Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist

Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Md Troopers Assoc #20 & Westminster Md Fire Dept Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Showing posts with label Military Natl Security Intel CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Military Natl Security Intel CIA. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

White House mistakenly identifies CIA chief in Afghanistan - The Washington Post

White House mistakenly identifies CIA chief in Afghanistan - The Washington PostBy Published: May 25, 2014



The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.
The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country. Read More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-mistakenly-identifies-cia-chief-in-afghanistan/2014/05/25/ac8e80cc-e444-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html?wpisrc=nl_hdln
'via Blog this'

Monday, March 31, 2014

Washington Post News Alert Exclusive: CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says

Washington Post News Alert: 

Exclusive: CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.

Read more at: 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-misled-on-interrogation-program-senate-report-says/2014/03/31/eb75a82a-b8dd-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html 


*****

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Dishonorable Disclosures - You Tube: Intelligence and Spec Ops forces are furious at how Obama has exploited their service for political advantage




You Tube: Intelligence and Spec Ops forces are furious at how Obama has exploited their service for political advantage


About Dishonorable Disclosure


Published on Aug 15, 2012 by 
Intelligence and Special Operations forces are furious and frustrated at how President Obama and those in positions of authority have exploited their service for political advantage. Countless leaks, interviews and decisions by the Obama Administration and other government officials have undermined the success of our Intelligence and Special Operations forces and put future missions and personnel at risk.

The unwarranted and dangerous public disclosure of Special Forces Operations is so serious -- that for the first time ever -- former operators have agreed to risk their reputations and go 'on the record' in a special documentary titled "Dishonorable Disclosures." Its goal is to educate America about serious breaches of security and prevent them from ever happening again.

Use of military ranks, titles & photographs in uniform does not imply endorsement of the Dept of the Army or the Department of Defense. All individuals are no longer in active service with any federal agency or military service.


*****

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

For CIA family, a deadly suicide bombing leads to painful divisions - The Washington Post

For CIA family, a deadly suicide bombing leads to painful divisions - The Washington Post:

Washington Post: For CIA family, a deadly suicide bombing leads to painful divisions

By Ian Shapira, Published: January 28, 2012

The call from the Central Intelligence Agency came on a December afternoon in 2009 while Gary Anderson was skiing with his three children. It’s about your wife, the agency man said.

Standing inside Eagle Rock ski lodge in Pennsylvania, Anderson pleaded for details. The CIA official said simply: Where are you? We’ll meet you.

Anderson suspected dreadful news about Jennifer Matthews, his college sweetheart, his wife of 22 years and a CIA operative on assignment almost 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. With several hours until the CIA meeting, Anderson and his three children — then 12, 9 and 6 — hit the slopes for one more hour. The father wanted to cling a little longer to normalcy, to a life between before and after.

Finally, the Fredericksburg family got into their silver minivan and headed to a nearby motel. There, in a sterile conference room, CIA officials told Anderson the news: His wife, one of the CIA’s top al-Qaeda experts, had just been killed in an explosion at a base in Khost province, in eastern Afghanistan. There was no mention of a double agent, no indication that six other CIA operatives had died in the deadliest attack on agency personnel in decades.

Anderson, who is commenting publicly on the loss of his wife for the first time, was so stunned that he couldn’t formulate questions, except: Are you sure she’s dead? … http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/for-cia-family-a-deadly-suicide-bombing-leads-to-painful-divisions/2012/01/20/gIQAyJGVYQ_story.html?tid=pm_local_pop


'via Blog this'

*****

Monday, December 26, 2011

Ronald Kessler - Newsmax.com: FBI and CIA Deserve Our Thanks as Much as Military

Ronald Kessler - Newsmax.com: FBI and CIA Deserve Our Thanks as Much as Military

FBI and CIA Deserve Our Thanks as Much as Military

By: Ronald Kessler - Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. He is a New York Times best-selling author of books on the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA. His latest, "The Secrets of the FBI," has just been published. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via email. Go Here Now.



Because of the terrorist threat, the FBI and CIA have become as important as the military in preserving our freedom. Yet while thanking our military is standard practice in American life, no one thinks of thanking the FBI, the CIA, or the rest of the intelligence community for keeping us safe since 9/11.

Instead, the media and many on the extreme left and extreme right demonize the men and women of those agencies for allegedly “spying on innocent Americans.”

Last year, two Washington Post reporters took two years to uncover this story: The intelligence community is big and secret and uses a lot of contractors. Presented as an exposé, the series, “Top Secret America,” found no abuse. Instead, it presented the conclusion that the intelligence community is a “hidden world” that is “growing beyond control.”

