Stop the Presses: Cheney's Re-emergence Is Finally Explained!
I think I have the answer to why Dick Cheney has emerged from all those undisclosed locations he used to hide in as vice president to loudly defend his lawbreaking, precedent-setting promotion of torture: the former vice president is simply nuts. The attacks of September 11, 2001 just did him in, mentally. And he's never been the same since.
I came to this view after reading a book review by Jeffrey Record, a professor of strategy at the Air War College. Professor Record reviewed The Dark Side, Jane Mayer's book on the Bush administration's torture policy, of which Cheney was the chief proponent. Tom Ricks's blogsite tipped me off to Record's review. Read this excerpt:
What made Cheney's influence so perfidious was the combination of his profound panic over the 9/11 attacks (and the mysterious anthrax "attacks" in the following month) and his absolutist view of presidential prerogatives. The attacks apparently unnerved Cheney to the point of his imagining Saddam Hussein to be undeterrable, an al Qaeda collaborator, and brimming with weapons of mass destruction. "I don't know him anymore," said Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Adviser to George H.W. Bush. According to Lawrence Wilkerson, [Secretary of State] Powell's chief of staff, "Cheney was traumatized by 9/11. The poor guy became paranoid." Having underestimated the al Qaeda threat before 9/11, Cheney overcompensated; in the weeks following the attack he travelled with a doctor as well as a duffel bag containing a gas mask and a biochemical survival suit.
It's not clear to me how much of the above information Prof. Record got from Mayer's book, and how much from other sources. Nor does he suggest, as I do, that Cheney's post-9/11 paranoia apparently became a permanent part of his personality -- a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Added to his panic over the attacks was doubtless his guilty conscience, stemming from his failure to prevent them.
After all, Cheney had ignored a briefing by White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke in February 2001 on a plan to deal with al Qaeda. And, although ordered by President Bush three months later to chair a terrorism task force, the vice president had failed even to call a meeting before 9/11.
Cheney's promotion of torture -- and his rabid public defense of it since leaving office -- seem to me like a continuation of the post-9/11 "overcompensation" Prof. Record writes about.
This past week you would think the principal promoter of torture was not Cheney, nor Bush, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The media have leapt upon what it sees as significant changes in her story of what and when she learned about waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques;" as if the then-Democratic minority leader could have done anything about them if, indeed, she knew all about them, which clearly, she didn't. In defending herself, Pelosi accused the CIA of lying, a charge that's been greeted with a combination of horror and incredulity by journalists of almost all stripes. Who, they collectively ask, could ever accuse the CIA of lying?
Who indeed? Almost anybody, it seems to me. The new CIA director, Leon Panetta, made what I thought was a half-hearted attempt to defend his agency against Pelosi's charge of deception. "It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," he said, citing notes on briefings the CIA had conducted for Pelosi and others in 2002 that indicated "that CIA officers briefed truthfully..." But he left the door wide open for the opposite view, by adding that Congress would have to determine for itself whose memory was most accurate. As for the public, a new poll shows as many people believe Pelosi as believe the CIA.
That's strong evidence that in this contest, the CIA starts out with credibility problems. Furthermore, its records show that former Democratic Senator Bob Graham of Florida, then chairman of the Intelligence Committee, was briefed on waterboarding in 2002. But Graham, who has a reputation for integrity and is a stickler for details, says he wasn't. And he says his personal journal shows that he did not attend three briefings the agency said he did.
In recent years, the agency's credibility has often proved anything but good. After all, it was former CIA chief, George Tenet, who told President Bush it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam had those non-existent weapons of mass destruction, even though the intelligence community was divided on that question. The same CIA director supplied most of the material for Secretary Powell's disastrous U.N. speech the month before Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq. Virtually everything Powell said in that speech (made with Tenet sitting just behind him) turned out to be untrue.
The CIA lied to a federal judge and the 9/11 Commission in 2003 and 2005 when it said it did not have video recordings of the interrogations of two al Qaeda operatives in its custody. In fact, the agency destroyed those tapes after the judge and the commission asked to see them.
And in December 2007, a former CIA operative, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and later other media that al Qaeda member Abu Zubayah had begun to cooperate after being waterboarded "for probably 30, 35 seconds." This was widely reported as an example of the effectiveness of that brand of torture, which Kiriakou told ABC had disrupted "maybe dozens of attacks."
But a Justice Department memo declassified last month said Zubayah had been waterboarded "at least 83 times," hardly an indication of instant, or indeed, much if any efficacy. It also turned out that Kiriakou was not even present when Zubayah was waterboarded in a secret prison in Thailand. He had only read about the treatment at CIA headquarters in Virginia.
The CIA insisted it had not instigated or encouraged Kiriakou's remarks, and had even considered legal action against him for divulging classified information. I am tempted to repeat the old cliche that if you believe any of that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. If the agency ever told him to shut up or else, its warnings were not very effective, since after ABC he gave interviews to the Washington Post, the New York Times, NPR, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC, among others.
