TVNL COMMENT, October, 2005: While the American news media finally discovered that Dick Cheney might not be the nicest person in the world, we would like to remind you that we have been warning people about this man since early 2003. Cheney and his PNAC warriors have taken control of US foreign policy, intelligence services and military so that they can proceed with their agenda. His fingerprints are all over the events of 9/11 and the motive for this was so nicely stated by his organization when they described how a “new Pearl Harbor” would the only way anyone would support such an agenda. BEFORE YOU DENY ANY OF THIS AND DEFEND THIS DEVIL INCARNATE, DO SOME RESEARCH!
OF SPECIAL NOTE: ‘Cheney cabal hijacked US foreign policy’ - Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday. - In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. - “Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.” - Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush “one of the finest presidents we have ever had” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either”.
Former Head Of Star Wars Program Says Cheney Main 911 Suspect - Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret., the former head of the Star Wars missile defense program under Presidents Ford and Carter has gone public to say that the official version of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory and his main suspect for the architect of the attack is Vice President Dick Cheney. - He said it is plausible that the entire chain of military command were unaware of what was taking place and were used as tools by the people pulling the strings behind the attack.
New biography looks at U.S. Vice-President Cheney with critical eye - If Cheney remains unscrutinized by a press corps that, as Nichols says, "willingly performs stenography to power," his book turns a searchlight on the votes, the statements and the other details that have largely been ignored.
Although we recognize the need for executive privilege, it is hard to imagine anything related to something as non-national-security related a topic as our an energy policy, that would be such a threat to national security as to declare it off limits to all. By US Law this is public information, but Mr. “Shred the Constitution” Cheney has used every ounce of executive power in order to keep the lid on his meeting notes.
What could they contain? Dealings with the Taliban; negotiating a pipeline perhaps? Enron deals? Does anyone remember that Bush used an Enron company jet to travel during his campaign and that one of his campaign platforms was to deal with the “energy crisis”, which turned out to be nothing more that an Enron scam on California? Could it be details parsing out Iraqi OIL? Hmm? Must be some important stuff in there, Dickey;-)
TVNL accusation: This is a little change up from the way we approach the world. Ordinarily we do not make accusation rather we raise questions where we do not have evidence to actually accuse anyone of anything. This is different. TVNL is going to right out say that we believe that the key to the 9/11 attacks, the war with Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq and whatever military action we “select” to launch, resides in Dick Cheney’s secret energy policy meeting notes. The press ignores this; we do not. Get to the bottom of this and we will find the truth about all of these issues. TVNL - June 10, 2003.
Cheney's unprecedented power - DICK CHENEY is the most powerful vice president in US history. Indeed, there is a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that Cheney, not Bush, is the real power at the White House and Bush the figurehead.
Cheney's secret classifications - Despite an executive order signed by President Bush in 2003 requiring all agencies or “any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information’’ to report on its activities, the vice president’s office maintains that it has no legal obligation to report on its classification decisions.
Cheney behind turn toward dictatorship - Mr. Cheney is a vile, indeed evil, influence in American political life. He is a very dangerous person who would if he could destroy American freedom about which he and his mentor prate hypocritically. His long years in Washington have caused him to lose faith in the legislative and judicial processes of the government. The country, he believes, requires a much stronger executive. Such concentrated power would have been necessary even if the Sept. 11 attacks had not occurred. Mr. Cheney uses the fear of terrorists as a pretext to advance his agenda of an all powerful president, a military dictator. - So long, of course, as he is a Republican.
Please Help Me by Dick Cheney - A TvNewsLies Parody - The news media have willfully ignored to report important stories about me, the Vice President, in favor of issues that are exponentially less important to the American public.
INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: The untold story of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy - How the public's business gets done out of the public eye - The Bush administration has removed from the public domain millions of pages of information on health, safety, and environmental matters, lowering a shroud of secrecy over many critical operations of the federal government. - The administration's efforts to shield the actions of, and the information held by, the executive branch are far more extensive than has been previously documented. And they reach well beyond security issues. - Important business and consumer information is increasingly being withheld from the public - New administrative initiatives have effectively placed off limits critical health and safety information potentially affecting millions of Americans. - Beyond the well-publicized cases involving terrorism suspects, the administration is aggressively pursuing secrecy claims in the federal courts in ways little understood--even by some in the legal system. - New administration policies have thwarted the ability of Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to monitor the executive branch and, in some cases, even to obtain basic information about its actions. - In the first two years of Bush's term, his administration classified records some 44.5 million times, or about the same number as in President Clinton's last four years.