A front-page subhead read: “The government has built a national security and intelligence system so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it’s fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping citizens safe.”

In fact, the intelligence community has kept us safe since 9/11. But Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, who wrote the series, never mentioned that fact. If they had, the Washington Post series could not have run: It would have been exposed as bogus…http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/FBI-CIA-safe-terrorism/2011/11/23/id/418996

[…]

Most people do not draw a connection between these efforts by the intelligence community and the fact that there has not been a successful attack since 9/11. Rather, FBI agents are portrayed in the media as having nothing better to do than probe the library reading habits of innocent grandmothers. If FBI agents can’t be trusted to wiretap within the law, why trust them to carry weapons or make arrests?

Despite constant vilifying by the media and congressional threats to take away the tools needed to uncover plots, FBI agents and CIA officers work silently around the clock and risk their own lives to keep us safe. Most could be making far more money in the private sector.

Out of love of country, they continue on the job, making sure we do not again witness Americans hurling themselves out of the windows of skyscrapers to escape an inferno or children holding up photos of their parents, hoping they survived a horrific attack.

Let’s give thanks to these patriots who have successfully protected us, our families, and our friends for more than 10 years… http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/FBI-CIA-safe-terrorism/2011/11/23/id/418996

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. He is a New York Times best-selling author of books on the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA. His latest, "The Secrets of the FBI," has just been published. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via email. Go Here Now.



You May Also Like

Wednesday, 21 Dec 2011 16:01 PM
A new law is needed to detain John W. Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, Joe diGenova, …

Monday, 19 Dec 2011 10:08 AM
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. s objection to state laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls is…

Thursday, 15 Dec 2011 09:07 AM
Liberal television anchors love having David Frum on their shows. He pretends to be a conservative but makes a habit of…
Latest News Stories






[20111123 Kessler FBI CIA Deserve Thanks as Much Military]

+++++++++++

*****

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

New York Times: News Alert: Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants Who Aided Bin Laden Raid


Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Tuesday, June 14, 2011 -- 10:32 PM EDT
-----
Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants Who Aided Bin Laden Raid



WASHINGTON — Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times
A casualty of the recent tension between the countries is an ambitious Pentagon program to train Pakistani paramilitary troops to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the northwestern tribal areas.
Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan’s support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighboring Afghanistan...  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/asia/15policy.html?_r=1&emc=na

*****

Thursday, May 05, 2011

Washington Post: CIA had secret outpost in Abbottabad

Breaking News Alert: CIA had secret outpost in Abbottabad
May 5, 2011 8:46:22 PM
----------------------------------------

The CIA maintained a safe house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for a small team of spies who conducted extensive surveillance over a period of months on the compound where Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. special operations forces this week, U.S. officials said.

The secret CIA facility was used as a base of operations for one of the most delicate human intelligence gathering mission in recent CIA history, one that relied on Pakistani informants and other sources to help assemble a "pattern of life" portrait of the occupants and daily activities at the fortified compound where bin Laden was found, the officials said.
Military Natl Security Intel CIA, World Pakistan, Military Global War on Terror, Military Global War on Terror Osama Bin Laden, 
*****

Monday, July 19, 2010

Ron Kessler: CIA Advised Against Terrorist's Release

Ron Kessler: CIA Advised Against Terrorist's Release


Jul 19, 2010
The Obama administration sent a Guantanamo Bay prisoner back to his native Yemen against the recommendations of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, Sen. Kit Bond tells Newsmax. After the failed Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines plane by a suspect...


Jul 15, 2010
By words and deeds, President Obama has cast a pall on American business, jeopardizing the economic recovery. From the healthcare industry to Wall Street, Obama never misses a chance to demonize business. From taxation to regulation to healthcare, he has undercut...


Jul 13, 2010
The Obama administration s spy swap was a good deal for the United States, John L. Martin, the Justice Department s former chief spy prosecutor, tells Newsmax. These 11 people charged with spying were useless appendages of a shattered regime, Martin says. They are a...


Jun 30, 2010
As might be expected, the mainstream media have ignored the latest rant from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., President Obama s minister, friend, sounding board, and mentor for 20 years. As reported recently by the New York Post, Wright told a seminar he taught at the...


Jun 28, 2010
President Obama s insistence on a date to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in the middle of a surge is self-defeating, Sen. Kit Bond, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tells Newsmax. A date to begin withdrawing in a war that is not...


Jun 23, 2010
Of all of President Obama s policies, none is more misguided than using politically correct euphemisms to refer to radical Muslim terrorists. Can you imagine Winston Churchill referring to the Nazis as violent extremists or to the London Blitz as a man-caused disaster...


