Lawrence Wilkerson Responds to Liz Cheney's "Fantasies" Remark
By Heather Wednesday May 20, 2009 4:30am
Lawrence Wilkerson responds to Liz Cheney's personal attack on him for about "making a cottage industry out of fantasies...about the Vice President since he left office". That Vice President being her father.
MADDOW: Joining us now is Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief-of-staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Col. Wilkerson, it is great to have you back on the show. Thanks for joining us.
WILKERSON: Good to be here.
MADDOW: I have to ask your reaction, first of all, to Liz Cheney attacking you in the way that she did yesterday morning on ABC.
WILKERSON: Rachel, I don‘t pay a lot of attention to Liz Cheney. Her bona fides are that she‘s the vice president‘s daughter just as her bona fide is when she was PDASS and DASS in the Secretary of State‘s Office for Middle Eastern Affairs, or that she was the daughter of the Vice President, meaning that for Dick Cheney, nepotism was alive and well in his government.
MADDOW: Well, you - as you‘ve gotten this pushback from Liz Cheney and from others, let‘s get specific about your accusation and the way that it‘s being taken apart. You wrote, quote, the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002.”
“Its principle priority,” you said, “for intelligence was not aimed at the preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.”
So you‘re saying the number one priority of those interrogations of the intelligence direction of those investigations was to get an Iraq and al-Qaeda link?
WILKERSON: I‘m saying that by that time, we had done some things that had severely limited al-Qaeda‘s operational reach. Not the least of which was to tear them a new rear end in Afghanistan. But we‘d done some other very sophisticated things, too, that had put al-Qaeda very much on the defensive.
At that point, even though the chatter might have gone up at times, I think those of us who were really in the business of looking at this knew that the possibility of another attack had receded somewhat.
So at that point, as we were building up a march to war with Iraq, it‘s come to my attention in a number of ways, independently corroborating one another, that our priorities at least were equal if not exceeding the priority to thwart another attack to find out intelligence that would link al-Qaeda with Baghdad with the Mukhabarat and give the administration a lot more weight in its marketing of the war with Iraq when that marketing commenced.
MADDOW: You also said - and I‘ll ask you about this other specific language that you use. You said, “So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney‘s office that their detainee was compliant (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP‘s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet.”
Then you say, “This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Are you saying it was Cheney ordering under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts.” Are you saying that it was Cheney‘s office ordering the waterboarding in Egypt of al-Libi or are you talking about someone else?
WILKERSON: No, I‘m talking about another individual. And it‘s the pushback against me from even my own interlocutors in the last 24 to 48 hours has been - well, Tenet gave those instructions, not the vice president.
And my reaction has been, any time George Tenet gave instructions like that, he had cover from the vice president. Otherwise, George Tenet would never give instructions like that.
This was a very close group of people who were performing this. The only one I don‘t know whether it included or not was the president of the United States. There‘s still grave doubt in my mind that the president was very intimately involved in the details of this process. I think it was almost exclusively the vice president.
And the vice president kept this information very close for obvious reasons. He didn‘t want it to leak, and it was a very secret operation. And the vice president didn‘t want anyone to know about it other than those with a need to know, meaning those who were actually executing it or carrying out his instructions to execute it, in this case, DCI George Tenet.
So my assumption that it came from the Vice President‘s Office, I think, is based on pretty firm ground.
MADDOW: And when you talk about your investigations into these matters and the independent corroborating information you‘ve been able to put together, were these things that you knew about contemporaneously or are other people telling you this now in retrospect, knowing that you‘re speaking out essentially in an effort to try to get this information out there into the public sphere?
WILKERSON: That‘s certainly part of it. But in 2004, April, when photographs from Abu Ghraib were eminent, Sec. Powell came to my office and walked through the door and he said, “I need you and Will Taft,” his legal visor, “to get to the bottom of this. How did we get to Abu Ghraib? How did we - give me a chronology. Give me the reasons how we got there.”
