Cheney’s Office Damaged in Fire… Heh.. Heh.. No Comment… I Don’t Want To Be Declared An Enemy Combatant And Guantanamo’ed.

Thick smoke billowed from a fire Wednesday in Vice President Dick Cheney’s suite of offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House.Cheney’s office, known for its historical furnishings and ornate decorations, was damaged by smoke and water from fire hoses, officials said. There was concern about water damage to the floor, made of mahogany, white maple and cherry and considered to be very delicate.

The adjacent office of the vice president’s political director, Amy Whitelaw, was heavily damaged by fire, said Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride.

The vice president was not in the building at the time; he was in the West Wing of the White House with President Bush.

Andy Borowitz  on Huffington Post has a little something to add though: 

Attempting to Destroy CIA Tapes, Cheney Burns Down White House

The White House, one of the most historic structures in the nation’s capital, burnt to the ground today after Vice President Dick Cheney attempted to incinerate a cache of CIA interrogation tapes in his office.

According to White House aides, the blaze started shortly after twelve noon, minutes after Mr. Cheney slipped out of a cabinet meeting, saying that he had to “hit the head.”

But rather than using the bathroom as he had stated, the vice president instead went to his office and put a blowtorch to a pile of CIA interrogation tapes which the White House had feared might be subpoenaed in the near future.

“I started burning those things and boom, they went up like a rocket,” an apologetic Mr. Cheney later told reporters.

The accidental blaze quickly spread from the videotapes to a nearby stack of transcripts of phone conversations involving Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and singer Barbra Streisand that Mr. Cheney had obtained via a warrantless wiretap.

“Once those transcripts caught on fire, I knew the building was a goner,” Mr. Cheney said. “There were literally thousands and thousands of pages of that stuff.”

Speaking in front of the charred remains of the historic building, administration spokesperson Dana Perino said that the White House might have been saved had it not been for an unfortunate bureaucratic mix-up: “Instead of calling the fire department, President Bush called FEMA.”

Courtesy of HuffPo