Jun 21, 2010
Ignored by the mainstream media, President Obama has been changing government rules to prevent agencies from using private firms in order to reduce costs. Typically, that raises costs to taxpayers by as much as 30 percent. The effort to stifle competition and require that...


Jun 18, 2010
When George W. Bush was president, the left believed he could do nothing right and even compared him to Hitler whenever he made a move to protect America. Now that Barack Obama is president, we have a similar syndrome taking hold among some on the right: Rep. Joe Barton, a...

More Ronald Kessler stories

*****

Kevin Dayhoff Soundtrack: http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.net/ Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/ or http://kevindayhoffart.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.com/ Kevin Dayhoff Westminster: http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/ or http://www.westgov.net/ = www.kevindayhoff.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoff Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net Explore Carroll: www.explorecarroll.com The Tentacle: www.thetentacle.com

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

How to Avoid Learning from Surprise Attacks, Courtesy Of the MSM and the CIA

How to Avoid Learning from Surprise Attacks, Courtesy Of the MSM and the CIA

Posted by Dutton Peabody Jun 22nd 2010 at 7:22 am in Featured Story, Military | Comments (17)

http://bigjournalism.com/dpeabody/2010/06/22/how-to-avoid-learning-from-surprise-attacks-courtesy-of-the-msm-and-the-cia/

Last week, at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Mo., a conference on the Korean War saw the CIA release of a large volume of long-classified documents. One of them led to this revelation:

Declassified Documents Show CIA Blunders in Korean War

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency committed two major blunders during the Korean War by underestimating the threat of a North Korean invasion of South Korea and failing to predict the intervention of Chinese communist troops until a day before it happened. . . . The revelations are contained in a set of CIA documents that were declassified on Wednesday, including a report entitled “Two Strategic Intelligence Mistakes in Korea, 1950,” which reviews the mistakes.

Battle_of_Inchon

According to the report, a [CIA] paper dated on June 19, six days before the Korea War broke out, noted that “while [North Korea] could take control of parts of the South, it probably did not have the capability to destroy the South Korean government without Soviet or Chinese assistance,” adding “This belief caused them to ignore warnings of [North Korea’s] military buildup and mobilization near the border, clearly the ‘force protection’ intelligence that should have been most alerting to military minds.”

The CIA had been monitoring China’s moves from the start of the war, but even after the balance tipped in favor of South Korea with the success of [MacArthur’s] Inchon landing operation that choked off the communist advance, it saw no signs of Chinese intervention. On Oct. 12, it reported, “While full-scale Chinese Communist intervention in Korea must be regarded as a continuing possibility, a consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that such action is not probable in 1950” . . . But on the following day, 30,000 Chinese troops poured across the Duman (or Tumen) River followed by 150,000 more soldiers a few days later, leading to a full-blown battle with allied forces.

Pretty enormous mistakes, considering that the North Korean and Chinese offensives required mobilization and movement to launch-points of large military forces opposite RoK and U.S. units, something not easy for intelligence collection to miss in a tinder-box environment like the Korean peninsula at the time.

If you haven’t read in the MSM about these two enormous mistakes being revealed, it’s because this report comes from South Korea. Its source can be read in its entirety here. The New York Times has not bothered to report it. The Washington Post website contains a June 16 AP report, “CIA papers: US was caught off-guard in Korean War,” which softballs the revelations and fails to be specific about U.S. civilian and military leaders having relied in 1950 on two crucial CIA assessments that proved dead wrong, at the cost of many American and RoK soldiers’ lives.

Read more: http://bigjournalism.com/dpeabody/2010/06/22/how-to-avoid-learning-from-surprise-attacks-courtesy-of-the-msm-and-the-cia/

*****

Kevin Dayhoff Soundtrack: http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.net/ Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/ or http://kevindayhoffart.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.com/ Kevin Dayhoff Westminster: http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/ or http://www.westgov.net/ = www.kevindayhoff.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoff Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net Explore Carroll: www.explorecarroll.com The Tentacle: www.thetentacle.com

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Dick Morris digest

Dick Morris digest

Obama Adviser 'Has to Resign'

Sep 04, 2009
Dick Morris says on FOX's "On the Record" that Van Jones, Obama's "green jobs" adviser, must resign after he reportedly signed a petition calling for an investigation into whether 9/11 was an inside job. He also said Obama's healthcare plan is in deep trouble.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY

Polls Tell Grim Tale For Obama

Sep 03, 2009
The longer President Obama takes to resolve this healthcare issue, the more his ratings will slip — diminishing his power to achieve anything. No president with poll approval numbers in the 30s would be able to push through a program like this.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY

Health Bill Breaches IRS Privacy

Aug 31, 2009
Under the House healthcare bill, the IRS is required to make available, to the new government “health choices commissioner” established by the legislation and to each state health program, all of your personal tax information.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY

Obama Goes After CIA to Appease Left

Aug 27, 2009
Because Barack Obama hasn’t yet pulled out of Iraq and might have to adjust his healthcare plan strategy, he had to pacify his constituency and throw a few CIA interrogators to the wolves.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY

Lieberman Opens Door to Democratic Retreat

Aug 25, 2009
Joe Lieberman's critique was not primarily focused on the healthcare aspects of the program, or even on its ultimate desirability, but rather on the wisdom of attempting so radical a transformation and so extensive — and expensive — during a major recession.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY

CIA Chief Panetta's Job Appears Secure

Appeals Court Rules Against Ashcroft in 9/11 Case

Goldwater Jr.: Obama Policies 'Scare the Hell Out of Me'

AP Picture of Wounded Marine Sparks Debate

Rep. Lynch May Seek Kennedy's Seat

Ethics Waiver OK'd for Probe of Sen. Stevens Case

20090904 sdsom Dick Morris digest
*****

Monday, August 31, 2009

Ben Stein Politico: Post story bolsters Cheney

Ben Stein Politico: Post story bolsters Cheney

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0809/Post_story_bolsters_Cheney.html

August 29, 2009 Categories:
Newspapers

The Washington Post leads today with an extraordinary story cutting against the conclusions of a series of recent government and media reports to cast as straight news — with a few hedges and qualifications — that waterboarding and sleep deprivation worked like a charm to turn Kalid Sheik Mohammed from an enemy into an "asset."

[…]

Torture foes have
argued that Mohammed was eager to tell his story and had, in fact, revealed many of his "secrets" in an Al Jazeera interview before his capture. This story seems to channel the CIA's pushback against, particularly, Attorney General Eric Holder.

Cheney biographer Stephen Hayes noted the story this morning on the blog of The Weekly Standard.

"Is the mainstream media coming around?" he asked.

By Ben Smith 01:06 PM

'Wellstone effect' for Kennedy? Aug 27 2009 - 4:32 PM EST

Kennedy legacy shapes Obama path Aug 27 2009 - 4:49 AM EST

Groups target GOP on cap-and-trade Aug 25 2009 - 5:06 AM EST

The summer of Astroturf Aug 21 2009 - 5:00 AM EST

Obama's poll numbers return to earth Jul 30 2009 - 9:24 PM EST

More:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0809/Post_story_bolsters_Cheney.html

20090829 Ben Stein Politico Post story bolsters Cheney
*****

RAW DATA: Transcript of Cheney on 'FOX News Sunday'

RAW DATA: Transcript of Cheney on 'FOX News Sunday'

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/30/raw-data-transcript-cheney-fox-news-sunday/

August 30, 2009

The following is a transcript of former Vice President Dick Cheney on "FOX News Sunday." FOXNews.com Sunday, August 30, 2009

Cheney Slams Obama's 'Politicized' Probe of CIA Interrogations 27428478

Publisher Accuses Reid of 'Bullying' Nevada Newspaper 27431038

Cheney: Enhanced Interrogations 'Essential' in Saving American Lives 27428688

Exclusive Preview: Cheney on FNS 27407860

Frank Says House Will Likely Approve Audit of Federal Reserve

CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: Mr. Vice President, welcome back to "FOX News Sunday."

RICHARD CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's good to be back, Chris.

WALLACE: This is your first interview since Attorney General Holder named a prosecutor to investigate possible CIA abuses of terror detainees.

What do you think of that decision?

CHENEY: I think it's a terrible decision. President Obama made the announcement some weeks ago that this would not happen, that his administration would not go back and look at or try to prosecute CIA personnel. And the effort now is based upon the inspector general's report that was sent to the Justice Department five years ago, was completely reviewed by the Justice Department in years past.

They made decisions about whether or not there was any prosecutable offense there. They found one. It did not involve CIA personnel, it involved contract personnel. That individual was sentenced and is doing time. The matter's been dealt with the way you would expect it to be dealt with by professionals.

Now we've got a political appointee coming back, and supposedly without the approval of the president, going to do a complete review, or another complete investigation, possible prosecution of CIA personnel. We could talk the whole program about the negative consequences of that, about the terrible precedent it sets, to have agents involved, CIA personnel involved, in a difficult program that's approved by the Justice Department, approved by the National Security Council, and the Bush administration, and then when a new administration comes in, it becomes political.

They may find themselves dragged up before a grand jury, have to hire attorneys on their own because the Justice Department won't provide them with counsel.