And I began at that point an investigation, and I kept up with that investigation, classified documents, unclassified documents and so forth, throughout the rest of the year until the election. And until January, we left the State Department.
And then after that, I still had a grave interest in it, even though I did not have the classified documents anymore. Lots of people made those documents available to me as soon as they became unclassified. And I began to put together my own audit trail as it were as to how all of this happened.
And I created a lot of contacts in doing that in the agency, in the military, in the diplomatic service and so forth. And a lot of people have talked to me over that time and I have been very careful to corroborate what I‘m saying with multiple sources, just as I was told to do by George Tenet out at the CIA as we prepared Powell for the 5 February presentation at the U.N.
And I‘ve been very careful about how I put these sources together. And I have not spoken out until I had a very firm idea in my mind of what was happening and when. I am a little confused about al-Libi, I‘ll admit that, because we didn‘t learn about him until we were out to CIA getting ready to go to New York and present Powell‘s presentation.
I‘m told now that he was tortured as early as February 2002 which was a year before that. So I‘ve still got to put that piece together.
MADDOW: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief-of-staff of Sec. of State Colin Powell, independent torture investigator on behalf of the nation, thank you for your time tonight, sir. It‘s always good to have you on the show.
WILKERSON: Thank you, Rachel.
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with several progressive bloggers who have called his account of things into question.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh051809.shtml
That said, I did admire him pointing out the nepotism of Cheney's daughter holding a high position in the State Department, which also employed Wolfowitz's main squeeze after she lost her gig at his bank.
but clearly he's got the knives out for Cheney, so this is incredibly good news... an partial insider ready to spill.
This could get good... I'm making popcorn.
As a former member of the inner circle, Wilkerson's words are very powerful. His statement "the pushback against me from even my own interlocutors in the last 24 to 48 hours" shows just how much weight his words have. Cheney's people are running scared.
Be careful out there, Mr Wilkerson.
Please don't fly in any small planes!
Who's afraid of the CIA?
Ray McGovern: Liz Cheney's accusation of Wilkerson's "fantasy stories" would be wonderful if it were true
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com...
good link. The CIA must be changed or eliminated for the good of the country. The CIA and the republicans are natural gravity wells for corruption and destruction of transparent government.
Who are they torturing on our behalf today?
And how about those Cheney assasin squads...
Look out future! We may find ourselves in the wrong time line going forward.
It is really great that we get confirmation from such a staunch patriot regarding the torture. However for any of us who were paying attention, without access to the information that Colonel Wilkerson had, it was obvious that we were deeply engaged in the torture, rape and murder of individuals in our custody and no other conclusion can be drawn then that......
WE ARE A NATION OF WAR CRIMINALS!
Since we first began massacring Indians for their land, this has been a country sick to its core. It puts on a pretty face, but deep down America is not what it appears to be.
The Benjamins.
moneymoneymoneymoneymoney
Is the only honest republican I think I have seen in over eight years.
I wonder why he waited so long to say anything? The money?
Wilkerson has been a very strong critic of the Bush regime for a long time now. He is not a Johnny come lately.
Tear them a new poop chute.
Want corn with that?
...that mass murdering, torture loving, lying ass, Constitution hating father of hers because she says so.
of this show on Tuesday Morining and thought that he hit Dear Liz over the head with her own bible. Good show!
Do the Nipponese practice nepotism?
DO NOT try to impede the "process of transformation"
He's believable because his story makes perfect sense. We all know that bush and cheney wanted an excuse to invade Iraq but they didn't really have an excuse so they tried to create one. They had the bogus info from Chalabi but it wasn't persuasive enough. Cheney wanted more so bad that he was willing to say to hell with the law.
First we had cheney out there telling his story, then when it looked like he doth protest too much, out comes his kid to continue the bs.
