The Two Faces of Dick Cheney

CONTENTS

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How Cheney Cooked the Intelligence on Iran

Cheney Predicted Baghdad ‘Quagmire,’ Casualties in 1994!

Dick Cheney And His On-Going Haliburton Connection

Dick Cheney, Forgery and the CIA - Not Business as Usual

Halliburton, Enron and Bechtel have Connections to Dick Cheney

Corporate Scandal and the Dick Cheney White House

How Cheney Cooked the Intelligence on Iran

Excerpted from an article by Gareth Porter at huffingtonpost.com on  November 9, 2007

Dick Cheney has been trying to pressure intelligence analysts who have not drunk the neocon kool-aid on Iran to go along with his line on the issues at stake in a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that the White House has been holding up for more than a year. Think Progress immediately noted the parallel between the Cheney's effort to get an Iran NIE that is more to his liking and the way he pushed intelligence analysts to accept the fabrications the neocons were pushing in on Iraq in 2002.

The similarities between Cheney's efforts to cook the intelligence on Iraq and on Iran are worth noting, but so are the differences. Cheney may have had a bigger impact in shaping the intelligence estimate on Iran to fit the policy he is pursuing than was the case on Iraq in 2002.

The Washington Post reported in June 2003 that Cheney and his chief of staff Scooter Libby had visited CIA analysts several times in 2002 to get them to reexamine their skeptical analysis on the WMD issue. But equally important, the Post quoted a "senior agency official" as saying that speeches by Cheney in August 2002 charging Saddam with having a nuclear weapons program "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here."

The effect was achieved despite the fact that the October 2002 NIE on Iraqi WMD was done very quickly, because it had been forced on the White House in September by the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Bob Graham. The White House had only just begun to roll out its propaganda campaign on the fictive Iraqi nuclear weapons program at that point.

Now flash forward to autumn 2006. Cheney had a draft NIE on Iraq that he didn't like. The intelligence community had already issued an NIE on Iran in spring 2005 that had concluded Iran's nuclear program would not progress to the point of having the capability to produce a nuclear weapon until sometime between 2010 and 2015. The new draft Iran estimate was still reportedly offering a similar analysis. Cheney wanted it to endorse the neocons' alarmist view that Iran could acquire the knowledge with which to make nuclear weapons much sooner than that.

Furthermore, Cheney needed an NIE that would support the policy of attacking Iran over its alleged role in Iraq and seizing supposed Iranian "Quds force" personnel there. He wanted it to endorse the charge that Iran is supplying armor-piercing weapons to Shiites in Iraq who were killing American troops. But the draft NIE didn't do that, according to former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi.

So part of Cheney's strategy was to keep sending the draft back for further work while he was creating a new political atmosphere on Iran's role in Iraq. He began in early 2007 to use the U.S. military command in Iraq to wage an intensive propaganda campaign on how the Iranians were supplying EFPs to anti-U.S. Shiite guerrillas through the Quds force. Ignoring intelligence available to the military that EFPs were being manufactured in machine shops in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus and his subordinates formulated a new narrative that would dominate media coverage and political discourse on the issue of Iran and Iraq.

That Iranian EFP narrative has now been repeated without any alternative view being reflected in the media for ten months. The complete dominance of that narrative in the society for so long has certainly had its effect on the NIE process. As a former CIA intelligence officer told me, "Look, most of the intelligence analysts are young guys with less than ten years of experience. A lot of them are willing to give the administration line on Iran the benefit of the doubt."

My sources suggest that the analysts ready to go along with the new narrative are now the majority. Nevertheless, some intelligence analysts on Iran are reportedly still refusing to say that there is concrete evidence to support the official line that the Iranian regime is exporting EFPs to Iraq. They are insisting on including their dissenting views on the issue in the NIE.

That is why the new Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, under orders from Cheney, has refused to circulate the NIE until all dissenting views on the issue have been removed.

There has been no comparable administration propaganda campaign over Iran's nuclear program, so Cheney's tactics were more direct. Last April the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Thomas Fingar, who presides over the NIEs, was made to go on National Public Radio and declare that the intelligence community was reevaluating whether its judgment on how soon Iran might produce a nuclear weapon needed to be revised. Fingar said the estimate "might change" and vowed that the analysts were "serious about reexamining old evidence". He even revealed the fact that the NIE on Iran was being delayed because of the reexamination.

Although he didn't say so explicitly, Fingar's statement left little doubt that the White House had forced the reexamination of the analysts' judgment on the Iranian nuclear program by holding the NIE hostage. How successful that hardball tactic has been in getting language more acceptable to Cheney is still not known, but there were still differences of view on the issue in the draft NIE as of last month, according to my sources.

These approaches to cooking the intelligence on Iran are even more nefarious than Cheney's direct approach on Iraq in 2002. They will certainly give Cheney language supporting his belligerent policy that he can leak to the press and use to keep Congress in line. Hopefully responsible officials with access to whatever dissenting views remain will leak those to anti-war Democrats, along with more details about how Cheney has manipulated the process.

Monday, Aug. 13, 2007 4:19 p.m. EDT

Cheney Predicted Baghdad ‘Quagmire,’ Casualties in 1994!

Vice President Dick Cheney is a staunch defender of the U.S. invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, but a 1994 video has now surfaced showing he opposed that very move after the liberation of Kuwait, saying it would land America in a "quagmire."

