Dick Cheney: Not In the Torture Chain of Command

Vice-President Dick Cheney told Wolf Blitzer that he was not in the torture policymaking chain of command. Cheney adds that he supports waterboarding. This is the lack of moral courage Cheney is known for. Cheney attempted to cover up shooting Harry Whittington in a hunting accident. Cheney disavowal being involved in torture policy.

Cheney's own legal council David Addington crafted a memo with Alberto Gonzales and William Haynes granting the administration the right to waterboard Abu Zubaydah. Addington is now Cheney's Chief of Staff. Cheney expects the public to believe his former legal council crafted a torture memo without the Vice-President's approval. Not likely.

Cheney sinks lower by taking a shot at former terrorism czar Richard Clarke. The same petty side Cheney shown against Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame rears it's head at Clarke. The White House made Clarke crisis manager during the 9/11 attacks. Clarke was put in that position because no administration official knew anything about al-Qaeda.

Transcript

BLITZER: We're out of time, but a quick couple of questions and then I'll let you go. Waterboarding, it was used how many times?

CHENEY: It was on three different individuals.

BLITZER: And the information you believe that was received was valid?

CHENEY: I do.

BLITZER: It stopped -- you stopped using it after, what, 2003?

CHENEY: There has not been an occasion since.

BLITZER: Why?

CHENEY: There has not been an occasion.

BLITZER: Is it -- there no need?

CHENEY: I'm just going to leave it that way. You know, when we get into talking about the application of specific techniques to prisoners, then we get into the business of signaling to our adversaries what we might or might not do and they can train for it. It has been publicly acknowledged that we did use waterboarding. That we did use it on three different individuals. And I believe it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, and one other, I think al-Nashiri. Those three individual were subjected to waterboarding during the course of their interrogation. But that's it.

BLITZER: Because I've always been perplexed, if it is so good and so useful, there are bad guys out there right now, why not continue to use it?

CHENEY: Well, you don't use it on somebody because he's a bad guy. What we were attempting to do, and what we did was to persuade these individuals who had a lot of intelligence and information about al Qaeda -- remember, we captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in, I think it was, spring, March of '03, in Karachi. At the time we didn't know a lot about al Qaeda. On 9/11 we didn't know a lot about al Qaeda. If Dick Clarke was such an expert, how come he didn't have all of this information about al Qaeda when he was running the counterterrorism program? The fact of the matter is that we were able to persuade them to cooperate, to give us the intelligence we needed, and to give us the base of understanding about al Qaeda, about personnel and operations and financing and geography and so forth that was essential in terms of defending our country against further attacks. Now you don't go in and pull out somebody's toenails in order to get them to talk. This is not torture. We don't do torture.

BLITZER: John McCain says it's torture.

CHENEY: Well, John is wrong. He and I have a fundamental disagreement on this point. But what the agency did was they sought formal guidance from the senior leadership of the administration, as well as the Justice Department in terms of what was appropriate and what wasn't. And they got that guidance. And they followed that guidance, as far as I know. I have no reason to believe anybody out at the agency violated any tenet of the obligations and responsibilities we have in terms of statutes or our treaty obligations. I think it was done very professionally. I think it was done very few times, when it was necessary. I think it produced good results. I think there are Americans alive today because we used that technique on those three individuals.

BLITZER: And if necessary, would you authorize it again?

CHENEY: Well, I'm not in the chain of command, but if necessary, I would certainly recommend it again.

BLITZER: Waterboarding?

CHENEY: Yes.