Dick Cheney served as U.S. Vice President under George W. Bush (2001–2009).
Presidential finding — intercepted in the anteroom
John Kiriakou recounted the account from George Tenet’s memoir regarding the authorization of the enhanced interrogation program. Tenet had prepared the presidential finding — the formal document requiring the president’s signature to authorize the CIA program — and traveled to the White House to obtain that signature. While waiting in the anteroom of the Oval Office, Cheney walked in and said: “Hi, George. What are you doing here?” Tenet told him he had the presidential finding for Bush’s signature to approve the torture program. Cheney said: “Oh, I’ll take that.” Tenet replied: “Well, no — I need to get the president’s signature.” Cheney said: “No, I’ll get the president’s signature.”[1][2][3]
Tenet later speculated that the president never actually signed the finding — that it was autopen’d — and that when Bush subsequently said he had no idea the program was taking place, he was probably telling the truth. Kiriakou’s characterization: Cheney was the one running foreign policy, intelligence policy, and defense policy. Bush was the face.[3][4]
Chair of the eve-of-Iraq-invasion Principals Committee
Per John Kiriakou, Cheney chaired the Principals Committee meeting on the night of February 19–20, 2003 — the eve of the Iraq invasion — in place of President Bush. At that meeting General Tommy Franks ended his order-of-battle briefing with: “If all goes as planned, we can be in Tehran by August.” George Tenet turned off his microphone and asked Kiriakou: “Did he say Tehran or did he say Baghdad?”[5]
Chairing the road to Baghdad — and Tehran
John Kiriakou recounts being the notetaker in a secure video teleconference chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney the day before the Iraq invasion, in which a general floated reaching “Tehran by August.”[6][7] He also relays the story that Richard Perle came to Cheney on September 12, 2001 to plant the idea of invading Iraq.[8] In another telling of the same eve-of-invasion episode, Kiriakou says responsibility for the invasion decision rested squarely on Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, with Condoleezza Rice a lesser factor because she was easily pushed around.[9] Kiriakou states flatly, of the broader pattern of the CIA being handed political decisions made at the White House and told to justify them after the fact, that the Iraq War decision was made by Cheney and imposed on the rest of the intelligence community,[10] and elsewhere puts it even more simply: “100% of the decision-making on these issues came from Cheney.”[11]
Reopening the Chalabi channel
Despite a CIA burn notice forbidding all contact with Ahmed Chalabi, Kiriakou says Cheney had the undersecretary of defense for intelligence secretly reopen a channel with him — and specifically instructed that officer not to tell the CIA.[12]
‘He really was the president’ (Tegan Broadwater Pt 2)
John Kiriakou says Dick Cheney pushed the bounds of the Constitution “more than any other vice president,” and that a generation on it is clear “he really was the president” — holding primacy over foreign affairs, intelligence, defense and energy while George W. Bush, “a perfectly lovely man,” was “simply not in charge.” He cites the film Vice’s scene of Cheney negotiating exactly that portfolio as his price for taking the job.[13][14][15]
‘Rather keep a thousand innocent people locked up’
Kiriakou recalls Cheney stating, while vice president, that he would rather keep a thousand innocent people locked up in Guantanamo than allow one guilty person to go free — a position Kiriakou says he holds in exact opposition to.[16] In another telling of the same remark, made when Cheney was confronted about Guantanamo, Kiriakou gives the figure as a hundred innocent men rather than a thousand.[17]
The Afghanistan op-ed and ‘this guy’s full of shit’
Kiriakou wrote a 2007 Los Angeles Times op-ed, titled by the paper “The Other War We’re Losing,” about Afghanistan being neglected while attention stayed fixed on Iraq. A few days after it ran, his editor told him the Office of the Vice President — Cheney’s office — had emailed with a comment on the piece. The entire email read: “This guy’s full of shit.”[18]
The Harris endorsement
Kiriakou says he declined to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 after she actively sought and then received the endorsement of the Cheney family, calling that endorsement something to be ashamed of rather than proud of, and Dick Cheney himself “a monster.”[19]