Chronology - The Bush White House's Refusal to Cooperate with a Congressional Investigation of the Energy Task Force
Truth and consequences - New questions about U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass terror - ‘Vice President Cheney's office played a major role in the secret debates and pressed for the toughest critique of Saddam's regime, administration officials say.’ - ‘ The first draft of Powell's speech was written by Cheney's staff and the National Security Council.’ - "It was over the top and ran the gamut from al Qaeda to human rights to weapons of mass destruction," says a senior official. "They were unsubstantiated assertions”. - TVNL translates” “unsubstantiated assertions” = LIES!
Shouldn't Dick Cheney Be Impeached? - After dropping more than 28,000 bombs on Iraq, the United States has now begun the business of rebuilding the country.... The companies that land the biggest contracts to do the work will cash in big-time.
Cheney And The CIA: Not Business As Usual - 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.
Arafat Sent $2,000 Gift to Cheney, a Leading Critic - In the months that followed, Cheney helped spearhead a shift in U.S. policy, announced by Bush on June 24, 2002, to condition peace efforts on Arafat's replacement by leaders "not compromised by terror." - TVNL comment: Just thought that you might like to know this.
U.S. Court Dismisses Cheney Appeal on Energy Papers - The lawsuit seeking the energy policy papers was brought by the private watchdog group Judicial Watch and environmental group Sierra Club. - In an appeal on behalf of the vice president, government lawyers late last year asked the appeals court to step into the lawsuit, which was filed to seek documents on the energy task force that Cheney directed in 2001.
Court Allows Suit on Cheney Energy Panel - A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected the Bush administration's bid to stop a lawsuit that seeks to delve into the energy industry's ties to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.
A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied - They may have finally found the smoking gun that nails the culprit responsible for the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the incriminating evidence wasn't left in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces but rather in Vice President Dick Cheney's office. - What is startling in Wilson's account, however, is that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council and the vice president's office were all informed that the Niger-Iraq connection was phony. No one in the chain of command disputed that this "evidence" of Iraq's revised nuclear weapons program was a hoax. - Yet, nearly a year after Wilson reported back the facts to Cheney and the U.S. security apparatus, Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, invoked the fraudulent Iraq-Africa uranium connection as a major justification for rushing the nation to war: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa." What the president did not say was that the British were relying on their intelligence white paper, which was based on the same false information that Wilson and the U.S. ambassador to Niger had already debunked. "That information was erroneous, and they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British white paper and the president's State of the Union address," Wilson said
LaRouche Demands Iraq Answers From Vice President Cheney - As late as March 16, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on national television to make the incredible claim that Iraq already possessed a nuclear weapons capability. - "Let there be no mistake about it," LaRouche said. "The nature of these charges constitute hard grounds for impeachment.... I want to know exactly what Dick Cheney knew and when he knew it. The charges are grave and specific and leave no wiggle room. Determining who knew what and when is, at this time, an urgent matter of national security."
Was war based on a lie? Ask Cheney - The latest revelation of wrongdoing comes from Joseph Wilson, a former National Security Council aide, who has raised the prospect that Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides knew that the "case" President Bush made for going to war with Iraq was based on fabricated data. - TVNL comment: We have said this from the start.
Cheney under pressure to quit over false war evidence - Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President and the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation last night as he was accused of using false evidence to build the case for war. - Mr. Cheney was also accused of knowingly misleading Congress when the administration sought its authorization for the use of force to oust Saddam Hussein. - TVNL comment: As far as we are concerned this is just one little offense that Cheney has committed!
CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS - Commerce & State Department Reports to Task Force Detail Oilfield & Gas Projects, Contracts & Exploration - Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org. - TVNL question: Well, do you believe us now? We told you so!
Cheney Task Force Had Eyes on Iraq Oil - Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.