... is that even though Bush/Cheney played the media with the ramp-up to the Iraq War, lying about uranium ore, lying about aluminum tubes, the whole 'grave and growing' vs. 'imminent' thing, the WMDs that didn't exist, the impervious bunkers Saddam didn't use, and more ...
... that the media even considers Dick Cheney to be a valid source for anything.
As far back as I can remember everything cheney claimed before the invasion has turned out to be false. Why doesn't the media at least challenge what he's saying today and why would anyone give any weight to what his daughter says? I think that 18% approval of cheney now must just be the members of the media.
Corporatism cares not a fig if Cheney is 'right' or wrong. It only cares about it's own survival.
... corporats need to pay me better, because I ain't singing the company song.
.....and loud enough, pretty soon everybody thinks it's the truth." This was Goebbels' motto, and Karl Rove has schooled his boys---Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, et al.---well. Also, the bigger the lie, the more people are prone to believe it, if you tell it with conviction and certainty. These guys are pros. They've been lying since the 70s. Cheney made his bones in the Nixon administration but wasn't as successful as he is now because the technology was pretty rudimentary then. And, obviously, the rotton apple doesn't fall far from the diseased tree. Whodathunk America would be hoist on her own petard by her technological advances?!!!!
marketed based on lies and tens of thousands of lives were lost and millions displaced. Perhaps it's just the "been there, done that" thing, and apple pie torture is more of a new shiny object.
........don't forget the Ventura knock-out punches!
... to call the fight. Ventura wins with a TKO after googledy-umptillion rounds.
Liz Cheney(aka-spawn of Satan)was appointed to her post on February 2005, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs and coordinator for broader Middle East and North Africa initiatives. By all accounts, it is an enormously powerful post, and one for which she was unqualified for....(that evil rat Cheney got her the job)
Liz Cheney oversaw the disbursement of millions of dollars of discretionary funding to middle Eastern countries when she was at State. Some of the money she disbursed was "secret" for national security reason.
Her husband at the time was Philip Perry, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security.
The whole corrupt pack of rats are---dishonest and greedy …
Making Excuses For TORTURE--— A fun game the whole family can play!
I can only hope Cheney has a very large, angry yet "friendly" cell mate who can do to him what he has done to others for so long.
Lawrence Wilkerson.....AKA Witness #1 for the prosecution.
Calling Eric Holder!!!
..he's busy looking forward!
Sorry for the cynicism but with all that's come out and an apparent lack of desire, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for anyone to make a move on the War Criminals.
Don't you feel safer now?
Demand Accountability!
It seems to me the dots are all there but everyone is afraid or refuses to connect them. Sure, connecting them is going to draw an ugly picture, but the picture is there forever.
This is the same behavior as a bully who takes your lunch money and threatens to beat you up if you tell anyone.
"Why do you hate America?" is the same as "You wanna be my friend, right?"
You can turn "Why do you hate America?" back on them: Adams said this is a nation "of laws, not of men", waterboarding has been prosecuted as a federal crime at home and abroad, Reagan ratified the Convention Against Torture: Bush, Cheney et al tortured.
Why do the torture apologists hate America?
war crimes IS the American way!
Joe Scarborough went on a bust-a-gut rant this morning defending the CIA and their actions. His buddy Harold Ford was right there with him. They sung the praises of torture without once mentioning the value of the results. They were of the mentality that simply by waterboarding someone you get the answer that you need. They failed to consider that all reports tell us what a waterboarded detainee tells the interrogator is questionable at the very best.
When your goal is to defend the use of torture, I think you have a serious problem. Why would anyone want to defend such heinous acts?
.."24" that's why he thinks he's qualified to apology for the torturers and their enablers.
but ILLEGAL. It's absolutely no different then if they were on our televisions defending child rape!
The other Sunday when Cheney was asked if he would testify under oath before congress and he hedged, that was when he told us all we need to know about him. If he wanted his story to be told and he was honest with what he's saying he would be chomping at the bit to have the oportunity to speak before congress and have that nation wide attention.
and conveniently timed. Nobody has said how he died in prison.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/05/al-li...
