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Published: Saturday June 17, 2006
Tuesday's episode of the PBS public affairs series Frontline will probe the battle between Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA to control the 'dark side,' according to a press release for the show.
"Amid daily revelations about prewar intelligence and a growing scandal surrounding the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff and presidential adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the intelligence community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most powerful vice president in the nation's history," says the press release.
The title for the show is derived from a television interview Cheney gave five days after September 11, 2001, when asked how the government might respond to the terrorist attacks by NBC's Tim Russert.
"I'm going to be careful here, Tim, because I--clearly it would be inappropriate for me to talk about operational matters, specific options or the kinds of activities we might undertake going forward," Cheney said. "We do, indeed, though, have, obviously, the world's finest military - they've got a broad range of capabilities - and they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy."
"We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will," Cheney added. "We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world."
"A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful," Cheney continued. "That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."
Cheney also told Russert that he envisioned a "very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with," and that the "mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there" neccessitated putting "some very unsavory characters" on the payroll.
According to the PBS press release, "The Dark Side" draws from "more than 40 interviews and thousands of documents," providing "a step-by-step examination of what happened inside the councils of war." Michael Kirk served as producer, writer and director while Jim Gilmore co-produced.
A brief trailer for the episode can be viewed at PBS' Frontline Website.
Excerpts from the PBS press release:
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After the attacks on 9/11, Cheney seized the initiative and pushed for expanding presidential power, transforming America's intelligence agencies, and bringing the war on terror to Iraq. Cheney's primary ally in this effort was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
"You have this wiring diagram that we all know of about national security, but now there's a new line on it. There's a line from the vice president directly to the secretary of defense, and it's as though there's a private line, private communication between those two," former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke tells FRONTLINE.
In the initial stages of the war on terror, Tenet's CIA was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. But when Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with the president that there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the agency and Tenet. Through interviews with DoD staffers who sifted through mountains of raw intelligence, FRONTLINE tells the story of how questionable intelligence was "stovepiped" to the vice president and presented to the public.
....
From stories of Nigerian yellowcake to claims that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met with Iraqi agents in Prague, The Dark Side dissects the now-familiar assertions that led the nation to war. The film also examines how that stovepiped intelligence was used by the vice president in unprecedented visits to the CIA, where he questioned mid-level analysts on their conclusions. CIA officers who were there at the time say the message was clear: Cheney wanted evidence that Iraq was a threat.
At the center of the administration's case for war was a classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that found evidence of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program. But Paul Pillar, one of the report's principal authors, now admits to FRONTLINE that the NIE was written quickly in a highly politicized environment, one in which the decision to go to war had already been made. Pillar also reveals that he regrets participating in writing a subsequent public white paper on Iraqi WMD. "What was the purpose of it? The purpose was to strengthen the case for going to war with the American public. Is it proper for the intelligence community to publish papers for that purpose? I don't think so, and I regret having had a role in it," Pillar says.
For the first time, FRONTLINE tells of George Tenet's personal struggle in the runup to the Iraq war through the accounts of his closest advisers.
"He, I think, asked himself whether or not he wanted to continue on that road and to be part of it. And I think there was a lot of agonizing that George went through about what would be in the best interest of the country and national interest, or whether or not he would stay in that position and continue along a course that I think he had misgivings about," says John O. Brennan, former deputy executive director of the CIA.
Tenet chose to stay, but after the failure to find Iraqi WMD, the tension between the agency and Cheney's allies grew to the point that some in the administration believed the CIA had launched a covert war to undermine the president. The film shows how in response, Cheney's office waged a campaign to distance itself from the prewar intelligence the vice president had helped to cultivate. Under pressure, Tenet resigned. Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, would later admit to leaking key sections of the NIE -- authorized, he says, by Cheney. Libby also stated that the vice president told him that President Bush had declassified the material. Insiders tell FRONTLINE that the leak was part of the battle between the vice president and the CIA.