Power Without Accountability - Dick Cheney avoids the spotlight because he likes to wield power without being held accountable for his actions.
Cheney must go - In a letter to President Bush, a group of CIA veterans charge the vice president drove the U.S. to war with a "campaign of deceit" -- and call for his head.
Kucinich Challenges Cheney in Iraq Flap - Democratic presidential aspirant Dennis Kucinich is calling on Vice President Dick Cheney to explain his role in how the now-disavowed claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa ended up in President Bush's State of the Union address.
Ten Questions For Cheney - Reps. Kucinich, Maloney and Sanders are members of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.
Cheney's Oil Maps - Can the Real Reason for War be This Crass? - Now that the official case for attacking Iraq made by the US and British governments has started to unravel, the question of the real reason for unleashing this death and destruction has become a hot topic of conversation again.
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. - 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.
Cheney bullish on Iraq war - Cheney was cheerleader general for the war - US Vice President Dick Cheney has launched a fierce defense of the decision to go to war in Iraq. - Mr. Cheney said it would have been extremely irresponsible to ignore the threat the country posed. - TVNL comment: The problem with Cheney’s remark is that he left out the fact that the very threat that he uses as an excuse for going to war was conjured up by his own administration and his fingerprints are all over the conjured up allegations!!!
Ex-CIA Agent on Cheney Iraq Speech: "Longest Statement of Disinformation" Ever Fed U.S. Public - Goodman went on to say, "For Dick Cheney to recite those charges we all know now not to be true adds to the terrible politicization of intelligence that's created a scandal in the intelligence community unlike anything I ever saw in my 24 years in the C.I.A. that includes the period of Vietnam, the period of the intelligence failure on the Soviet Union, and the incredibly contentious disputes over arms control."
Dick Cheney and his lies - Dick Cheney gave a speech before his favorite group, the American Enterprise Institute. As is par with this Administration, it was packed filled with lies, distortions and errors. - Let's take a look:
The plot thickens - New evidence fails to resolve the mystery of Bush's State of the Union misstep on Iraq - But Cheney's role is still murky. U.S. News has learned that a document prepared by Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, at almost exactly the same time as the State of the Union address omitted any reference to Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Niger. The chronology of events is puzzling--even to insiders
Judge Looks at Cheney Fraud Lawsuit - Halliburton Co. asked a federal judge Tuesday to throw out a lawsuit charging that the company and Vice President Dick Cheney, its former chief executive, misled investors by changing the way it counted revenue from construction projects.
Did Cheney's Secret Energy Meeting Set Stage for Iraq Attack? - Judicial Watch - Summary: Here is the smoking gun pointing directly to Vice President Richard Cheney's secret energy company meetings held at the White House in early 2001. Some of the documents of the meetings reveal charts of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" and a "map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals" ... Congress and the press should immediately and thoroughly investigate the any linkage between the secret White House deals, the fake California energy crisis, the Enron collapse, and the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The question to ask is: Did the White House sell US foreign policy to the highest energy company bidder? ... - TVNL question: How long have we been saying this?
Cheney's Believe It or Not! - A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY - By all accounts, Vice President Dick Cheney has been a major force in pushing the theory that Iraq’s supposed nuclear weapons program and connection to Al Qaeda was the basis for the U.S. invasion. As early as June of 2002, Cheney claimed to have evidence that Iraq had nuclear weapons, and leading up to the war he said the U.S. had evidence of a close cooperative connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. At the same time, he claimed that the Iraq war had nothing to do with enriching his former employer, Halliburton. Believe it…or not:
Cheney's 'Irresponsible' Speech - When Vice President Dick Cheney comes out of seclusion to brand critics "irresponsible," you know the administration is running scared.
Cheney Had Iraq in His Sight - Mr. Cheney has fought the release of the documents at every stage. A court ordered two weeks ago that at least some of the task force's working papers should be made public. - Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said: "People will draw their own conclusions about the documents, but that is what an open society is about. Given the delay in their release, the Bush administration clearly did not want them to come out."
Prewar statements by Cheney under scrutiny - Unlike CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who have taken responsibility and ex-pressed regret for allowing President Bush to make an erroneous claim in his State of the Union address, Vice President Dick Cheney in recent days has staked out an unapologetic defense of the war in Iraq.
