Washington Post Drops Demand To View Cheney's Visitor Logs

[Rose Siding]

The Washington Post has quietly retreated from a legal battle with Vice President Cheney by dropping a lawsuit demanding Secret Service logs of visitors to his office and residence.

The newspaper's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit prompted a flurry of press attention and court action just prior to the November election. In October, a district court judge in the capital, Ricardo Urbina, cited the looming vote when he ordered the Secret Service to comply immediately with the Post's request. However, just six days before the election, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay blocking Judge Urbina's order.

"We have decided not to pursue litigation further, though we believe we would have prevailed in the court of appeals as we did in the trial court," a Post attorney, Eric Lieberman, said in an e-mail yesterday. He said the paper had "a fundamental goal" of getting the records to inform voters before the election and failed in that regard. "We also considered the fact that there are several other well positioned FOIA lawsuits seeking these same types of records, and we are confident that the public's right of access will ultimately be vindicated in them," Mr. Lieberman said.

Before the Post abruptly backed down, its case was shaping up as a high-profile clash between Mr. Cheney's broad notions of executive privilege and the newspaper's insistence that the public has the right to know about lobbying and influence peddling at the highest levels of government.

http://www.nysun.com/article/47688?page_no=1

[Demeter]

1. Damn Shame. Cheney's Gotta Gun and Don't Know How to Use It

[meegbear]

2. Thanks for nothing Washington Post!

Fuck the public's right to know.

[tabasco]

3. The check cleared. Lawsuit go buh-bye! n/t

[Virginia Dare]

4. Those wiretaps must have come in handy...n/t

[SpiralHawk]

5. The Wimpington Post

Has Totally ASSUMED THE POSITION

[gratuitous]

6. Oh sure

Our office drops lawsuits all the time when we've won at trial and we expect to win on appeal. Nothing to see here. Nothing unusual happening. In fact, our clients like it when they've won a case and then we decide to abandon it. Happens at least twice a week. Totally routine and ordinary.

Something smells here, and it smells like bullshit to me.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

7. did the WP have a 'visit'

not by aliens obviously

[rainy]

8. Don't want to show how many times Jeff Gannon visited.

Not to mention all the oil execs.