Vice President Joe Biden did not leak classified information when he reportedly described to dinner guests the location of a "hideaway" his predecessor, Dick Cheney, used in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, an aide to Biden said Monday. 

"There was no disclosure of classified information," spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said. 

She said Biden was merely describing a guest room in the Naval Observatory, the official vice presidential residence in Washington. 

But that's not what Newsweek's Eleanor Clift reported last week. 

She wrote that Biden, while at the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, described to fellow guests the "bunker-like room" that served as the "secure, undisclosed location" where Cheney holed up after the terror attacks. 

"He said the young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment," she wrote. 

"The officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed, an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn't be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall." 

Alexander on Monday described the room as a rather accessible place that is far from secret. 

She said the room was not an underground facility, "rather, an upstairs workspace in the residence, which he understood was frequently used by Vice President Cheney and his aides. 

"That workspace was converted into an upstairs guest room when the Bidens moved into the residence."