Cheney: NYT Pulitzers for Spying Stories ‘Aggravating’

Vice President Dick Cheney said that the prizes won by the New York Times for uncovering the Bush administration were “aggravating” to him, and cautioned the incoming administration on the lessons he’s learned in office.

Cheney said the domestic spying program “really worked” and provided valuable intelligence. “But then it became public,” Cheney said during an interview on conservative radio host Bill Bennett’s show. “The New York Times broke the story I think in December of ’05, won the Pulitzer for it, which always aggravated me.”

Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won the Pulitzer Prize for their revelation of the program, which was published over the objections of the Bush administration.

Cheney added that “there is no question” President-elect Obama had begun to get a sense for the difference between campaign rhetoric way the world actually works since beginning to receive the same intelligence briefings he and President Bush receive daily.

Cheney cautioned that former Clinton administration officials, who he called “honorable,” who would rejoin the White House during the Obama administration should not assume they can pick up where they left off eight years ago.

“The fact is the world has changed in major ways since January of ’01 when we took over,” Cheney said. “And that break in service of some eight years I think they will find has been a period of time when the threat to the nation has changed in fairly dramatic ways.”