Fourth Branch: The Inverse Heisenberg

The Information Security Oversight Office develops security classification policies for classifying, declassifying and safeguarding national security information generated by the Government to protect information vital to our national security interests. A reporter was looking at the ISOO's annual report and saw that it contained no information from the Office of the Vice President. And that's when the OVP made public the idea that because they have both legislative and executive functions, that the requirement for oversight doesn't apply to them. They were saying the basic rules didn't apply to them. The ISOO thought that was a rather remarkable position. So they wrote a letter to the highly skilled and completely nonpartisan Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asking for a ruling that Cheney's office had to comply. Shortly after that the OVP recommended to a National Security Council task force to change the executive order that would effectively abolish the office. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says that merely by the act of looking at something you change it. In the Bush administration, merely looking at something changes YOU.