#
Tuesday's episode of the PBS public affairs series Frontline will probe the battle between Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA to control the 'dark side,' according to a press release for the show.
"Amid daily revelations about prewar intelligence and a growing scandal surrounding the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff and presidential adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the intelligence community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most powerful vice president in the nation's history," says the press release.
The title for the show is derived from a television interview Cheney gave five days after September 11, 2001, when asked how the government might respond to the terrorist attacks by NBC's Tim Russert.
"I'm going to be careful here, Tim, because I--clearly it would be inappropriate for me to talk about operational matters, specific options or the kinds of activities we might undertake going forward," Cheney said. "We do, indeed, though, have, obviously, the world's finest military - they've got a broad range of capabilities - and they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy."
"We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will," Cheney added. "We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world."
"A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful," Cheney continued. "That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."
Cheney also told Russert that he envisioned a "very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with," and that the "mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there" neccessitated putting "some very unsavory characters" on the payroll.
According to the PBS press release, "The Dark Side" draws from "more than 40 interviews and thousands of documents," providing "a step-by-step examination of what happened inside the councils of war." Michael Kirk served as producer, writer and director while Jim Gilmore co-produced.
A brief trailer for the episode can be viewed at PBS' Frontline Website.
Excerpts from the PBS press release:
#
After the attacks on 9/11, Cheney seized the initiative and pushed for expanding presidential power, transforming America's intelligence agencies, and bringing the war on terror to Iraq. Cheney's primary ally in this effort was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
"You have this wiring diagram that we all know of about national security, but now there's a new line on it. There's a line from the vice president directly to the secretary of defense, and it's as though there's a private line, private communication between those two," former National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke tells FRONTLINE.
In the initial stages of the war on terror, Tenet's CIA was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. But when Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with the president that there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the agency and Tenet. Through interviews with DoD staffers who sifted through mountains of raw intelligence, FRONTLINE tells the story of how questionable intelligence was "stovepiped" to the vice president and presented to the public.
....
From stories of Nigerian yellowcake to claims that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met with Iraqi agents in Prague, The Dark Side dissects the now-familiar assertions that led the nation to war. The film also examines how that stovepiped intelligence was used by the vice president in unprecedented visits to the CIA, where he questioned mid-level analysts on their conclusions. CIA officers who were there at the time say the message was clear: Cheney wanted evidence that Iraq was a threat.
At the center of the administration's case for war was a classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that found evidence of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program. But Paul Pillar, one of the report's principal authors, now admits to FRONTLINE that the NIE was written quickly in a highly politicized environment, one in which the decision to go to war had already been made. Pillar also reveals that he regrets participating in writing a subsequent public white paper on Iraqi WMD. "What was the purpose of it? The purpose was to strengthen the case for going to war with the American public. Is it proper for the intelligence community to publish papers for that purpose? I don't think so, and I regret having had a role in it," Pillar says.
For the first time, FRONTLINE tells of George Tenet's personal struggle in the runup to the Iraq war through the accounts of his closest advisers.
"He, I think, asked himself whether or not he wanted to continue on that road and to be part of it. And I think there was a lot of agonizing that George went through about what would be in the best interest of the country and national interest, or whether or not he would stay in that position and continue along a course that I think he had misgivings about," says John O. Brennan, former deputy executive director of the CIA.
Tenet chose to stay, but after the failure to find Iraqi WMD, the tension between the agency and Cheney's allies grew to the point that some in the administration believed the CIA had launched a covert war to undermine the president. The film shows how in response, Cheney's office waged a campaign to distance itself from the prewar intelligence the vice president had helped to cultivate. Under pressure, Tenet resigned. Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, would later admit to leaking key sections of the NIE -- authorized, he says, by Cheney. Libby also stated that the vice president told him that President Bush had declassified the material. Insiders tell FRONTLINE that the leak was part of the battle between the vice president and the CIA.
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