Cheney: Bush wasn’t in the dark on CIA

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that President Bush was not kept in the dark on the CIA’s interrogation techniques, calling the Senate Intelligence Committee report’s claim a “flat out lie.”

{mosads}The report, released Tuesday, has sparked renewed debate over the techniques, which the report says included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and rectal feeding and asserts were torture.

{mosads}The report says that Bush did not know the details of the techniques until 2006, years after they began, and that he “expressed discomfort” when he learned of an incident involving a detainee chained to a ceiling and wearing a diaper.

“I think he knew certainly the techniques, we did discuss the techniques, there was no effort on our part to keep him from that,” Cheney said on Fox News.

“That the president wasn’t being told is just a flat out lie.”

Bush wrote in his memoir, Decision Points, that he did know about the interrogation practices.

“Read his book,” Cheney said. “He was fully informed.”

Cheney strongly defended the program overall.

“Torture was something we very carefully avoided,” he said, pointing to the Justice Department’s approval of the effort. 

“In terms of there being some problems in the program, there may well have been, but I don’t think the Senate report represents the truth of what actually happened,” he added.

Host Bret Baier asked Cheney about the report’s description of the rectal feeding of a detainee.

“I don’t know anything about that specific instance,” Cheney said, later adding, “That was not one of the authorized or approved techniques.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, backed the release of the report in a floor speech on Tuesday.

“John and I have a fundamental disagreement about the program,” Cheney said.

The former vice president repeatedly pointed to the Americans who died in the September 11 attacks as justification.

“I would do it again in a minute,” he said.