Tag: Dick Cheney

CREW announced today that the FBI released notes (pdf)of former Vice-President Dick Cheney's FBI interview on the leak of Valerie Plame's identity, purusant to its FOIA lawsuit. In the interview, Cheney is critical of the CIA.

Cheney could not recall 22 things, including, whether he had ever told Scooter Libby about Valerie Plame. Via Mother Jones, A list is below: [More....]

If you're a liberal, you can say that George Bush isn't very smart, and Dick Cheney isn't very nice, and that's about the end of it. A million liberal blogs and columns grind away at synonyms for "not nice" and "not smart" year after year, but the Republicans still control 49 seats in the Senate, and Fox News still has a license to broadcast.

Bush-Cheney chained up a 78 year-old Afghan man in a fetal position at Guantanamo for more than 24 hours, while he pissed and shat all over himself.  The New York Times and the Washington Post are still a little fuzzy about what to call this procedure, and the rest of the media is even more obtuse. When John McCain sponsored a very weak bill to restrict this method of "interrogation," Dick Cheney ran through every office in the Capitol trying to defeat it, and he succeeded. The same sort of thing is happening at this very moment in a secret CIA prison somewhere, and if you don't know what to call it, I can tell you.

It's torture, Stupid!  

Dick Cheney continues to insist the CIA interrogators should neither be investigated nor prosecuted. He continues to praise their work.

"The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions," he said in a statement dated Monday.

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CREW advises that tomorrow morning, Judge Emmett Sullivan will hear arguments in its FOIA lawsuit on whether Dick Cheney's FBI interview in the Valerie Plame leaks investigation should be released to the public.

On April 8, 2009, CREW requested that the Obama administration release the interview in light of President Obama’s oft-stated claims of a commitment to transparency and accountability and Attorney General Holder’s promise of a presumption of openness. The current administration has refused to release the interview, siding with the Bush administration in keeping secret a document that would shed light on the former vice president’s role in destroying Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA career and jeopardizing the lives of others with whom she came in contact.

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The New York Times reports on a covert program planned by the CIA that Dick Cheney ordered be kept secret.

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

....Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

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When I wrote a few weeks ago about the Obama Administration taking the position that documents related to Dick Cheney's FBI interview in the Valerie Plame leaks case should not be released, it was in the context of lack of transparency and the silliness of the Government's attempted justification:

Another sign of non-transparency from Obama: His Justice Department is fighting a Freedom of Information Act request in federal court, trying to keep CREW from obtaining FBI reports and summaries of Dick Cheney's statement to the FBI over the Valerie Plame Leak. The Judge held a hearing yesterday and was very unhappy with the Government's position. He's going to review the statement himself to see if there's any reason not to release the requested documents. The Government gave this ridiculous reason: They don't want the statements "to become fodder for Cheney's political enemies or late-night commentary on "The Daily Show."

In newer developments, David Corn reports the Government has filed a new pleading containing a more substantive reason: [More...]

Banned Techniques Yielded `High Value Information,' Memo Says

Torture works! Who knew?

The source of this garbage is Admiral Dennis Blair, who is deeply committed to giving everybody who tortured detainees a free pass.

"I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past," he wrote, "but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given."

So it isn't exactly big news that this guy would claim his top-secret records prove that torture really works, and we're all so much safer because a few raggedy Arabs were (half) drowned, frozen, humiliated, beaten, kicked, suffocated, sleep-deprived, isolated, chained up like pretzels for days at a time and forced to poop and pee all over themselves, while their families were arrested, threatened, tortured, deported, and dispossessed.

The New York Daily News reports that aides to Dick Cheney are saying he's really angry that Bush wouldn't give Scooter Libby a full pardon and kept the pressure on Bush until the last minute.

After repeatedly telling Cheney his mind was made up, Bush became so exasperated with Cheney's persistence he told aides he didn't want to discuss the matter any further. The unsuccessful full-court press left Cheney bitter. "He's furious with Bush," a Cheney source told The News. "He's really angry about it and decided he's going to say what he believes."

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Dick Cheney is back and Politico has him.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.

In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Cheney tells Politico that President Obama will do one of two things: Backtrack on his positions or put the country at risk. Politico describes Cheney's mood as "self-vindicating."

Maybe Cheney watched Monday's "24" episode? [More...]

Vice President Dick Cheney has told the Associated Press there is no need for President Bush to issue preventive pardons for abusive interrogation techniques. Why?

He also said he doesn't think anyone at the CIA did anything illegal during interrogations. He says they followed the administration's legal opinions.

What about waterboarding? Cheney believes the information gleaned from suspects after the simulated drowning is reliable. And,

The vice president said waterboarding has been used with "great discrimination by people who know what they're doing" and produced much valuable information.

He's learned nothing since 2006 when he publicly first endorsed waterboarding. Is he living in an alternative universe or what? 12 days and counting.

Vice President Dick Cheney defended himself and the Bush Administration today on Fox News Sunday.

Cheney expressed no regrets in today's interview, vigorously defending the Bush administration's war and counterterrorism policies and saying he was untroubled by opinion polls showing that he and Bush are among the most unpopular White House occupants in modern times. "Eventually you wear out your welcome in this business, but I'm very comfortable with where we are and what we've achieved substantively," he said.

In discussing his views of broad executive power on national security issues, Cheney said Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt "went far beyond anything we've done in a global war on terror," and said that all U.S. presidents since 1973 have viewed the War Powers Act -- which gave Congress the role of declaring war -- as unconstitutional.

He also mocked Joe Biden. The transcript is here.

You knew it had to be too good to be true. It was.

The Texas indictments against Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales have been dismissed.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released its report (pdf) on PlameGate today. The last two paragraphs tell the story:

The investigation sought to answer basic questions about this incident, including (1) how the Valerie Plame Wilson leak occurred, including whether there was a concerted effort to knowingly disclose classified information; (2) whether senior White House officials complied with requirements governing the handling of classified information; (3) whether the White House took appropriate steps to address an improper leak and sanction any individuals involved; and (4) what legislative or other actions are needed to ensure appropriate identification and handling of classified information by White House officials so that such leaks do not occur in the future.

The Committee has been unable to completely investigate these matters, in part, because of the President’s assertion of executive privilege over the report of the FBI interview of Vice President Cheney. This invocation of executive privilege was legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege. It prevented the Committee from learning the extent of the Vice President’s role in the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity.

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Remember in 2003 when Vice President Dick Cheney began asserting that the Vice President is not part of the executive branch? He's been using that ever since as an excuse to be relieved from preserving documents under the Presidential Records Act.

Today, a federal judge told Cheney to preserve his records.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is a setback for the Bush administration in its effort to promote a narrow definition of materials that must be safeguarded under by the Presidential Records Act.

The Bush administration's legal position "heightens the court's concern" that some records may not be preserved, said the judge.

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It's official. President Bush invoked a claim of executive privilege to prevent Congress from obtaining Justice Department interviews with Dick Cheney and others over the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson. A subpoena for the information was issued in June.

The Wilsons respond (no link, received by e-mail):

“Today the president took the unprecedented step of asserting executive privilege to thwart congressional efforts to review Vice President Cheney’s interview with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald concerning the betrayal of Valerie Wilson’s covert CIA identity. We agree with Congressman Waxman that the position taken by the president is ludicrous.

The American people have a right to know what role the vice president played in the leak of Ms. Wilson’s covert identity for political purposes. The fact that the Attorney General is recommending the assertion of executive privilege reveals that this Department of Justice is as beholden to the White House as that run by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

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