Ruling on Energy Panel Is Appealed - Continuation of the lawsuit would mean that the administration could be forced to disclose the inner workings of the drafting of the policy. Federal agencies have already turned over about 39,000 pages, but the energy task force has turned over none. - The three-judge panel determined the appeals court had no jurisdiction to stop the lawsuit because the Bush administration had not asserted executive privilege to protect the documents. - TVNL Comment: Folks, this is the smoking gun issue regarding this Bush/PNAC nightmare that we are living through! TVNL has been screaming about this and you folks can help bring attention to it! The news entertainment networks bring you trial after trial, OJ, Robert Blake, Kobe, Laci Peterson, the Windshield murderer, Martha Stweart, but they don’t seem to think that this is an imoprtant court case. Ask your friends if they even know about this!!!
At what point do leaders' connections become treason? - Vice President Dick Cheney has a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the Saudis. As the secretary of defense who managed the first Gulf War, he is highly respected in Saudi Arabia. While serving as president of the Halliburton Corporation, he maintained and expanded those relationships. Is the vice president vulnerable to criticism for his friendship with a government that has supported terrorists who attacked us?
GAO Cites Corporate Shaping of Energy Plan - The White House collaborated heavily with corporations in developing President Bush's energy policy but repeatedly refused to give congressional investigators details of the meetings, according to a federal report issued yesterday. - The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in the report that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham privately discussed the formulation of Bush's policy "with chief executive officers of petroleum, electricity, nuclear, coal, chemical and natural gas companies, among others." - An energy task force, led by Vice President Cheney, relied for outside advice primarily on "petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, electricity industry representatives and lobbyists," while seeking limited input from academic experts, environmentalists and policy groups, the GAO said.
Dick Cheney: Obstruction of Justice - The Vice President has comitted what appears to be a criminal act of some sort. Congressional investigators say that he tried to sabotage their investigation into his dealings with the energy industry.
GAO's Final Energy Task Force Report Reveals that the Vice President Made A False Statement to Congress - By JOHN W. DEAN - The Report shows that Cheney's claim to Congress, in the August 2, 2001 letter, that responsive documents were provided to GAO, was plainly false. - According to the Report, Cheney provided GAO with 77 pages of "documents retrieved from the files of the Office of the Vice President responsive to" GAO's inquiry regarding the Energy Task Force's "receipt, disbursement, and use of public funds." - To any lawyer, a mere 77-page document production seems suspiciously slim - especially when it is meant to represent information from a group of people on a fairly broad topic. Surely there were more documents that were not turned over. - Moreover, it turned out, as the Report reveals, that the documents that were turned over were useless:
Lawsuit Vs. Cheney and Halliburton Dismissed - Judicial Watch is considering whether to appeal the ruling to a higher court or file an updated lawsuit with information obtained since last year, said group president Tom Fitton.
Energy Task Force Appeal Refused - U.S. Court Rebuffs White House Bid to Avoid Releasing Files - A federal appeals court in Washington yesterday rejected the Bush administration's effort to avoid releasing documents about Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, the fourth time a judicial panel has rebuffed efforts to keep the information from the public.
Cheney Wants Supreme Court Review on Energy Case - "At some point, the Bush administration is going to have to realize that the American people want to know what kind of influence energy corporations had over America's energy policies," said David Bookbinder, senior attorney for the Sierra Club, an environmental group. - TVNL Comment: It sure seems tht Cheney has something huge that he wants to keep secret! Smoking gun perhaps?
Democrats Question Cheney's Halliburton Payments - Vice President Dick Cheney, a former CEO of Halliburton Co., has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company since taking office while asserting he has no financial interest in the company, Senate Democrats said on Tuesday. - The Democrats demanded to know why Cheney claimed to have cut ties with the oil services company, involved in a large no-bid contract for oil reconstruction work in Iraq, when he was still receiving large deferred salary payments.
