A Case For Interrogating Dick Cheney

Some in Congress are stung by charges that former Vice President Dick Cheney ran an international assassination op from the White House without telling them about it.

They say he told the CIA to withhold the facts from Congress. This raises the question of how much power Cheney actually wielded---and the answer apparently is plenty.

In (Bush lawyer) John Yoo's version of events, writes Jane Mayer in her book "The Dark Side" (Anchor) "the impetus to break out of Geneva's strictures...came from the CIA. Many at the Agency, however, saw this differently, suggesting it was Cheney and his lawyer, (David) Addington, who pushed the Agency to take the path toward torture." A few days after 9/11 Cheney observed the CIA had gone over "to the dark side," but whether he starred in the role of Darth Vader needs to be established or denied.

The record appears to weight the case against him. Cheney has a long history of yeoman service to the Dark Side. To begin with, he is an unapologetic advocate of force, stating that force "makes your diplomacy more effective going forward, dealing with other problems." When the first President Bush failed to swing Panama's voters against General Manuel Noriega with $10 million in cash bribes, he called on Cheney, then his defense secretary, to crush Panama. Cheney did. During Christmas week of 1989, writes Tim Weiner in "Legacy of Ashes"(Anchor), "smart bombs blasted Panama City slums into rubble while Special Forces soldiers fought their way through the capital. Twenty-three Americans and hundreds of innocent Panamanian civilians died in the two weeks it took to arrest Noriega and to bring him in chains to Miami." That was an example of Cheney's work. More