand that the administration turn over Secret Service records of visitors at the White House and vice president's residence. So the logs got a new designation.

Unbeknownst to the public, the White House and Secret Service signed a memorandum last year declaring the visitor records outside of the Freedom of Information Act and "at all times under the exclusive legal custody and control of the White House."

Later, Mr. Cheney's lawyer informed the Secret Service that visitor logs for the vice president's personal residence "are and shall remain subject to the exclusive ownership, custody, and control of the OVP" (Office of Vice President). The law enforcement agency was even ordered not to keep any copy of the logs.

The Secret Service routinely destroyed information about the vice president's visitors until various lawsuits for the records forced it to stop.

The administration power grab is scary and hauntingly Nixon-like.