Cheney's Role In 911 Put On Center Stage By British MP - For the first time, a prominent British political figure has aired his suspicions, that the group around U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney may have intentionally caused, or allowed to happen, the mega-terrorism in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, to set into motion an era of neo-imperial wars. Labour Party Member of Parliament Michael Meacher wrote a major feature focussing on Cheney's Project for a New American Century
Cheney may still have Halliburton ties - Congressional report finds Vice President still has financial interest in his old company. - A congressional report concludes that, under federal ethics standards, Vice President Dick Cheney still has a financial interest in Halliburton, the energy services company he used to run.
At the start of each of Bush’s bad ideas is Dick Cheney - Because he’s the consummate insider and so many Washington players have known him for years, Cheney has been able to maintain a reputation as the Bush administration’s steady hand at the tiller. The reality has always been otherwise. - Now official Washington may finally be starting to see the light.
Dick Cheney, Commander in Chief - The image of the president of the United States as a tame horse, saddled up and ridden by his own vice president, may seem overblown, but Biden is not alone in his assessment of the White House's internal dynamics. When it comes to foreign policy, Cheney is increasingly seen as holding the reins in the power circles within Washington.
Dick Cheney and Halliburton - Documenting the Halliburton / Cheney Crimes and Controversies - Independent Media TV – It’s hard to imagine a company being more controversial than Halliburton in recent years. Enron obviously has been a very controversial company, but while Enron’s criminal behavior has been all over the television news, Halliburton’s criminal and controversial activity has flown under the radar of TV headlines, and therefore escaped serious public scrutiny. If you haven’t been following the Halliburton situation closely, I would imagine that you are in for quite a shock as I list them here.
Cheney’s Long Path to War - The Hard Sell: He sifted intel. He brooded about threats. And he wanted Saddam gone. The inside story of how Vice President Cheney brought into shady assumptions and helped persuade a nation to invade Iraq - Cheney has repeatedly suggested that Baghdad has ties to Al Qaeda. He has pointedly refused to rule out suggestions that Iraq was somehow to blame for the 9/11 attacks and may even have played a role in the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The CIA and FBI, as well as a congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks, have dismissed this conspiracy theory. Still, as recently as Sept. 14, Cheney continued to leave the door open to Iraqi complicity. He brought up a report—widely discredited by U.S. intelligence officials—that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. And he described Iraq as “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11.” A few days later, a somewhat sheepish President Bush publicly corrected the vice president. There was no evidence, Bush admitted, to suggest that the Iraqis were behind 9/11.
Case for war confected, say top US officials - An unprecedented array of US intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambast the Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq. In their view, the very foundations of intelligence-gathering have been damaged in ways that could take years, even decades, to repair. - A new documentary film beginning to circulate in the United States features one powerful condemnation after another, from the sort of people who usually stay discreetly in the shadows - a former director of the CIA, two former assistant secretaries of defence, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even the man who served as President Bush's Secretary of the Army until just a few months ago. - Between them, the two dozen interviewees reveal how the pre-war intelligence record on Iraq showed virtually the opposite of the picture the administration painted to Congress, to US voters and to the world. They also reconstruct the way senior White House officials - notably Vice-President Dick Cheney - leaned on the CIA to find evidence that would fit a preordained set of conclusions.
Quiet Power - On Iraq and Elsewhere, Many Say Cheney Wields New Vice-Presidential Clout - "His power is unparalleled in the history of the republic, frankly, for that position," said John Hulsman, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank. - Analysts believe the secretive and conservative Cheney, who did not speak to Nightline for this story, was a driving force behind the Bush administration's aggressive approach to war in Iraq, a role that eventually might cost him.
High court may hear Cheney appeal - Energy case focuses on confidentiality, presidential powers - The Bush administration's sustained campaign to build up the powers of the presidency and to extend the confidentiality of White House decision-making is due for a major test in the Supreme Court, possibly as early as today. - TVNL Comment: This is setting up precedence for crime to be committed and law to be circumvented. To claim all this over a non-security related an issue as energy meeting notes is outrageous and screams of a cover up. What are they so desperate to hide? What can it possibly be?
Cheney's grab-and-go rubs some the wrong way - As he travels, Cheney does not hold news conferences. His meetings with business and community leaders are private. He rarely makes time to meet voters outside the fundraisers, which often results in news reports and commentary that suggest he's indifferent to the people and problems of the cities he visits - TVNL Comment: That’s the least of the problems with Cheney. He is possibly the biggest criminal to ever hold office, but nobody pays attention...but we do!!!
