Libby and the Cheney Unseen

[PhilipShore]

03.07.2007
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=13818
The National Interest Online

Without a doubt, Vice President Dick Cheney thought that his actions inside the walls of his office would never be revealed to the public. The trial of his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, threatened to change all that, but without the vice president’s testimony, the private Cheney will remain private. The public is left to speculate just what

the Libby affair does or does not reveal about the vice president. But there is a chapter in Cheney’s own past that mirrors the behavior of Libby so closely, it becomes necessary to ask: Did a tone and strategy of forgetfulness in the vice presidential office come from the top?

Under the cover of a special-access, “black” program, we can see the secret Cheney in action as he worked as the secretary of defense for President George H.W. Bush. In a series of particularly telling incidents, we can see how he misled Congress, shifted the blame to a subordinate and made false statements to his own president. Black programs, or super-secret compartments buried within the classified parts of the defense budget, can tempt officials to think: “no one will ever find out if I shave the edges off doing what’s right.” But we did.

The A-12 program, which involved a stealth bomber designed to replace the Navy’s venerable A-6B, is an example of a “black” program that caused trouble for Cheney during his tenure with the first Bush Administration. It was so secret that when the senior naval aviator associated with the program, Vice Admiral Robert Dunn, was shown a memorandum exposing his improper behavior with the program, he said, “You know, when I signed that, I never thought that it would see the light of day.” These same A-12 documents revealed the unseen Cheney.