In an April 15, 1994 interview apparently with the American Enterprise Institute – recently posted on YouTube [Editor’s Note: Watch YouTube video here]– Cheney said he did not think U.S. or U.N. forces should have moved into Baghdad in 1991, explaining:

"Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

"Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place?

"That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it - eastern Iraq - the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years.

"In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

"It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

"The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families - it wasn't a cheap war.

"And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? "Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right."

Cheney helped President George H.W. Bush direct the Gulf War, and Bush later came under criticism for not seizing Baghdad and overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

Now my question is: "Did he have a Brain Lapse or did profit (say Haliburton) have a great deal to do with his decision to recommend going into Iraq."

Dick Cheney And His On-Going Haliburton Connection

(HE RECEIVES ONE MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR IN DEFERED COMPENSATION!!!)

Dick Cheney is known as a neo-conservative and has always supported a Conservative Christian position especially when it comes to Church and State issues.  It is apparent from the data collected, that the first amendment and other constitutional articles are in danger from his past and future actions.

Upon calling his office in June 2002and asking about which religions he considers "real," we find that the religion of Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Shintoism, and everything except Christianity "..aren't "Real" religions."  What is a real religion, Mr. Cheney?  What you have been practicing?  Read the following and remember: "By their Works may they be known."

(Remember it is best to investigate on your own when looking at allegations about anyone.    Don't believe us, think for yourself and investigate for yourself!  And remember, the First Amendment Coalition does not represent any political party nor do we recommend any political candidate, nor are we involving ourselves in the political process. )

Click Here to See Connections with Large Corporate Scandals part 1

Click Here to See Connections with Large Corporate Scandals part 2

Click Here and See below for: Cheney, Forgery and the CIA

A disappointment to be sure, but Cheney has at least two more years to make it up to them. And then there's always Syria... And Iran... And North Korea ... And... And...

Cheney, Forgery and the CIA

Not Business as Usual

By RAY McGOVERN
former CIA Analyst

As though this were normal! I mean the repeated visits Vice President Dick Cheney made to the CIA before the war in Iraq. The visits were, in fact, unprecedented. During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit.

During the '80s, it was my privilege to brief Vice President George H.W. Bush and other very senior policy-makers every other morning. I went either to the vice president's office or (on weekends) to his home. I am sure it never occurred to him to come to CIA headquarters.

The morning briefings gave us an excellent window on what was uppermost in the minds of those senior officials and helped us refine our tasks of collection and analysis. Thus, there was never any need for policy-makers to visit us. And the very thought of a vice president dropping by to help us with our analysis is extraordinary. We preferred to do that work without the pressure that inevitably comes from policy-makers at the table.

Cheney got into the operational side of intelligence as well. Reports in late 2001 that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger stirred such intense interest that his office let it be known he wanted them checked out. So, with the CIA as facilitator, a retired U.S. ambassador was dispatched to Niger in February 2002 to investigate. He found nothing to substantiate the report and lots to call it into question. There the matter rested--until last summer, after the Bush administration made the decision for war in Iraq.

Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, claimed that Saddam Hussein had "resumed his effort to acquire nuclear weapons."

At the time, CIA analysts were involved in a knock-down, drag-out argument with the Pentagon on this very point. Most of the nuclear engineers at the CIA, and virtually all scientists at U.S. government laboratories and the International Atomic Energy Agency, found no reliable evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program.

But the vice president had spoken. Sad to say, those in charge of the draft National Intelligence Estimate took their cue and stated, falsely, that "most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

Smoke was blown about aluminum tubes sought by Iraq that, it turns out, were for conventional weapons programs. The rest amounted to things like Hussein's frequent meetings with nuclear scientists and Iraq's foot-dragging in providing information to U.N. inspectors.

Not much heed was paid to the fact that Hussein's son-in-law, who supervised Iraq's nuclear program before he defected in 1995, had told interrogators that Iraq's nuclear capability--save the blueprints--had been destroyed in 1991 at his order. (Documents given to the United States this week confirm that. The Iraqi scientists who provided them added that, even though the blueprints would have given Iraq a head start, no order was given to restart the program; and even had such an order been given, Iraq would still have been years away from producing a nuclear weapon.)

In sum, the evidence presented in last September's intelligence estimate fell far short of what was required to support Cheney's claim that Iraq was on the road to a nuclear weapon. Something scarier had to be produced, and quickly, if Congress was to be persuaded to authorize war. And so the decision was made to dust off the uranium-from-Niger canard.

The White House calculated--correctly--that before anyone would make an issue of the fact that this key piece of "intelligence" was based on a forgery, Congress would vote yes. The war could then be waged and won. In recent weeks, administration officials have begun spreading the word that Cheney was never told the Iraq-Niger story was based on a forgery. I asked a senior official who recently served at the National Security Council if he thought that was possible. He pointed out that rigorous NSC procedures call for a very specific response to all vice presidential questions and added that "the fact that Cheney's office had originally asked that the Iraq-Niger report be checked out makes it inconceivable that his office would not have been informed of the results."

Did the president himself know that the information used to secure congressional approval for war was based on a forgery? We don't know. But which would be worse--that he knew or that he didn't?

Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1964 to 1990, regularly reported to the vice president and senior policy-makers on the President's Daily Brief from 1981 to 1985. He now is co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in Washington. He can be reached at: mcgovern@counterpunch.org.