The Center for Public Integrity (CPI), one of the best organizations monitoring the government, has just released two reports on White House travel. The first covers the years 1999 to late 2004. Its finding that "more than 620 White House officials have reported receiving more than $2.3 million in trips from companies and organizations" doesn't reveal much of surprise.

It is the second report "Cheney Sidesteps Travel Disclosure Rules" that's the corker. CPI staff were going to compare the travel expenses of the Bush and Clinton administrations but found that they couldn't. There were no travel reports from Vice President Cheney's office—

Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff have been unilaterally exempting themselves from long-standing travel disclosure rules followed by the rest of the executive branch, including the Office of the President, the Center for Public Integrity has discovered.

Cheney's office also appears to have stuck taxpayers with untold millions in travel costs rather than accepting trip sponsors' funds that the rules would require to be disclosed.

It's not as if those in Cheney's office don't indulge in the type of junkets that are routinely funded by private sources. Instead of accepting reimbursement for such trips like other government travelers, it appears that his office labels them "official travel." As a result, however, the public is kept largely unaware of where he and his staff are traveling, with whom they are meeting with and how much it costs, even though tax dollars are covering the bill.
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Some would credit the vice president's office for not accepting outside cash to cover his travel costs. That may be true, but critics point out that the Office of the Vice President's lack of disclosure also creates an opaque situation, with little or no transparency or accountability and at a substantial cost to taxpayers.
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The Ethics Reform Act of 1989 requires every executive "agency" to file a semiannual report of payments accepted from non-federal sources. Regulations implementing this provision state that the term "includes an independent agency as well as an agency within the Executive Office of the President."

President George W. Bush's office accepts reimbursement for travel and has reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel funded by private sources in fiscal years 2003 and 2004, including trips taken by high-profile staffers such as Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales. Public records show that all but one of the other offices within the Executive Office of the President also have filed travel disclosure reports showing privately funded trips. The lone exception, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, appears to have filed no financial disclosure forms at all.

More than a dozen organizations and colleges have confirmed that Cheney's office was not compensated for travel to their events — and in some cases even refused offers of reimbursement.

Not an agency of the executive branch

We knew the Office of the Vice President was special, but we didn't know how special—

Instead of making disclosures like most of the White House, Cheney's office since March 2002 has periodically responded to OGE [Office of Government ethics] inquiries by stating that it is not obligated to file such disclosure forms for travel funded by non-federal sources.

The letters were signed by then-Counsel to the Vice President David Addington, who two weeks ago was named Cheney's chief of staff, replacing indicted aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Addington also reportedly helped write a memo validating the use of torture or similar techniques on terrorism suspects abroad that came to light during the attorney general confirmation process of Gonzales, Bush's former counsel.

In the letters to the Office of Government Ethics, Addington writes that the Office of the Vice President is not classified as an agency of the executive branch and is therefore not required to issue reports on travel, lodging and related expenses funded by non-federal sources. The letters go on to say that neither the vice president nor his staff had accepted any non-federal payments for travel during the period, and that the office is making that limited disclosure as "a matter of comity."

This means that no one knows where Cheney's recently indicted former chief of staff "Scooter" Libby was scooting either.