It's a terrible, terrible precedent.

WALLACE: There are a lot of aspects that you just raised. Let me review some of them.
Why are you so concerned about the idea of one administration reviewing, investigating the actions of another one?

CHENEY: Well, you think, for example, in the intelligence arena. We ask those people to do some very difficult things. Sometimes, that put their own lives at risk. They do so at the direction of the president, and they do so with the -- in this case, we had specific legal authority from the Justice Department. And if they are now going to be subject to being investigated and prosecuted by the next administration, nobody's going to sign up for those kinds of missions.

It's a very, very devastating, I think, effect that it has on morale inside the intelligence community. If they assume that they're going to have to be dealing with the political consequences -- and it's clearly a political move. I mean, there's no other rationale for why they're doing this -- then they'll be very reluctant in the future to do that.

WALLACE: Do you think this was a political move not a law enforcement move?

CHENEY: Absolutely. I think the fact is, the Justice Department has already reviewed the inspector general's report five years ago. And now they're dragging it back up again, and Holder is going to go back and review it again, supposedly, to try to find some evidence of wrongdoing by CIA personnel.

In other words, you know, a review is never going to be final anymore now. We can have somebody, some future administration, come along 10 years from now, 15 years from now, and go back and rehash all of these decisions by an earlier administration.

WALLACE: Let me follow up on that. The attorney general says this is a preliminary review, not a criminal investigation. It is just about CIA officers who went beyond their legal authorization.
Why don't you think it's going to stop there?

CHENEY: I don't believe it. We had the president of the United States, President Obama, tell us a few months ago there wouldn't be any investigation like this, that there would not be any look back at CIA personnel who were carrying out the policies of the prior administration. Now they get a little heat from the left wing of the Democratic Party, and they're reversing course on that.

The president is the chief law enforcement officer in the administration. He's now saying, well, this isn't anything that he's got anything to do with. He's up on vacation on Martha's Vineyard and his attorney general is going back and doing something that the president said some months ago he wouldn't do.

WALLACE: But when you say it's not going to stop there, you don't believe it's going to stop there, do you think this will become an investigation into the Bush lawyers who authorized the activity into the top policymakers who were involved in the decision to happen, an enhanced interrogation program?

CHENEY: Well, I have no idea whether it will or not, but it shouldn't.

The fact of the matter is the lawyers in the Justice Department who gave us those opinions had every right to give us the opinions they did. Now you get a new administration and they say, well, we didn't like those opinions, we're going to go investigate those lawyers and perhaps have them disbarred. I just think it's an outrageous precedent to set, to have this kind of, I think, intensely partisan, politicized look back at the prior administration.

I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly, Chris, is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from Al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, how did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?

Instead, they're out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions, threatening contrary to what the president originally said. They're going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations. I just think it's an outrageous political act that will do great damage long term to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say.

WALLACE: If the prosecutor asks to speak to you, will you speak to him?

CHENEY: It will depend on the circumstances and what I think their activities are really involved in. I've been very outspoken in my views on this matter. I've been very forthright publicly in talking about my involvement in these policies.

I'm very proud of what we did in terms of defending the nation for the last eight years successfully. And, you know, it won't take a prosecutor to find out what I think. I've already expressed those views rather forthrightly.

WALLACE: Let me ask you -- you say you're proud of what we did. The inspector general's report which was just released from 2004 details some specific interrogations -- mock executions, one of the detainees threatened with a handgun and with an electric drill, waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times.

First of all, did you know that was going on?

CHENEY: I knew about the waterboarding. Not specifically in any one particular case, but as a general policy that we had approved.

The fact of the matter is, the Justice Department reviewed all of those allegations several years ago. They looked at this question of whether or not somebody had an electric drill in an interrogation session. It was never used on the individual, or that they had brought in a weapon, never used on the individual. The judgment was made then that there wasn't anything there that was improper or illegal with respect to conduct in question...

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Do you think what they did, now that you've heard about it, do you think what they did was wrong?

CHENEY: Chris, my sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States, and giving us the intelligence we needed to go find Al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed. Those interrogations were involved in the arrest of nearly all the Al Qaeda members that we were able to bring to justice. I think they were directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States.

It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well.

WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it?

CHENEY: I am.

WALLACE: One specific question about Holder, the Obama administration -- you put out the statement saying that you were upset that President Obama allowed the attorney general to bring these cases. A top Obama official says, hey, maybe in the Bush White House they told the attorney general what to do, but Eric Holder makes independent decisions.

CHENEY: Well, I think if you look at the Constitution, the president of the United States is the chief law enforcement officer in the land. The attorney general's a statutory officer. He's a member of the cabinet.

