×
"THE ANGLER." There's almost too much in yesterday's portion of the Washington Post's four-part series on Dick Cheney to comment on. But it's striking how much of the post-9/11 intelligence operations appear to be entirely under his purview.
On Oct. 25, 2001, the chairmen and ranking minority members of the intelligence committees were summoned to the White House for their first briefing on the eavesdropping and were told that it was one of the government's most closely compartmented secrets. Under Presidents George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton, officials said, a conversation of that gravity would involve the commander in chief. But when the four lawmakers arrived in the West Wing lobby, an aide led them through the door on the right, away from the Oval Office."We met in the vice president's office," recalled former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.). Bush had told Graham already, when the senator assumed the intelligence panel chairmanship, that "the vice president should be your point of contact in the White House." Cheney, the president said, "has the portfolio for intelligence activities."It's also interesting to see Cheney's tendency to create the facts-on-the-ground before Bush has ever stepped on the landscape.
On Nov. 14, 2001, the day after Bush signed the commissions order, Cheney took the next big step. He told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that terrorists do not "deserve to be treated as prisoners of war." The president had not yet made that decision. Ten weeks passed, and the Bush administration fought one of its fiercest internal brawls, before Bush ratified the policy that Cheney had declared: The Geneva Conventions would not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters captured on the battlefield.Bush hadn't made that decision. But Cheney forced his hand, and set the situation up so any outcome other than the one he'd signaled would make the administration look like it was retreating. This is Cheney's world, it seems. We just live in it.--Ezra Klein