If the agency really tried and failed to shut Kiriakou up, it would be very unusual, since CIA censorship of other former employes, including former director Tenet himself, Michael Scheuer and Valerie Plame, has been very effective. All complained that the agency unjustifiably cut out parts of their books. Plame even said the CIA forced her to leave out matters that were part of the public record, such as the fact that she was employed by the agency from Nov. 9, 1985, to Jan. 9, 2006, a fact that appeared in the Congressional Record.
I could go on and on. But you get the point. At times, the CIA's credibility is not much better than crazy Dick Cheney's.
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I like the PTSD diagnosis, but I wonder if the source isn't just 9/11. Obviously, something very terrible happened to the man while chairing the National Energy Policy Development Group. He didn't withhold the minutes, he was trying to repress the memories. The horror....
The only thing I would add to your excellent analysis of Mr. Cheney is that the differences in his personality/attitude were striking after he served as a corporate CEO. In Government, you learn to compromise. But corporate CEOs are the closest things we have in this country to absolute monarchs. When Cheney returned to government, he brought his CEO mentality with him.
Who's telling the truth? I vote Pelosi.
Not only is Dick Cheney a coward, but he wanted to invade Iraq years before 9/11. Why hasn't anyone talked about the Project for a New American Century that he and several other neocons (Rumsfeld,Wolfowitz,Feith, Kristol etc) presented to then President Clinton in 1998. They asked Clinton to invade Iraq to take over the oil fields and oust Saddam.
This is the smoking gun motive for all that he has done post 9/11 and no one on the "supposed" liberal media ever brings this document up.
Why didn't they finish the job in Afghanistan initially? It would have been harder to justify invading Iraq if we caught Bin Laden. Why did Bush kick the UN Inspectors out when Saddam let them in? It would have been harder to invade Iraq the longer they were there and found NOTHING. Why did Al Lib suddenly kill himself after all these yrs? He could tell the world he was tortured until he confessed to an Al Qaida-Iraq connection....even though there never was one and he recanted several yrs. ago.
The sad truth is Cheney thought Iraq would be easy and he wanted the oil fields for American Companies....He was dead wrong and hundreds of thousands have died because of his obsession and greed. If I were him, I would be afraid to die also.
This is one of those well presented but 'dry' articles that will not see a lot of comments. Well written, journalism. I read it and appreciated the writing.
Um, NO! The man just showed his true colours after the attacks because he used them as a smoke screen. He did not have PTSD or any such thing. Heck he was perfectly safe during the attacks. The man is a monster and should pay for his crimes.
Oh no, I can't possibly do it. This article isn't going to allow me to feel sorry for former Vice President Cheney, even if he was P.T.S.D. If he was and didn't get help, it is time for us tor realize that even government leaders can be so traumatized by events as to go 'temporarily insane'! Where were his advisors and the checks and balances on his decisions. If he showed signs of significant distress, where were those friends to say "Hey Buddy, you might better see a therapist!" If this is true and he was actually P.T.S.D., then that is his best hope for evading criminal charges. This still doesn't answer for his lack of attention to terrorism before 9/11 or before the trauma and it certainly doesn't leave all the others in the administration that knew about this torture program off the hook. They will have to answer for their roles in all this. We reap what we sow, that's for sure.
"It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," he said
But such a large part of the CIA schtick is lying, hiding, misleading, suppressing. It is a covert Organization, the lying and hiding, and misleading and obfuscating is what they do.
They also don’t assassinate and do renditions either. Yeah. Right.
Very good points. I just watched the Kennedy series last night, and remembered that they (the C.I.A.)were the ones involved with the failed Bay of Pigs landing, as well as the coup de tat and assassination of South Vietnamese leader named Diem. Not to mention the Iran-Contra Deal with help from Oliver North and the war in Nicaragua, etc. etc. Why should we EVER trust this clandestine organization? Like you said, this is what they are known for.
"the former vice president is simply nuts. The attacks of September 11, 2001 just did him in, mentally. And he's never been the same since."
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Bullshit.
Dick Cheney cannot use the insanity defense for his crimes of 9/11.
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Cheney was managing multiple war games and terror drills on 9/11 that paralyzed U.S. Air Force response.
In May of 2001 Dick Cheney was placed directly in charge of managing the "seamless integration" of all training exercises throughout the federal government and military agencies by presidential mandate.
The morning of 9/11 began with multiple training exercises of war games and terror drills which Cheney, as mandated by the president, was placed in charge of managing.
War games & terror drills included live-fly exercises with military aircraft posing as hijacked aircraft over the United States, as well as simulated exercises that placed "false blips" (radar injects indicating virtual planes) on FAA radar screens.
One exercise titled NORTHERN VIGILANCE pulled Air Force fighters up into Canada simulating a Russian air attack, so there were very few fighters remaining on the east coast to respond. All of this paralyzed Air Force response ensuring that fighter jocks couldn't stop 9/11.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml
Didn't he tell NORAD to stand down, too, during the attacks?
He did much more than just give a stand down order....
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=militaryExercises
Great article.
