Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power

Web Q&A:
» Reporter Barton Gellman, was online on Monday, June 25, to answer readers' questions about the Cheney series. Read the Q&A transcript.

By Barton Gellman and Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 25, 2007

Shortly after the first accused terrorists reached the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2002, a delegation from CIA headquarters arrived in the Situation Room. The agency presented a delicate problem to White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, a man with next to no experience on the subject. Vice President Cheney's lawyer, who had a great deal of experience, sat nearby.

The meeting marked "the first time that the issue of interrogations comes up" among top-ranking White House officials, recalled John C. Yoo, who represented the Justice Department. "The CIA guys said, 'We're going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees'" if interrogators confined themselves to treatment allowed by the Geneva Conventions.

From that moment, well before previous accounts have suggested, Cheney turned his attention to the practical business of crushing a captive's will to resist. The vice president's office played a central role in shattering limits on coercion of prisoners in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending legal opinions that the Bush administration has since portrayed as the initiatives, months later, of lower-ranking officials.

In 2001, as the bushit administration was just taking office, former Vice President Dan Quayle paid Dick Cheney a visit. Quayle, who served under the first President Bush, explained to Cheney what the traditional duties of the office entailed, such as international travel, political fundraising & attendance of funerals.

But the new Vice President had other ideas. "I have a different understanding with the president," Cheney told Quayle, portending the unprecedented power the new Vice President would soon come to consolidate in his office. While Cheney is often described as the most powerful vice president in history, the extent & mechanics of his power have been shrouded in secrecy. In a series of articles in the Washington Post this week, the veil is slightly lifted. They reveal "Cheney's largely hidden & little-understood role in crafting policies" in the bushit administration, where he often uses his vast knowledge of government bureaucracy to "roll over" internal opponents & impose his legislative will. With an "edge-of-the-envelope" view of executive supremacy, Cheney has crafted an unaccountable role for himself that flagrantly flouts the rule of law that the American people expect the president to uphold.

On Nov. 14, 2001, in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheney declared that terrorists "do not need to be treated as prisoners of war" by the United States. While it sounded like Cheney was expressing administration policy, Bush "had not yet made that decision." He wouldn't for another ten weeks & only after the administration "fought one of its fiercest internal brawls."

In pushing for his policy to be ratified, Cheney engaged in blatant bureaucratic deception, convincing then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to sign his name to a memo written by Cheney's chief counsel, David Addington, that "struck a pre-emptive blow" to the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell & National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. If consulted by Bush, Cheney "then became a sounding board for advice he originated himself.

Often, rather than dealing with the objections of top advisers like Rice & Powell, Cheney simply cut them out of the loop. For at least two of the most important counter-terrorism policy decisions - the pronounced ability to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely & the expanded definition of allowable interrogation techniques - Rice & Powell were not consulted & only learned of them from the news media. If Cheney's office didn't like decisions that were made, they would often rewrite them, discarding language "agreed to between Cabinet secretaries."

In 2002, the Justice Department delivered a secret opinion, distributed under the signature of Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, that declared US law against torture "prohibits only the worst forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" & that the definition of "torture" only means suffering "equivalent in intensity" to the pain of "organ failure...or even death." These narrowed definitions opened the door to many previously prohibited interrogation techniques.

After the Washington Post revealed that opinion in a 2004 article, the administration claimed the memo was written by John Yoo, who served in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. But in a recent interview, Yoo said that he was aided by Addington, Gonzales & deputy White House counsel Tim Flanigan.

In preparing the opinion, Addington, who worked tirelessly to present the position of "his client, the vice president," offered the memo's most radical claim: "that the president may authorize any interrogation method, even if it crosses the line of torture," saying that US & treaty laws against torture "do not apply" to the commander-in-chief.

In 2005, when Congress began crafting legislation to strictly forbid torture, Cheney did all he could to undermine its authority. "Without normal staff clearance" or consultation with other senior aides, Cheney had Addington place a Statement of Administration Policy into the Office of Management & Budget's authoritative guidance on the 2006 spending bill that said "the President's senior advisers would recommend that he veto" any such bill. After Congress passed a veto-proof bill, it was Addington, advocating for Cheney, who altered the President's signing statement to say that Bush would interpret the law "in a manner consistent" with his constitutional authority, which many interpret as an attempt to skirt the law.

Last week, House investigators revealed that over the objections of the National Archives, Cheney has exempted his office since 2003 from a presidential executive order designed to safeguard national security information. Claiming that the Office of the Vice President is not an "entity within the executive branch," & thus not subject to presidential executive orders, "Cheney's office has failed to provide data on its classification and declassification activities as required."

In 2004, his office "specifically intervened to block an on-site inspection by the Information Security Oversight Office," an office that he later tried to have abolished. His counsel has further claimed that "the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch."

Despite Cheney's claim in 2001 that a congressional probe into his energy task force "would unconstitutionally interfere with the functioning of the executive branch," he has had no qualms denying his place in the executive when it suits his purposes. The Center for Public Integrity revealed in 2005 that Cheney "unilaterally" exempted his office "from long-standing travel disclosure rules followed by the rest of the executive branch" by claiming that he was not part of the executive branch.

Despite White House claims that Cheney's unaccountability is "a little bit of a non-issue," Congress is taking it seriously. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) will introduce an amendment this week that will "place a hold on funds for Cheney's office and official home until he clarifies to which branch of government he belongs." "If he's going to be funded in the executive branch, he complies with the rules that apply to everybody," said Emanuel. "He is not above the rules of the executive branch."

Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

Commandments Of Secrecy 

from Mark Fiore

‘As the Iraq war that Vice President Dick Cheney created continues to shred American - and many more Iraqi - lives, further documentation has emerged proving that, even during failed wars, the merchants of death profit.

As the Iraq war that Vice President Dick Cheney created continues to shred American - and many more Iraqi - lives, further documentation has emerged proving that, even during failed wars, the merchants of death profit. No company has profited more from the carnage in Iraq than Halliburton, which Cheney headed before choosing himself as Bush's running mate. One shudders at the blissful arrogance of this modern Daddy Warbucks, who sees no conflict of interest over the blood-soaked profits garnered by the once-bankrupt division of the company that left him rich.

This week's evidence of the continuing corruption of Halliburton and its subsidiaries profiteering from contracts costing American taxpayers an unbelievable $22 billion stems from a report by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. The report, only one of many about Halliburton's recently severed subsidiary KBR, focuses on work done in Baghdad's super-secure Green Zone.

While parent company Halliburton insults U.S. taxpayers by relocating its headquarters to the tax shelter of Dubai, subsidiary KBR has been spun off to focus more directly on the American military contracts that form the core of its operations.’

The Banality Of Greed

More on the salmon massacre Gus ....

 

US Congressman Mike Thompson (D-CA) & 36 of his colleagues called for a hearing into the role vice president Dick Cheney played in the 2002 die-off of about 70,000 salmon near the California-Oregon border. The letter wrote: "Did in fact the vice president of the US put pressure on midlevel bureaucrats to alter the science and circumvent the law in order to gain political votes for his re-election or the election of other people in Oregon?"

From Dan Brook, 2003...

Reflecting on the intimate-"embedded"-relationship between state and corporate power, what Mussolini referred to as fascism, Friedman laid it plain in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, his intellectual love letter to corporate globalization and U.S. imperialism: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." Free markets? Not quite. The unspoken capitalist mantra has always been "free markets for thee, not for me".

In "The American Empire (Get Used to It)", (New York Times Magazine, 5 January 2003, cover story), Michael Ignatieff states that "because [the Persian Gulf region] has so much of the world's proven oil reserves", it is "the empire's center of gravity". Ignatieff refers to this as "the burden of empire". The following day the London Daily Mirror, also with a cover story, pictured a graphic showing a tough-looking Bush with his tough words interspersed with oil company logos. Underneath, the tag line reads: "Now can you guess why George W. Bush is hellbent on a war with Iraq?" It shouldn't surprise anyone-though it may disgust them-that while the U.S. military allowed the Baghdad library and museum to be looted of priceless Mesopotamian antiquities, it carefully guarded the Oil Ministry with heavily-armed Marines and razor wire.

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Gus: As I watched SBS' "Roman empire" programme last night, I could not stop making parallels with the "pax Americana" presently enacted through "war Americana". yes, oil and money is the name of the game... Lives are so priceless that they're worth mostly peanuts in that grand scheme... Enjoy yourself while the going's good...

Dick Cheney admitted on the Larry King Live show that Halliburton had done contract work in Burma. Cheney defended the project by saying that Halliburton had not broken the U.S. law imposing sanctions on Burma, which forbids new investments in the country. "You have to operate in some very difficult places and oftentimes in countries that are governed in a manner that's not consistent with our principles here in the United States," Cheney told Larry King. "But the world's not made up only of democracies."

According to EarthRights International (ERI) - the Yadana and Yetagun pipeline consortia - Unocal, Total and Premier - knew of (especially from their own consultants) and benefited from the crimes committed by the Burmese military on behalf of the projects. An ERI investigation concluded that construction and operation of the pipelines has involved the use of forced labor, forced relocation and even murder, torture and rape. In addition, as the largest foreign investment projects in Burma, the pipelines will provide revenue to prop up the regime, perhaps for decades to come.

Halliburton Watch

Americans working in Iraq for Halliburton spin-off KBR have been outraged by the massive fraud they saw there. Dozens are suing the giant military contractor, on the taxpayers' behalf.

Whose side is the Justice Department on?

The People Vs The Profiteers

Former US president Jimmy Carter has denounced Vice-President Dick Cheney as a "disaster" for the country and a "militant" who has had an excessive influence in setting foreign policy.

Cheney has been on the wrong side of the debate on many issues, including an internal White House discussion over Syria in which the vice-president is thought to be pushing a tough approach, Carter said.

"He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world," Carter told the BBC in an interview.

"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter said. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."

US contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan more than doubled from 2004 to 2006 to over 25 billion dollars but government oversight of the firms involved has slackened, a watchdog group said Monday. 

"While the billions of dollars involved and the complexity of these war-related contracts has only grown, the lack of oversight has been staggering," said Bill Buzenberg, head of the Center for Public Integrity. 

The study by the independent center said government outsourcing for the two war theaters was marred by issues such as a lack of competitive bidding, missing contracts and unidentified companies. 

The construction and services company KBR, formally known as Kellogg, Brown and Root and a subsidiary of oil-services giant Halliburton until April, topped the list with more than 16 billion dollars in US contracts from 2004 to 2006. 

US War Contracts Top 25 Billion Dollars