Put the Blame on Cheney for U.S. Mess in Iraq - This isn't how Papa Bush and the handlers thought it would work out. Not when they put solid Dick Cheney in charge of the kid's government. - It was Cheney, the seasoned, solid expert in national security matters, who was supposed to make certain the intelligence was straight, who was going to protect the president's credibility. But it turns out he was the one pushing for information to confirm his preconceived notions.
Cheney and the ‘Raw’ Intelligence - A memo written by a top Washington lobbyist for the controversial Iraqi National Congress raises new questions about the role Vice President Dick Cheney’s office played in the run-up to the war in Iraq. The memo, obtained by NEWSWEEK, suggests that the INC last year was directly feeding intelligence reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and purported ties to terrorism to one of Cheney’s top foreign- policy aides. Cheney staffers later pushed INC info—including defectors’ claims about WMD and terror ties—to bolster the case that Saddam’s government posed a direct threat to America. But the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have strongly questioned the reliability of defectors supplied by the INC.
High Court to Hear Cheney-Energy Dispute - The court agreed to hear an appeal from the administration, which is fighting a lawsuit over the relationships between industry and the panel Cheney assembled.
Behind Closed Doors - When George W. Bush was running for president, he was inspiring on the subject of privacy. But it was not your privacy or mine he was talking about. He has gone all out to keep his administration's energy-legislation deliberations from public scrutiny. - Cast your mind back to the White House task force, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, that came up with the stalled Bush oil policy. Democrats complained that it met frequently with Enron and other energy executives but blew off environmental lobbyists. Bush and Cheney, sensitive to charges of being too close to the oil industry, clammed up.
Will the French Indict Cheney? - Yet another sordid chapter in the murky annals of Halliburton might well lead to the indictment of Dick Cheney by a French court on charges of bribery, money-laundering and misuse of corporate assets.
The Cheney/Baker Strategic Energy Plan : History and Illusion - We already have the names of nearly everyone Cheney sought advice from for the Strategic Energy Plan ! The content of the plan itself is an outrage of Imperial conceit ! - Americans are even less interested in the truth of these present findings than they were over a decade ago regarding the findings of this author, and many others, about specific meetings and policy formulations already decided upon long before past President Bush-Senior's administration sought to bomb Iraq into the stone age. - One area the mainstream media will not address which the preemptive invasion and now occupation of Iraq will clearly solve was paramount in the task force members' arguments. - TVNL Comment: This was sent to us by a reader. It has not been verified but it is very interesting if it is true.
Cheney Target of Criminal Investigation - Though neglected by major media in the United States, international news sources report that French law enforcement authorities have made Vice President Dick Cheney the target of a criminal investigation for his role in a massive bribery scandal during his time as CEO of Halliburton.
French Judge Wants Cheney to Testify in Halliburton Scandal - A French judge is threatening to subpoena – and even to prosecute—the Vice President of the United States in a huge scandal involving Halliburton, when its CEO was Richard Cheney. = TVNL Comment: Could you imagine if this happened to Al Gore during Bill Clinton’s term in office? This would be 24 hour/day coverage, especially by FOX News. It would be bigger than the Gary Condit scandal. Cheney is the accused, not a single word in the US media! Ask anyone you know about this and they will have no idea what you are talking about. Then ask them who Scott Peterson is and they will know because that is what the US news media feels they should know.
Cheney Hunting Trip With Scalia Raises Impartiality Questions - Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in south Louisiana, just three weeks after the high court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal involving lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force.
Watchdog groups question Cheney, Scalia hunting trip - Supreme Court justice denies doing anything improper - Cheney invited Scalia, an old friend, to Louisiana earlier this month to hunt waterfowl on a private reserve. The trip occurred three weeks after the court agreed to hear the case, scheduled for sometime in April. Details of the trip were first reported by the Los Angeles Times. - The two also had a private dinner with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Maryland's Eastern Shore in November, when the justices were still considering Cheney's appeal. - TVNL Comment: Cheney is spitting in the face of the US Constitution and whatever is left of checks and balances in our Bush/PNAC dictatorship government, while he laughs in the faces of all Americans. He has acted as if he were above the law ever since his old friend” Antonin Scalia appointed him VP. This administration has eliminated all accountability and runs on the premise that the people do not need to know what their government is doing and they have no say in what goes on.