I'd like to comment on part of what you wrote:
~snip~
"... In recent years, the agency's credibility has often proved anything but good. After all, it was former CIA chief, George Tenet, who told President Bush it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam had those non-existent weapons of mass destruction, even though the intelligence community was divided on that question. The same CIA director supplied most of the material for Secretary Powell's disastrous U.N. speech the month before Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq. Virtually everything Powell said in that speech (made with Tenet sitting just behind him) turned out to be untrue..."
Five or so years ago I remember watching a Special Investigative Report regarding Powell's UN speech. In the report Lawrence Wilkerson mentioned a meeting between Tenet and Powell he had witnessed the evening before the speech. Secretary Powell purportedly asked Tenet one last time if all that he was about to state in his address to the UN was the truth. Wilkerson went on to say that George Tenet looked Colin Powell straight in the eye and answered in the affirmative.
This has never left me. Colin Powell was undoubtedly yet another fall guy in a very corrupt Administration. I remember reading so many articles and comments deriding Powell because of his UN speech. He should wear Cheney recent denouncement of him as a badge of honor. He is a very good and decent man who was horribly used, imo.
But he was one of the most powerful military men in this country, he had access ot all sorts of people who could have disabused him.
He didn't check his facts.
Every high ranking person should have a devils advocate on his staff. If they don't their going to get used and duped.
The UN weapons inspectors, that had been in and out of Iraq for a decade, finding and destroyig weapons, said openly there were not WMD, not biologicals, not nukes. Why didn't Powell avail himself of their research and their reports?
Yes, Colin Powell has been the scapegoat and fall guy for the failed policies of the Bush Administration and he may have deserved some repremand but certainly NOT the full weight of everyone's disfavor over all that went on with the first Bush term. Hopefully, when more comes to light, he will be exonerated.
Are the repubes and Panetta going to inherit an investigation by their words and actions? A case of unintended consequences could hit them in the lip over their PR offensive. They leave little wiggle room if the truth needs to get out. LOL!!!!!
If you want an eye-opener about the CIA, read Valerie Plame's book. She submitted it to the CIA and they blacked out parts of it they considered, well, whatever they considered it. Then, because some of the things they wouldn't let her print were public knowledge, she footnotes other people's recollections and information about them in the back of the book. Priceless - and idiotic on the CIA's part to try to keep some things under wraps that could so easily be circumvented.
Thanks for the head's up kareemachan. (It seems I've a lot of reading to do! So many books, so little time). Kidding aside, I look forward to reading Ms. Plame's book.
Cheney's current media blitz is what we used to call a rear guard action - to protect his a-s-s. It is just more of the same old subterfuge, misdirection, half-truths and outright lies that will go down in history as the hallmark of the Bush/Cheney administration. In the best Karl Rove tradition, they are now attacking Nancy Pelosi to change the subject and confuse the issue about torture. It makes me nauseous to watch so much of the hack media continuing to cooperate with this deceit. Most sane people understand that the CIA is in the business of lies and manipulation. Good grief, they make Hollywood blockbusters about it.
Good comment.
"Most sane people understand that the CIA is in the business of lies and manipulation"
Most sane people also understand MSM's complicit participation in this as well.... and the numbers of Americans catching on are ever increasing I think (or least I hope).
So does that make the MSM the CIA? Seriously . . . think about it . . . pretty much non-stop distortion and progaganda, courtesy of 24/7 cable news. Lying, dissembling, fearmongering, brainwashing, race-baiting--it's all there. I'm listening to it right now about Pelosi's got some 'splaining to do. My god. Hey, I'm probably just Cheney--uh, uh, I mean paranoid.
Beautifully done. Blame "crazy Cheney" for the illegal war and everything else in between. And let the Republicans off the hook for the worst presidency in American history.
Innocent by reason of insanity.
Hmm... I didn't get that from this article. Instead, to me the article provided a small opening into what made/makes this psychopath (imo) tick. I found this paragraph to be particularly enlightening:
~snip~
"After all, Cheney had ignored a briefing by White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke in February 2001 on a plan to deal with al Qaeda. And, although ordered by President Bush three months later to chair a terrorism task force, the vice president had failed even to call a meeting before 9/11."
The article delves into Cheney's psyche, and demonstrates the unreliability of statements made by the CIA. What it does not do, imo, is make any excuse for GOP behavior (i.e. by everything being Cheney's fault).
I get that CIA lied but I think there needs to be a bit of perspective. After all, CIA is a government agency that answers to the President. And when the Prez (or in this case Vader) wants info in certain ways, the sub(Tenet) is gonna wag the tail the way the masters want it. So yes, I think CIA lied but I think the blame needs to go to the top - Tenet and above. The top guys are suppose to sift through the info and present an unbiased report, not tail wagging. In essence, organization isn't corrupt. Rather, some people are obviously corrupt and some parts of it that these people directly control may be. So let's lay off CIA as an organization but put the blame on the perpetrators with the means.
On top of that, there was the unprecedented series of meetings the Vice had with CIA officials at CIA headquarters. How come Cheney is not asking for the minutes of those meetings to be declassified?
Great comment - and I also agree with what WmC said in response.
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