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FROM THE OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT
DECEMBER 21, 2005
Vice President Dick Cheney appeared in public just after sunset today to announce a new initiative, the Vice President's Public E-Mail Archive.
"As a vigorous user of e-mail, which has often been my only contact with the above-ground world, I know how frustrating it can be to look for an important old messages, spending hours sifting through your Sent Messages box, only to find you deleted it in a fit of 'organizing my files," Cheney said. It even happened to my old Chief of Staff Scooter, who lost hundreds of messages about Valerie Plame."
"To prevent problems like these, my office has developed a unique new public service -- the Public E-Mail Archive of the Vice President."
"No longer will you need to worry about storage space on your hard drive, the size of your free account at Yahoo, or the displaced aggression of your soon to be ex-wife deleting messages from your girlfriend," Cheney said. "Don't worry. If you're a member of the public, we have a copy of all your e-mails."
Through a spokesman, Cheney's office conceded that it was with grave misgiving that they were embarking on what some might perceive as a new entitlement program.
"At first we thought the private sector could handle this important public need," the Cheney aide said. "We went back and forth on this, but in the end, Dick really wanted to read your e-mail himself. Right now!"
"The catch is that I keep odd hours," Cheney said. "I can't be out and about between dawn and sunset, so I need access to your e-mail, to everyone's e-mail, really, during my productive early morning hours. The typical corporate 9 to 5 drone just can't provide that kind of immediate all-hours coverage for a reasonable price."
"The vice president is even taking the time to write an occasional suggestion or word of encouragement," the Cheney aide said. "Dick always wants to be helpful. Sometimes, when he sees an inartful defense of the president, or an e-mail that isn't sufficiently 'regime-friendly', he'll tap out a quick note to the sender, returning the e-mail for revisions."
"We always let the message get through eventually," he added. "You could think of the Veep, er, umm, actually he prefers to be known as the Viper ... you could think of the Viper as sort of like a friendly English teacher helping you make your patriotic point more cogently. He's always harping on things I say ..."
"Ahhh, shut up," Cheney said. "Here's what I want you to know. From now on, everybody's old e-mail belongs to me. If you want to look at your past messages, you can submit a FOIA -- HAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAA. Or maybe you can try to ask the FISA court to give your e-mail back. MUUUUWWWAAAAAHAAAHAHHAAHAHA."
"And by the way, Mr. Wansley, your wife is getting pretty frisky in her correspondence with that 'boring' guy who works down the hall from her, the one she says she can't stand," Cheney added.
The Office of the Vice President intended to release video and photographs of the Vice President handling some of the messages in the new Public E-Mail Archive. Unfortunately, when we reviewed the image and video files, the V.P. was strangely absent, even from shots we were absolutely sure he had appeared in. We will provide new photos as soon as we're able to determine the cause of this glitch.