Perhaps one of Cheney's assassination squads got to him. Makes me wonder.
This is one of those things that if it doesn't make you wonder, you haven't been paying attention.
It is really great that we get confirmation from such a staunch patriot regarding the torture. However for any of us who were paying attention, without access to the information that Colonel Wilkerson had, it was obvious that we were deeply engaged IN the torture, rape and murder of individuals in our custody and no other conclusion can be drawn then that......
WE ARE A NATION OF WAR CRIMINALS!
... we're a nation of idiots. There's absolutely no reason that the people who understand torture is a crime against our laws and an ethical/moral failure should be in the minority.
Is it just because of the Rush Limbaugh Brain Trust, or is it also because of the evangelical don't-question-God mindset?
I would think the religious people would be raising hell about this torture subject. Seems they of all people would be speaking out against what has been done by our country.
I'm the lapsed Catholic ... and I understand that Christ was tortured as a political exercise.
It's part and parcel of the mythology - Christ died for our sins, and those sins include what was done to him. (Or, it's a slapdash redress of Odin/Yggdrasil, but I'll leave that to Ys to explain.)
but I'll leave that to Ys to explain.)"
The only question is whether the explanation will come with video linked to it. Hope so.
people as well as wiping out the heathen redskins. As far as raising hell about torture...well, they believe hell is a place of eternal torture endorsed by their god.
This Wilkerson chap is alright by me.
and follow the link. Just because this clown is saying what we want to hear now doesn't mean he wasn't one of the clowns falling out of the car in the middle of the circus during the Bush administration and his information is any better now than it was when he was feeding us horse manure a few years back.
But, okay.
I keep the monkeys in, that is why I hid behind the link.
In a tub?
Just the one he spanks.
Zing o' the day!
My grandfather had a chimp once. As Thundermonkey points out, Chimps are not monkeys.
His name was Whiskey and he wore a diaper. The chimp, not Grampa. They lived together in a trailer. Grampa was lonely. The chimp was mean. He had to spank his monkey a lot. Grampa, not the chimp.
Maybe Wilkerson is one of those rare men in govt. who has a conscience
I mean, he's calling the past administration out on their BS.
Even if he's doin it only to cover up his sins...I don't really care, I want to see bushco on trial for warcrimes.
If we gotta give up a few good sized fish, on order to get to the trophy size....so be it.
he is as loose with his facts now as he was then. He is worth a chuckle for the pain he is causeing his former colleagues, but he is not exactly Mr. Reliable.
yeah we shouldn't get all buddy buddy with they guy, lol.
But hey, if he wants to throw cheney under a bus...fine with me.
Cheney knows how the game operates. He placed cronies throughout all branches of govt to take Iraq. He scapegoated the CIA and cooked intelligence. As the classified crimes dick committed start seeing the light of day, he must get ahead of the force of justice. He's down to himself, his daughter and media cronies.
Many here have their pitchforks raised following dick's distractions. Discounting the Col's word for his political affiliation is BS. The thugs have their new game plan and Larry is using another playbook. The country over party one.
But even though guys like Wilkerson and Powell like to be "the nice Bushies," they're still Bushies.
And W could have never pulled it off without their help.
Dunno if it's true or not but Wilkerson sure looks "depressed." Like he might commit suicide at any moment.
...he will perish in a small plane accident. Hhhhhmmmmmmmmm, where have I heard THAT before?
...presents itself that at least the "possibility" of criminal acts as high as Cheney exist.
And yet, not a peep from the White House about assigning a special prosecutor. If this so called "truth commission" gains any footing, you can then rest assured this whole thing will get completely swept under the rug.
Change we can believe in. Yeah, right.
