Washington– Washington (AFP) – Dick Cheney This was the public face of the George W. Bush administration’s overreaching approach to surveillance and intelligence gathering in the years after the war. September 11, 2001 attacks.
As an unabashed advocate of broad executive power in the name of national security, Cheney placed himself at the center of a polarized public debate over detention, interrogation, and espionage that continues two decades later.
“I think the security situation we have today is largely a product of our responses to September 11, and Vice President Cheney was clearly right in the middle of how to enact that response from the White House,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University.
It can be said that Cheney was the administration’s most prominent supporter Patriot Actthe law enacted almost unanimously after the events of September 11 that gave the United States government sweeping surveillance powers.
He also defended the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program aimed at intercepting the international communications of suspected terrorists in the United States, despite concerns about its legality by some figures in the administration.
Had such authority existed before 9/11, as Cheney once asserted, it could have led the United States to “arrest two hijackers who flew a plane that crashed into the Pentagon.”
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies still maintain essential tools to confront potential terrorists and spies who emerge after the attacks, including National Security Letters that allow the FBI to order companies to hand over information about clients.
But the courts have also questioned the legal justification for the government’s surveillance apparatus, and a Republican Party that once stood solidly behind Cheney’s global vision of national security has become far more divided.
Bipartisan consensus on expanding surveillance powers after September 11 It has given way to increased suspicionEspecially among some Republicans who believe spy agencies used those powers to undermine President Donald Trump while he was in office Investigating ties between Russia and his 2016 election campaign.
Congress in 2020 allowed the expiration of three provisions of the Patriot Act that the FBI and Justice Department said were essential to national security, including a provision that allows investigators to monitor people without proving they are acting on behalf of an international terrorist organization.
A program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the United States government to collect the communications of non-Americans abroad without a warrant for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence, It was reauthorized last year – But only after important negotiations.
“I think for someone like Vice President Cheney, expanding those powers was not an incidental goal — it was a primary goal,” Vladeck said. “And I think the Republican Party today doesn’t view these kinds of issues — counterterrorism policy, government surveillance powers — as anywhere near the kind of policy issues that the Bush administration looked at.”
As the architect of the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Cheney pushed spy agencies to find evidence to justify military action.
Cheney, along with others in the administration, claimed that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and had ties to Al Qaeda. They used this to sell the war to members of Congress and the American people, although this was later debunked.
the False intelligence was used to justify the invasion of Iraq It is seen as a major failure of America’s spy services and evidence of what can happen when leaders use intelligence to achieve political goals.
The government’s arguments in favor of war have fueled mistrust among many Americans, which continues to resonate with some in the Trump administration.
“For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in an endless, counterproductive cycle of regime change or nation building,” said Tulsi Gabbard, Director of the Office of National Intelligence. He said in the Middle East last week.
Many lawmakers who voted to use force in 2003 say they regret it.
“It was a mistake to rely on the Bush administration to tell the truth,” said Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts. The twentieth anniversary of the invasion.
Trump has long criticized Cheneybut it depends on A common legal doctrine During Cheney’s time in office to justify this Fatal strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats In Latin America.
The Trump administration says so does the United States Engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug gangs It declared them illegal combatants.
“These drug terrorists have killed more Americans than Al Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. October 28, he said on social media. “We will track them down, net them up, hunt them down and kill them.”
After the events of September 11, the Bush-Cheney administration authorized the US military to attack enemy combatants acting on behalf of terrorist organizations. This raised questions about the legality of killing people or detaining people without trial.
Jim Lodis, a former national security analyst who directs the Bell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, said Cheney’s involvement in consolidating executive power, surveillance, and “falsifying primary intelligence books” has echoes in today’s strikes.
“When you think about his legacy some of it is very troubling. And maybe some of it is just what the moment calls for,” Lodis said. “But it’s a complicated legacy.”
Vladeck noted that the lasting legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration is “the blurring, if not their complete collapse, of the lines between civilian responses to threats and military responses.”
He pointed out Classification of foreign terrorist organizationsIt is a tool that predates the September 11 attacks, but has become more widespread in the years since. Trump used it A name for several drug cartels.
Protecting the nation from espionage, terrorism, and other threats is a complex endeavor spread throughout government. When Cheney was vice president, for example, agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence were created.
As was the case then, the division of labor remains disputed, with a rift recently emerging between FBI Director Kash Patel and the intelligence community led by Gabbard.
The FBI said in a letter to lawmakers that it “strongly disagrees” with the legislative proposal that it said would remove the bureau as the government’s primary counterintelligence agency and replace it with the Counterintelligence Center under the Director of National Intelligence.
“The cumulative effect will place decision-making in the hands of employees who are not actively engaged in CIA operations, familiar with the complexities of CIA threats, or in a position to develop coherent, tailored mitigation strategies,” the FBI warned in the letter obtained by The Associated Press.
The FBI said this would be at the expense of national security.
Spokesmen for the agencies later issued a statement saying they were working alongside Congress to strengthen counterintelligence efforts.