Sunday, June 24, 2007

According to the report, before the end of the very day on which we were attacked, Cheney had put together a legal team consisting of David Addington (Cheney's counsel), Alberto Gonzales, Tim Flanagan (Deputy White Counsel), and John Yoo of the Justice Department. Cheney's team promptly came up with the "authorization for the use of military of force" that Congress approved on Sept. 18. Soon thereafter, it put into place, with the president's approval, the program under which the NSA intercepted communications by al Qaeda into the U.S. without a warrant.

In doing so, Cheney kept various bureaucracies out of the loop. For example, he excluded John Bellinger, the ranking national security legal advisor in the White House, as well as the State Department's legal team. Cheney and his team also out-maneuvered Bellinger and others when they persuaded President Bush to treat captured al Qaeda fighters as unlawful combatants with no rights under the Geneva Conventions.

The Post points out that Cheney's efforts to bypass large chunks of the bureaucracy were inconsistent with his own philosophy for White House decision-making, as he had articulated it on various occasions in the past. Under the extraordinary circumstances created by 9/11, I find it commendable that Cheney did not feel wedded to his prior, hyper-cautious approach -- let's call it "growing in office."