The Problem With a Special Prosecutor
The recent appearances of the Cheneys over the media as a credible political opponent on par to the Obama administration's policies and stances raises an issue of journalistic deontology! This is definitely of artificial making. On the one hand, we've got a legitimately elected President of the United States who has undergone the rigorous electoral process having to make his case to the American people and coming out successful in eliciting the policies he intends to carry out during his mandate within the confines of the American political institutional structure and process. On the other hand, we've got political personae (the Cheneys) who are effectively being presented by the media as a legitimate opponent on par to the Obama administration whereas they do not bear any electoral mandate whatsoever for the political views they profer and with no consequent responsiblity, stake and risk that will arise from any such mandate while the President is tied to them.
The latest case in point, is Liz Cheney's appearance on the Scarborough Show with her critical and undermining views of the President presented in effect as critical views to the Obama speech delivered in Egypt under the disguise of expressing her opinions. For comments/expressions of opinion on the President's policies, her views as well as those of her father have been given such a broad artificial reception by the media that runs very contrary to the expression of opinion as we've come to know it. These views are rather given almost the same weight and placed on par as the political stances of a legitimately elected president with a legitimate mandate for the policies he is undertaking while the Cheney's hold no such legitimate mandate and with no accompanying political accountability whatsoever. The issue here is that such attitude by the media is contrary to what we've come to expect from normal implicit democratic rules. If the Cheneys had any pretense for policies they wished to be implemented after the Bush Administration, the solution would have simply been for Dick or Liz to run for president. Since they didn't, it is artificial for the media to strive to present them as a counterweight on par to the Obama administration's policies well beyong what will be expected for the opinion of a simple citizen that the Cheneys are now notwithstanding their previous political roles. And by the way, by extension is it acceptable that any citizen, no matter what self-righteous pretense they might have, to be artificially given a similar counterweight role on par with the President on any policy issues of the Obama administration while not holding any legitimate political mandate for which they will be politically accountable for their stances? It can be understandable, that the Cheneys can be of direct concern when it comes to matters of direct relation to political issues having to do with Cheney's role in the Bush administration. But to raise their views on the policies and stances the administration should take on par with the President undermines appropriate journalistic deontology because as we should all know by now "elections do matter".
What strikes the mind here is that the Cheneys have perfectly understood this "naïvété" of the media and are using this "media confusion about fairness" to artificially strive to extirpate Mr. Dick Cheney from accusations of introducing torture policies during the Bush Administration among other political accusations. Their strategy is very simple. Legally, Cheney can't make it (they know that secretly). In all courts of law, so-called EITs are definitely torture practices. Besides, the facts as we know them are overwhelmingly against him and the Bush Administration, and Dick Cheney's contradictions are extensive. The real strategy of the Cheney's here is totally otherly: turn it "political". First, saying torture works and was for the good of the country should elicit the fervour of many Americans. Afterall, all what is needed is that a substantial number of Americans polled buy to this argument, and then the issue’s legal underpinning may be undermined. Secondly, posing artificially as the right wing counterweight to the Obama's administration policies elicits the impression and fervour in some quarters particularly to the right that he is making the President moderate and thus he is political useful. A look at this second political trick shows how the media has effectively been manipulated: knowing fairly well that in his administrative role the President will have to take practical and pragmatic postures with respect to the release of photos of abused detainees as well as on other policies, all what Dick simply have to do is to posit that he is against releasing the pictures and pretend to take critical policy issues postures on the right, making him seemingly a moderating influence on the President. Thirdly, the Cheneys simply have to claim that Obama is following the Bush Administration’s policies he criticized pointing to his strategies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. In this case too, the media is manipulated as they ignore the fact that the Obama administration does not have the luxury of starting from scratch as Bush had on all these issues but rather adopts a “course correction strategy” of the situations to bring them as close as possible to what he advocates. The fact is that, the underlying strategy of Dick and her daughter is to make this three steps political trick extirpate Dick from the accusations levied against the former administration. The sad thing is that the media is "naïvely" falling for these political tricks!
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