The president's the one who bears this responsibility. And for him to say, gee, I didn't have anything to do with it, especially after he sat in the Oval Office and said this wouldn't happen, then Holder decides he's going to do it. So now he's backed off and is claiming he's not responsible.

I just, I think he's trying to duck the responsibility for what's going on here. And I think it's wrong.
WALLACE: President Obama has also decided to move interrogations from the CIA to the FBI that's under the supervision of the National Security Council, and the FBI will have to act within the boundaries of the Army Field Manual.

What do you think that does for the nation's security? And will we now have the tools if we catch another high-value target?

CHENEY: I think the move to set up this -- what is it called, the HIG Group?

WALLACE: Yes.

CHENEY: It's not even clear who's responsible. The Justice Department is, then they claim they aren't. The FBI is responsible and they claim they aren't. It's some kind of interagency process by which they're going to be responsible for interrogating high-value detainees.

If we had tried to do that back in the aftermath of 9/11, when we captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, we'd have gotten no place. I think it moves very much in the direction of going back to the old way of looking at these terrorist attacks -- that these are law enforcement problems, that this isn't a strategic threat to the United States.

I think it's a direct slap at the CIA. I don't think it will work.

I think that if they were faced with the kind of situation we were faced with in the aftermath of 9/11, suddenly capturing people that may have knowledge about imminent attacks, and they're going to have to have meetings and decide who gets to ask what question and who's going to Mirandize the witness, I think it's silly. It makes no sense. It doesn't appear to be a serious move in terms of being able to deal with the nation's security.

WALLACE: Well, on another issue, the CIA has stopped a program to kill or capture top al Qaeda leaders, top al Qaeda terrorists. And CIA Director Panetta told lawmakers that you told the CIA not to inform Congress.

Is that true?

CHENEY: As I recall -- and frankly, this is many years ago -- but my recollection of it is, in the reporting I've seen, is that the direction was for them not to tell Congress until certain lines were passed, until the program became operational, and that it was handled appropriately.

And other directors of the CIA, including people like Mike Hayden, who was Leon Panetta's immediate predecessor, has talked about it and said that it's all you know a very shaky proposition. That it was well handled, that he was not directed not to deal with the Congress on this issue, that it's just not true.

WALLACE: The CIA released two other documents this week -- "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Preeminent Source on Al Qaeda"...

CHENEY: Right.

WALLACE: "Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al Qaeda."

While they say that the overall program got absolutely crucial information, they do not conclude whether the enhanced interrogation programs worked. They just are kind of agnostic on the issue. And then there's what President Obama calls the core issue -

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques? And it doesn't answer the broader question, are we safer as a consequence of having used these techniques?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHENEY: Well, these two reports are versions of the ones I asked for previously. There's actually one, "Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al Qaeda," there's another version of this that's more detailed that's not been released.

But the interesting thing about these is it shows that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah provided the overwhelming majority of reports on Al Qaeda. That they were, as it says, pivotal in the war against Al Qaeda. That both of them were uncooperative at first, that the application of enhanced interrogation techniques, specifically waterboarding, especially in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is what really persuaded him. He needed to cooperate.
I think the evidence is overwhelming that the EITs were crucial in getting them to cooperate, and that the information they provided did in fact save thousands of lives and let us defeat all further attacks against the United States.

The thing I keep coming back to time and time again, Chris, is the fact that we've gone for eight years without another attack. Now, how do you explain that?

The critics don't have any solution for that. They can criticize our policies, our way of doing business, but the results speak for themselves. And, as well as the efforts that we went to with the Justice Department and so forth to make certain what we were doing was legal, was consistent with our international treaty obligations.

WALLACE: At one point the Vice President showed us the view of majestic mountains from his back yard. I asked about the Democrats running battle with the CIA including Nancy Pelosi's charge the agency once lied to her.

Republicans have made the charge before, do you think Democrats are soft on National Security?

CHENEY: I do, I've always had the view that in recent years anyway that they didn't have as strong of advocates on National Defense or National Security as they used to have, and I worry about that, I think that things have gotten so partisan that the sort of the pro defense hawkish wing of the Democratic party has faded and isn't as strong as it once was.

WALLACE: Now that he has been in office for seven months, what do you think of Barack Obama?

CHENEY: Well, I was not a fan of his when he got elected, and my views have not changed any. I have serious doubts about his policies, serious doubts especially about the extent to which he understands and is prepared to do what needs to be done to defend the nation.

WALLACE: Now, he has stepped up the use of the Predator drones against Al Qaeda. He has continued rendition. Aren't there some things you support that he has done?

