Dick Cheney memoir alleges internal power struggles and defense of torture within Bush administration

24 the secrecy of internal deliberations a hallmark of his time in office, divulges a number of conflicts with others in the inner circle. He wrote that George J. Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, resigned in 2004 just “when the going got tough,” a decision he calls “unfair to the president.” He wrote that he believes that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell tried to undermine President Bush by privately expressing doubts about the Iraq war, and he confirms that he pushed to have Mr. Powell removed from the cabinet after the 2004 election. “It was as though he thought the proper way to express his views was by criticizing administration policy to people outside the government,” Mr. Cheney writes. His resignation “was for the best.” He faults former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for naiveté in the efforts to forge anuclear weapons agreement with North Korea, and Mr. Cheney reports that he fought with White House advisers over softening the president’s speeches on Iraq. Mr. Cheney acknowledged that the administration underestimated the challenges in Iraq, but he said the real blame for the violence was with the terrorists. He also defends the Bush administration’s decision to inflict what he called “toughinterrogations” — like the suffocation technique known as waterboarding — on captured terrorism suspects, saying it extracted information that saved lives. He rejects portrayals of such techniques as “torture.” In discussing the much-disputed “16 words” about Iraq’s supposed hunt for uranium in Niger that were included in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address to help justify the eventual invasion, Mr. Cheney said that unlike other aides, he saw no need to apologize for making that claim. He writes that Ms. Rice eventually came around to his view. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024615