On Monday night, former vice president Dick Cheney said on Fox News that he had "formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions." But the next day, "An intelligence source familiar with the situation" told the Washington Post's Greg Sargent that "The agency has received no request from the former Vice President to release this information." Sargent concluded that "it seems fair to assume for now that the only target of this request was the Fox News television audience." But in a followup post, Sargent reported:
Turns out Cheney made the request through the National Archives, a spokesperson for the archives confirms. That means that we may, in fact, see the documents that Cheney claims will demonstrate that the Bush torture program collected a whole bunch of useful intelligence, though it may take awhile. National Archives spokesperson Susan Cooper confirms that Cheney did submit a request for unspecified documents on March 31st. Cooper said that the National Archives had asked the relevant agency - she wouldn't say which one, but there's little reason to doubt that it's the CIA - for the relevant documents this morning.
Here's hoping Sargent doesn't rely on this "intelligence source" in the future.