CHENEY: Sure, some of those things have been -- the use of the Predator drone, something we started very aggressively in the Bush Administration, marrying up the intelligence platform with weapons is something we started in August of 2001. It has been enormously successful. And they were successful the other day in killing Batula Masood, which I think all of those are pluses.

But my concern is that the damage that will be done by the President of the United States going back on his word, his promise about investigations of CIA personnel who have carried those policies, is seriously going to undermine the moral, if you will, of our folks out at the agency. Just today, for example, the courts in Pakistan have ruled that A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistan nuclear weapon man who provided assistance to the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Libyans, has now been released from custody.

It is very, very important we find out and know long term what he is up to. He is, so far, the worst proliferator of nuclear technology in recent history. Now we have got agents and people out at the agency who ought to be on that case and worried about it, but they are going to have to spend time hiring lawyers at their own expense in order to defend themselves against the possibility of charges.

WALLACE: Actually, the CIA has now said that they are going to pay for the lawyers.

CHENEY: Well, that will be a new proposition. Always before, when we have had these criminal investigations, the fact is that the employees themselves had to pay for it.

WALLACE: What do you think of the debate over healthcare reform and these raucous town halls?

CHENEY: I think it is basically healthy.

WALLACE: And what do you think of the healthcare reform issue?

CHENEY: I don't -- well, it is an important issue, but I think the proposals the Administration has made are -- do not deserve to be passed. I think the fact that there is a lot of unrest out there in the country that gets expressed in these town hall meetings with folks coming and speaking out very loudly about their concerns indicates that there are major, major problems of what the administration is proposing.

WALLACE: There was a story in the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago that in the process of writing your memoir, you have told colleagues about your frustration with President Bush, especially in his, your second term. Is that true?

CHENEY: No.

WALLACE: That story was wrong.

CHENEY: Right.

WALLACE: The report says that you disagreed with the President's decision to halt water boarding, you agreed with his decision to close the secret prisons, you disagreed with his decision to reach out to Iran and North Korea. Is that true?

CHENEY: Well, we had policy differences, no question about that, but to say that I was disappointed with the President is not the way it ought to be phrased. The fact of the matter is, he encouraged me to give him my view on a whole range of issues. I did.

Sometimes he agreed. Sometimes he did not. That was true from the very beginning of the Administration.

WALLACE: Did you feel that he went soft in the second term?

CHENEY: I wouldn't say that. I think you are going to have wait and read my book, Chris, for the definitive view.

WALLACE: It sounds like you are going to say something close to that?

CHENEY: I am not going to speculate on it. I am going to write a book that lays out my view of what we did. It will also cover a lot of years before I ever went to work for George Bush.

WALLACE: Will you open up in the book about areas where you disagreed --

CHENEY: Sure.

WALLACE: -- with the president?

CHENEY: Sure.

WALLACE: There is a question I have wanted to ask you for some period of time. Why didn't your Administration take out the Iranian nuclear program, given what a threat I know you believe it was, given the fact that you knew that Barack Obama favored, not only diplomatic engagement, but actually sitting down with the Iranians, why would you leave it to him to make this decision?

CHENEY: It was not my decision to make.

WALLACE: Would you have favored military action?

CHENEY: I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues.

WALLACE: Do you think that it was a mistake, while you were in power, while your administration was in power, not to go after the nuclear infrastructure of Iran?

CHENEY: I can't say that yet. We do not know how it is ultimately going to come out.

WALLACE: But you don't get the choice to make it 20/20 hindsight.

CHENEY: Well, I --

WALLACE: In 2007, 2008, was it a mistake not to take out their program?

CHENEY: I think it was very important that the military option be on the table. I thought that negotiations could not possibly succeed unless the Iranians really believed we were prepared to use military force. And to date, of course, they are still proceeding with their nuclear program and the matter has not yet been resolved.

We can speculate about what might have happened if we had followed a different course of action. As I say I was an advocate of a more robust policy than any of my colleagues, but I didn't make the decision.

WALLACE: Including the president?

CHENEY: The president made the decision and, obviously, we pursued the diplomatic avenues.

WALLACE: Do you think it was a mistake to let the opportunity when you guys were in power, go, knowing that here was Barack Obama and he was going to take a much different --

CHENEY: I am going to -- if I address that, I will address it in my book, Chris.

WALLACE: It is going to be a hell of a book.

CHENEY: It is going to be a great book.

WALLACE: Was it a mistake for Bill Clinton, with the blessing of the Administration, to go to North Korea to bring back those two reporters?

CHENEY: Well, obviously, you are concerned for the reporters and their circumstances, but I think if we look at it from a policy standpoint, it is a big reward for bad behavior on the part of the North Korean leadership. They are testing nuclear weapons.

