Fresh off the presses from Wayne Madsen Report:

Vice President Dick Cheney’s counsel ordered, in writing, the Secret Service to destroy the official visitors logs containing the names of those who visited him at the official residence of the Vice President at the U.S. Naval Observatory in northwest Washington, DC. A federal judge ordered the records released pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but the Bush-friendly U.S. Court of Appeals for DC later blocked the records release.

In a September 13, 2006 letter, Cheney’s counsel ordered the Secret Service to return the visitors logs and destroy any copies. Cheney is claiming executive privilege in refusing to disclose the logs. There are indications that the logs held by the Secret Service have already been tampered with. Although the controversy about Cheney’s visitors arose during the Jack Abramoff/Duke Cunningham scandals - investigators wanted to know the identity of lobbyists who visited Cheney - the logs have taken on new importance.

As WMR has previously reported, Cheney, before he was Vice President, was a client of the “Washington Madam’s” Pamela Martin & Associates escorts. Although there are no indications that Cheney engaged these services after becoming Vice President, a number of Cheney’s friends and advisers who possibly engaged the services of the escorts may be on the Vice President’s visitors logs. These include individuals who worked for Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense and President and CEO of Halliburton. What has the Vice President and his counsel worried is that by matching some of the names on the visitors logs with the phone records of Pamela Martin, a very interesting social networking chart could be produced. The September 13, 2006 order by Cheney’s counsel came a few weeks before the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Postal Inspection Service seized “Washington Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s assets. In what may have been a huge blunder on the part of the government, the Federal agents failed to seize her 46 pounds of phone records.