Colin Powell: Bush and Cheney Held Secret Meetings Behind Closed Doors

This post, written by Faiz Shakir, originally appeared on Think Progress

In the stellar Washington Post exposé on Dick Cheney, the public learned that key presidential aides were often intentionally kept out of the loop on important decisions by the Vice President. For example, President Bush's decision to try detainees in military commissions and strip them of their due process rights was not conveyed to Secretary of State Colin Powell:

"What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001.

In addition, the Post reported that a Cheney-commissioned Justice Department memo that advocated the legal justification for torture was kept out of Powell's sight:

On June 8, 2004, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell learned of the two-year-old torture memo for the first time from an article in The Washington Post.

Last night in an interview with Larry King, Powell criticized Cheney, saying, "[He] sometimes went directly to the president and the rest of us weren't aware of what advice he was giving." He also chastised the White House's manner of doing business. "It was not a system where we routinely exposed all points of view," he said. (The video is to your right)