Court Blocks Order To Identify Cheney's Visitors

A federal appeals court has blocked a district judge's ruling that could have led to the disclosure of the identities of visitors to Vice President Cheney's home and White House office.

Late yesterday afternoon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted an emergency stay of the lower judge's order, which required the Secret Service to turn over two years of visitor logs to the Washington Post or offer a detailed legal justification for withholding the records.

The appeals judges, Karen Henderson, David Sentelle, and David Tatel, did not offer a detailed explanation for their decision. The government "satisfied the stringent standards required for a stay," the judges wrote.

The newspaper argued that the upcoming election lent urgency to its Freedom of Information Act request. The district judge, Ricardo Urbina, concurred.