Cheney's Big Torture Speech

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Karin Cooper, CBS / AP Photo As the former vice president takes the stage Thursday morning—at the same time as Obama—The Daily Beast's John Sifton on what to look out for, from defending interrogations to rehashing dubious claims about how they kept us safe.

At Dick Cheney’s big national-security speech Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute, expect the former vice president to criticize the Obama administration’s closure of the CIA detention and interrogation program. He’ll also attempt to give a defense of Bush administration counterterrorism tactics, including the use of torture on suspected terrorists.

Of course, Cheney won’t call the CIA techniques “torture.” He’ll defend interrogations as “aggressive” but legal—or at least thought to be legal at the time they were used. Cheney’s also likely to make some arguments about the necessities of using the aggressive techniques and claim that terrorist plots were disrupted because of the CIA’s actions. (Yet he will not explain why, if the techniques were legal, it is so vital that they be justified by claims about their effectiveness.)

A particular lie Cheney is likely to get caught up on is the timeline. If you hope to talk your way out of something, it’s important to make sure your storyline somehow matches known facts.

Cheney will also say he can’t talk about the details of how those plots were disrupted, though he may rehash President Bush’s dubious claims about the disruption of a plot to destroy the Los Angeles Library Tower, claims that have been debunked—thoroughly. He’ll likely make a sardonic comment about how he, like the American Civil Liberties Union, is seeking to have documents declassified that will vindicate Bush-era policies.

Therein is the silver lining to President Obama’s foot-dragging on seeking accountability for detainee abuse. In the absence of the threat of prosecution, at least some Bush-era perpetrators seem to be singing like canaries. Cheney continues to make incriminating statements about torture and his role in facilitating its use and approval. With hope, today’s appearance at AEI will be no different.

Ironically, if this were a typical criminal investigation and Cheney a suspected criminal, his status as a suspect would be a secret, and the government would be happy not to indict him, and keep its suspicions secret, for as long as he continued to make self-incriminating statements. As former prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega has already argued, in some respects a criminal investigation is the last thing anyone seeking accountability would want right now. Let them keep talking: Let them hang themselves with their own rope.

Of course, not everything Cheney will say will be self-implicating. Like any criminal talking about his crimes, Cheney is likely to mix fact and fiction. He will not make a full admission as Jack Nicholson did in A Few Good Men, when asked by Tom Cruise, “Did you order the code red?” (“You're goddamn right I did!”)

He’ll gently try to justify his actions, or minimize his role, yet he’ll only dig himself in deeper.

A particular lie Cheney is likely to get caught up on is the timeline. If you hope to talk your way out of something, it’s important to make sure your storyline somehow matches known facts. Yet at some point in Cheney’s speech today, he is likely to repeat the claim that CIA interrogation techniques were thoroughly vetted by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel—and suggest that the White House and CIA only proceeded with torture once officials were certain that their actions were legal and had obtained memos from OLC saying so.

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