Costello pushes hearings on Cheney - Costello questioned the award of billions of dollars of contracts to Cheney's former corporation Haliburton to extinguish fires and rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure after the war. - "Can you imagine what the Republicans would be doing to a Democratic president who was a CEO of a company that now has gotten billions of dollars worth of contracts -- no-bid contracts -- without competition?" Costello, D-Belleville, was quoted as saying. - "There would be hearings day after day. And my prediction to you is that you will see in this session of Congress ..., there will not only be hearings, but I think there ought to be impeachment hearings."
Cheney's Iraq Deceptions Leave NPR Speechless - The evaporating claims about the trailers have been a prominent part of the controversy over the Bush administration's failure to produce the banned weapons that it insisted were in Iraq. Yet Juan Williams was not prepared to question Cheney when he cited the trailers as "conclusive evidence" of an Iraqi biological weapons program.
Legal Watch Dog Group CREW Alleges Cheney Leaked Classified Information, Breaking Federal Law - "Mr. Cheney's reference to classified information and the ensuing silence from the White House shows a distinct pattern: leaking classified information that the administration deems beneficial is Standard Operating Procedure," Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of CREW said today. - "Perhaps even more disturbing, Mr. Cheney is continuing to rely on a discredited memo to buttress the administration's claim of a connection between Iraq and Al Queda as justification for the war in Iraq, completely contradicting both President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell who have admitted that there is no evidence linking Iraq to the September 11th attack."
Scalia Was Cheney Hunt Trip Guest; Ethics Concern Grows - Two military Black Hawk helicopters were brought in and hovered nearby as Cheney and Scalia were whisked away in a heavily guarded motorcade to a secluded, private hunting camp owned by an oil industry businessman. - The Times previously reported that the two men hunted ducks together while the case was pending, but it wasn't clear then that they had traveled together or that Scalia had accompanied Cheney on Air Force Two.
Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe - Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.
Is Dick Cheney Scary On Purpose? - Sinister. That word keeps cropping up in descriptions of Dick Cheney's public countenance. - I don't quite understand how or why this came to pass. But I'm now suspicious that it's a plot. Maybe the image wizards at the White House figured out that in post-9/11 America, having a dark, secretive, powerful sorcerer behind the throne was the perfect tactic to create awe and obedience amongst us Muggles. - After all, Dick Cheney didn't used to be Dr. Strangelove.
Dick Cheney’s Nigerian nightmare - Investigators in three countries are probing an alleged $180 million bribe involving Halliburton. How long can the veep keep this tale of international sleaze from dominating the news? - "It’s potentially a very serious case," says Charlie Cray, director of the Washington-based Center for Corporate Policy. "Certainly $180 million is a lot of money. It’s not clear to what extent Cheney would have been involved, if at all, at this point. In other words, his fingerprints may not be on it.... On the other hand, it happened on his watch."
Gaming the California Electricity Market - Firm with Ties to Cheney's Task Force Faces Criminal Indictment - Cheney was asked whether a handful of the energy companies that sold electricity in California and stood to benefit financially from the new policy were behaving like a "cartel" and manipulating prices in the state's deregulated electricity market.
'The Wizard of Oz Letter' - Bush pulls back the curtain on who really runs the White House - Until now, it’s been all speculation about Vice President Cheney’s influence. With the revelation of the tandem testimony, nobody with a straight face can deny Cheney is a co-president or worse, the puppeteer who pulls Bush’s strings.
Cheney is running a shadow government, claims Watergate aide - Much of the blame for the White House style, he suggests, lies with Mr Cheney, who is "by nature a secretive man" who "wants to turn the clock back to pre-Watergate styles of Imperial Presidency".
