Cheney's Shocking Admissions on How Close He Came to Nearly Destroying the Country

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted December 24, 2008.

“I presided over the meeting. We briefed them on the program and what we'd achieved and how it worked, and asked them, should we continue the program. They were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike, all agreed, absolutely essential to continue the program.

“I then said, do we need to come to the Congress and get additional legislative authorization to continue what we're doing? They said, absolutely not, don't do it, because it will reveal to the enemy how it is we're reading their mail.

“That happened. I mean, we did consult. We did keep them involved. We ultimately ended up having to go to the Congress after The New York Times decided they were going to make the judge review all their -- make all of this available, obviously, when they -- in reacting to a specific leak.

“But it was a program that we briefed on repeatedly. We did these briefings in my office; I presided over them. We went to the key people in the House and Senate Intel Committees, and ultimately the entire leadership, and sought their advice and counsel and they agreed we should not come back to the Congress.”

Continued Dangers

Cheney’s description of a high-level bipartisan consensus on a program that ignored the clear legal requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act suggests that the threats to American liberties go deeper than simply the aggressive actions by the Bush administration.

It means that -- among others -- House Speaker Pelosi who served as both the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and as House Minority Leader would have been part of Cheney’s program of White House briefings.

In 2008, Speaker Pelosi joined in supporting a compromise bill fashioned by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that granted retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that collaborated with Bush’s warrantless surveillance.

Although that bill -- and an earlier one approved by the Democratic-controlled Congress in 2007 -- effectively legalized Bush’s apparent lawbreaking, Pelosi argued that one of the strengths of the 2008 bill was that it restated the principle that the President must abide by the FISA law, a paradoxical argument for legislation that ensured that the previous violation of law would go unpunished. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Dems Legalize Bush’s Crimes.”]

When the bill reached the Senate in early summer 2008, Sen. Barack Obama was one of the Democrats who voted for it, prompting sharp criticism from many in the Democratic “base” that Obama was flip-flopping on his earlier protests against Bush’s illegal spying program.

Now, with less a month before Bush’s presidency ends, Vice President Cheney has thrown down the gauntlet, again, regarding whether Pelosi, Obama and other Democrats actually will repudiate the Bush-Cheney concept of an imperial presidency.

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Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."

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