Groups to sue to declare VP papers public

8 Sep 2008 // Several historians and open-government advocates said they will sue to declare U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's records public to prevent their destruction.

The groups, which includes the progressive advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said they planned to file their lawsuit Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, naming Cheney, the executive offices of the president and vice president, and the National Archives and Archivist Allen Weinstein as defendants, The Washington Post reported.

The plaintiffs say they want to protect information about national security, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wiretapping, energy and other issues that could be lost if Cheney keeps to his argument that he isn't part of the executive branch. Experts say the vice president could claim he isn't required to make his papers public after leaving office, the Post said.

"I'm concerned that they may not be preserved. Whether they've been zapped already, we don't know," Stanley Kutler, an emeritus professor and constitutional scholar at the University of Wisconsin Law School, told the Post.

Cheney hasn't revealed his plans for his papers.