Vice
President Cheney is on a passionate, mostly secret and sometimes lonely
campaign to prevent Congress from approving prohibitions against
torture -- prohibitions that he insists could encumber American
intelligence gathering.
Always a hawk, Cheney
nevertheless is widely considered to have undergone a radical
transformation after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. One of the
New Cheney's cardinal rules: No holding back.
Cheney publicly embraced the "dark side" within days after the terrorist attacks. Here he is talking to NBC's Tim Russert
on Sept. 16, 2001. The U.S. military has "a broad range of
capabilities. And they may well be given missions in connection with
this overall task and strategy," Cheney said.
"We
also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've
got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of
what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any
discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our
intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the
world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to
use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."
Arguments
against torture -- along both moral and pragmatic lines, from both
Democrats and Republicans, and even from inside the White House -- have
not dissuaded the vice president. Indeed, he got some apparent support
today from President Bush, who had this exchange with a reporter in
Panama. From the transcript :
"Q
Mr. President, there has been a bit of an international outcry over
reports of secret U.S. prisons in Europe for terrorism suspects. Will
you let the Red Cross have access to them? And do you agree with Vice
President Cheney that the CIA should be exempt from legislation to ban
torture?
"PRESIDENT BUSH: Our country is at war, and
our government has the obligation to protect the American people. The
executive branch has the obligation to protect the American people; the
legislative branch has the obligation to protect the American people.
And we are aggressively doing that. We are finding terrorists and
bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the
terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and
plans. Anything we do to that effort, to that end, in this effort, any
activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture.
"And,
therefore, we're working with Congress to make sure that as we go
forward, we make it possible -- more possible to do our job. There's an
enemy that lurks and plots and plans, and wants to hurt America again.
And so, you bet, we'll aggressively pursue them. But we will do so
under the law. And that's why you're seeing members of my
administration go and brief the Congress. We want to work together in
this matter. We -- all of us have an obligation, and it's a solemn
obligation and a solemn responsibility. And I'm confident that when
people see the facts, that they'll recognize that we've -- they've got
more work to do, and that we must protect ourselves in a way that is
lawful."
Stopping Congress
Dana Priest and Robin Wright
write in The Washington Post: "Over the past year, Vice President
Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop
Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more
restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to
defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials. . . .
"Increasingly,
however, Cheney's positions are being opposed by other administration
officials, including Cabinet members, political appointees and
Republican lawmakers who once stood firmly behind the administration on
all matters concerning terrorism. . . .
"Cheney's
camp is a 'shrinking island,' said one State Department official who,
like other administration officials quoted in this article, asked not
to be identified because public dissent is strongly discouraged by the
White House. . . .
"Cheney's camp says the United
States does not torture captives, but believes the president needs
nearly unfettered power to deal with terrorists to protect Americans.
To preserve the president's flexibility, any measure that might impose
constraints should be resisted. That is why the administration has
recoiled from embracing the language of treaties such as the U.N.
Convention Against Torture, which Cheney's aides find vague and
open-ended."