Energy Task Force Data Not Private - A federal judge yesterday ordered several federal government agencies to release documents concerning their work on Vice President Cheney's energy task force or provide a legal reason for withholding them. - U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman rejected arguments by Bush administration lawyers that employees from the Department of the Interior and Department of Energy can claim special confidentiality privileges for the period when they worked for the task force, which held private meetings with energy industry representatives as it crafted a national energy policy. - "The court's ruling is a wake-up call to the Bush administration: It's time to come clean about how it is doing the public's business," said NRDC senior attorney Sharon Buccino.
Chinese express curiosity about Cheney, his role in administration - It's said, a Chinese student told Dick Cheney on Thursday, that "you are the most powerful vice president in U.S. history." - The remark underscored high curiosity about Cheney in China, and a perception that he's the power behind the throne in Washington. - In its lead story Thursday, the newspaper China Daily said Cheney "has been described as the `godfather' of Bush's administration."
Cheney aide now lobbyist on energy - The executive director of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, whose closed-door meetings with industry executives enraged environmentalists and prompted a Supreme Court showdown this week, became an energy lobbyist just months after leaving the White House, records show. - Nine months later, Lundquist was a registered lobbyist for companies that stood to benefit from the energy policy he helped craft, according to 2003 lobby disclosure records reviewed by the Globe.
A Vision of Power - There's a deep mystery surrounding Dick Cheney's energy task force, but it's not about what happened back in 2001. Clearly, energy industry executives dictated the content of a report that served their interests. - The real mystery is why the Bush administration has engaged in a three-year fight — which reaches the Supreme Court today — to hide the details of a story whose broad outline we already know. - Could there be a smoking gun in the records? Well, maybe Mr. Cheney was already divvying up Iraq's oil fields in 2001, but I'd be surprised to find anything that clear-cut. It's more likely that the administration fears that releasing the task force's records would alert the public to the obvious. - TVNL Comment: Sorry Mr. Krugman, we beat you by a year in our assessment of Cheney!
Cheney pared defense while Pentagon chief - Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been charging that John Kerry would be a dangerous president because he opposed many key weapons that the military now relies on, himself presided over the biggest cutbacks in defense programs in modern history when he was secretary of defense under the first President Bush.
Cheney's Five Draft Deferments During the Vietnam Era Emerge as a Campaign Issue - Eventually, like 16 million other young men of that era, Mr. Cheney sought deferments. By the time he turned 26 in January 1967 and was no longer eligible for the draft, he had asked for and received five deferments, four because he was a student and one for being a new father.
Dick Cheney: Profiteer-Extraordinaire - Vice President Cheney is an angry man. His war isn’t going well, the prospect of a second term is slipping away, and now some troublemakers in Congress are even starting to talk about war profiteering.
Cheney accused of corporate fraud - Judicial Watch, based in Washington DC, says Mr Cheney artificially boosted the share price of the Halliburton energy company during the time he was chief executive in the 1990s.
Grand jury probes Cheney's role in 'illegal' Iran trade - Yet another controversy has flared up around the Halliburton oil services company of which Vice-President Dick Cheney used to be chief executive - this time over whether during the 1995-2000 Cheney era it violated US law by doing business directly with Iran. - The US Treasury has been probing the affair, which centres on a Dubai-based subsidiary of Halliburton and its work at Iranian oilfields, ever since allegations first surfaced in 2001. But this week it emerged that the group is under investigation by federal prosecutors in its home town of Houston. A grand jury has also subpoenaed various documents covering its Iranian operations, a sign that some evidence has surfaced indicating the company knowingly violated the sanctions.
Vice President of Vice? - Cheney Lobbied Congress to Ease Sanction Against Terrorist Countries While CEO of Halliburton
Cheney's Oil-for-Food Switcheroo - But the one company that helped Saddam exploit the oil-for-food program in the mid-1990s that wasn't identified in Duelfer's report was Halliburton, and the person at the helm of Halliburton at the time of the scheme was Dick Cheney.
Cheney's Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon UN $Bns - But the one company that helped Saddam exploit the oil-for-food program in the mid-1990s that wasn't identified in Duelfer's report was Halliburton, and the person at the helm of Halliburton at the time of the scheme was Vice President Dick Cheney.
Cheney + Pakistan = Iran - Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan ’s top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan’s proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a cover-up designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it.
What could possibly be so secret? After all it’s an ENERGY POLICY, not a plan for world domination;-)
