Cheney Indicted

A Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on state charges related to federal prisons in south Texas. The Willacy County District Attorney, Juan Angel Guerra, claims it is not a personal vendetta on his part. “The grand jury is the one that made those decisions, not me,” he told AP. Cheney is charged with engaging in an organized criminal activity related to his investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and “at least misdemeanor assaults” on detainees because of his link to the prison companies. The indictment also accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the prisons. Gonzales’s attorney, George Terwilliger III, wrote, “This is obviously a bogus charge on its face, as any good prosecutor can recognize.” He said he hoped Texas authorities would take steps to stop “this abuse of the criminal justice system.”