They have been major proliferators of nuclear weapons technology. They built a reactor in the Syrian Desert very much like their own reactor for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.They probably are the worst proliferators of nuclear technology any place in the world today.
And there ought to be a price for that. Instead, I think when the former President of the United States goes, meets with the leader and so forth, that we are rewarding their bad behavior. And I think it is a mistake.

WALLACE: You would not have done it.

CHENEY: No.

WALLACE: How concerned are you about the increase in violence in Iraq since we pulled out of the major population areas and also what do you make of the fact that the top Shiite parties have formed an alliance tilting towards Iran and leaving out Prime Minister Maliki?

CHENEY: Well, I am concerned about Iraq, obviously. I have been a strong supporter of our policies there from the very beginning. I think we made major, major efforts to take down Saddam Hussein's regime, establish a viable democracy in the heart of the Middle East. I think especially going through the surge strategy in '07 and '08, we achieved very significant results.

It is important that we not let that slip away. And we need to be concerned, I think, in these days now in the beginning of the new Administration, I would like to see them focus just as much on victory as they are focused on getting out. And I hope that they don't rush to the exit so fast, that we end up in a situation where all of those gains that were so hard won are lost.

WALLACE: Given the increase in violence, given some of these new issues, in terms of the political lay of the land, given President Obama's plan to pull all combat troops out by a year from now, the summer of 2010, how confidant are you that -- that Iraq, as a stable, moderate country, is going to make it?

CHENEY: I don't know. I don't know that anybody knows. I think it is very important that they have success from a political stand point. I think the Maliki government is doing better than it was at some points in the past. I hope that we see continued improvement in the Iraqi armed forces, security services.

But I think to have an absolute deadline by which you're going to withdraw, that's totally unconditioned to developments on the ground -- I think there's a danger there that you're going to let the drive to get out overwhelm the good sense of staying long enough to make certain the outcome is what we want.

WALLACE: Obviously, this weekend, the country is focused on the death of Ted Kennedy. What did you think of him?

CHENEY: Well, I -- personally, I liked him. In terms of policy, there's very little we agreed on. He was a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts. I was a conservative Republican from Wyoming. So there wasn't much that we had to work together on.

On the other hand, I admired the fact that he got into the arena as much as he did for most of his professional life, and was obviously a very active participant.

WALLACE: How are you adjusting to life out of power?

CHENEY: Well, this is the fourth time I've done it, Chris. So it's not my first rodeo, as we say. I'm enjoying private life. I just -- excuse me -- took my family on an Alaskan cruise for a week, all the kids and the grandkids. We've gotten to spend a great deal of time in Wyoming, which, as you can tell her in Jackson Hole, is one of the world's finer garden spots.

So I have, I think, adjusted with a minimal amount of conflict and difficulty. It's been pretty smooth.

WALLACE: What do you miss?

CHENEY: Oh, I'm a junky, I guess, all those years. I spent more than 40 years in Washington, and enjoyed, obviously, the people I worked with, wrestling with some of the problems we had to wrestle with. I enjoyed having the CIA show up on my doorstep every morning, six days a week, with the latest intelligence.

WALLACE: You miss that?

CHENEY: Sure.

WALLACE: Why?

CHENEY: Because it was fascinating. It was important stuff. It kept me plugged in with what was going on around the world. And as I say, I'm a junky from a public policy stand point. I went to Washington to stay 12 months and stayed 41 years.

I liked it. I thought it was important. And I will always be pleased that I had the opportunity to serve.

WALLACE: Do you miss having your hands on the levers of power?

CHENEY: No, I don't think of it in those terms.

WALLACE: But I mean being able to affect things. You obviously feel strongly about these issues.

CHENEY: Right.

WALLACE: Do you miss the fact that now you're just another man watching cable news?

CHENEY: No, and as I say, I've been there before. I left government after the first Nixon term and went to the private sector. I left after the Ford administration and ran for Congress. Then left after the secretary of defense and went to the private sector. So these are normal kinds of transitions that you've got to make in this business.

What I've always found is that there are compensating factors to living a private life, to having more freedom and time to do what I want, and to spend more time with the family, which is very important. Over the years, you know, I've sacrificed a lot in order to be able to do those things I've done in the public sector.

WALLACE: Well, we want to thank you for talking with us and including in your private life putting up with an interview from the likes of me.

CHENEY: It's all right. I enjoy your show, Chris.

WALLACE: Thank you very much, and all the best sir.

CHENEY: Good luck.

20090830 sdosm RAW DATA Transcript of Cheney on FOX News Sunday


*****