Cheney Keeps His Secrets

The Skinny is Joel Roberts' take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.

That's according to front-page stories Friday in The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

Documents released Thursday by a House committee claim that since 2003, Cheney's office has resisted routine oversight of its handling of classified material, blocked mandatory inspections and even tried to have the unit of the National Archives responsible for enforcing the oversight rules abolished.

The L.A. Times points out that "at least one of those inspections would have come at a particularly delicate time — when Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and other aides were under criminal investigation for their suspected roles in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame."

Cheney's argument is that his office is "not an entity within the executive branch," because it also has a legislative role under the Constitution - an interesting position, the LAT notes, from an official who has claimed executive privilege when refusing to provide information requested by Congress.

In an interview with the New York Times, Rep. Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said, "I know the vice president wants to operate with unprecedented secrecy. But this is absurd. This order is designed to keep classified information safe."

CIA To Share The "Family Jewels"

The CIA is airing decades of its dirty laundry, declassifying hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the agency's worst abuses from the 1960s and '70s, the Washington Post and New York Times both report Friday.

The Post says the records document a "quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups."

The documents, to be publicly released next week, include accounts of agency break-ins and thefts, opening of private mail, wiretaps of journalists, and drug tests on "unwitting" civilians.

"Most of it is unflattering," said CIA Director Michael Hayden. "But it is CIA's history."

The documents, known around the CIA as the "family jewels," have been unsuccessfully sought for years by journalists and historians under the Freedom of Information Act.

New Orleans Death Rate Surges

The death rate in New Orleans rose dramatically last year, USA Today reports, as the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina continues to linger in the crestfallen city.

The city's death rate surged by 47 percent in 2006, compared with two years before Katrina, according to a new study. Doctors attributed much of that increase to a severe shortage of medical care and personnel – seven of New Orleans' 22 hospitals and half its hospital beds have been lost, and more than 4,000 doctors have been displaced since the hurricane.

The study included deaths of evacuees who left New Orleans following the storm. Kevin Stephens, director of the New Orleans Health Department and the report's lead author, said poor people who fled the city had trouble getting health care wherever they went.

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