Author | Barton Gellman |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Nonfiction |
Publisher | Penguin Press |
Publication date | September 2008 |
Media type | Hardback, audiobook |
Pages | 384 pages |
ISBN | 978-1-59420-186-8 |
OCLC | 191929196 |
973.931092 B 22 | |
LC Class | E840.8.C43 G45 2008 |
Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency is a 2008 book by Washington Post investigative reporter Barton Gellman. Presenting information in a narrative fashion, Gellman asserts that United States Vice President Dick Cheney misled Republican leaders about the threat of Iraq before the invasion of Iraq by the United States. The book levels several allegations against Cheney and his administration. The book is based on hundreds of previously unpublished interviews with high-ranking government officials. [1]
Barton Gellman, a staff writer for The Washington Post , participated in a lengthy series of Pulitzer Prize-winning stories about Vice President Cheney published in November 2007. [2] Angler is the conclusion of that investigation, and arranges the findings in a narrative fashion. [3]
Throughout the course of the interviews, Gellman spoke on record to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and his predecessor Andrew H. Card Jr., senior presidential advisers Dan Bartlett and Karl Rove, and numerous high-ranking Justice Department alumni, including John Ashcroft and James B. Comey. Cheney and President Bush declined Gellman's requests to be interviewed. [1]
Of the title of the book, Gellman said in a television interview:
Cheney's Secret Service codename. They have a wry sense of humor about the way they give codenames, and a lot of times they have a double meaning. Obviously, Cheney is an avid fisherman. I thought it was a nice metaphor for the way that he works. He tends to approach the levers of power obliquely. He doesn't like to—like you to see him coming, doesn't like to have an overt public role. He finds his way to the place where decisions are made and often doesn't leave many signs of his presence. [4]
From news sources about the book, with quotes of the book itself:
Cheney said, according to Armey, that Iraq's "ability to miniaturize weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear," had been "substantially refined since the first Gulf War," and would soon result in "packages that could be moved even by ground personnel." Cheney linked that threat to Saddam's alleged personal ties to al Qaeda, Armey said, explaining that "we now know they have the ability to develop these weapons in a very portable fashion, and they have a delivery system in their relationship with organizations such as al Qaeda." [1]
Armey said he reversed his position after Cheney told him that the threat from Iraq was actually "more imminent than we want to portray to the public at large." [1]
Hayden has this sort of famous, or famous in Washington, briefing device. He draws a Venn diagram with three overlapping ovals: one of them is what they would love to be able to do, one is what they're technically capable of doing, and one is what's legal. And what he says is, you know, "Where we work is right in the space where those three ovals intersect." And Cheney tells him, "Suppose that third oval wasn't there. Suppose you were not constrained by the law. And he is not saying, "Let's break the law." He's saying, "Let's suppose there were no legal restriction. Then what would you do?" And he does not go in the direction of asking for a change in the law. He presses the interpretation that, as commander-in-chief in wartime and because intelligence gathering is inherent in war, Bush doesn't have to follow the explicit prohibitions in two felony statutes on warrantless surveillance, that Bush, as commander-in-chief, can simply override those and override them secretly. - Barton Gellman [4]
Critical book reviews have been positive. Time magazine stated that "while Gellman's book feels more like a collection of set-pieces than a cohesive whole, this look at this second most powerful office in the land couldn't be timelier." [9] The Christian Science Monitor calls the book a "meticulously researched, highly readable new biography" that "tells the story of a man who has left a powerful imprint on American government." [10] The Los Angeles Times calls the book a "carefully reported and vigorously written" book that "creates immensely valuable clarity and perspective." [3]
Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists.
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Richard Keith Armey is an American economist and politician. He was a U.S. Representative from Texas's 26th congressional district (1985–2003) and House Majority Leader (1995–2003). He was one of the engineers of the "Republican Revolution" of the 1990s, in which Republicans were elected to majorities of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. Armey was one of the chief authors of the Contract with America. Armey is also an author and former economics professor. After his retirement from Congress, he has worked as a consultant, advisor, and lobbyist.
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The Terrorist Surveillance Program was an electronic surveillance program implemented by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was part of the President's Surveillance Program, which was in turn conducted under the overall umbrella of the War on Terrorism. The NSA, a signals intelligence agency, implemented the program to intercept al Qaeda communications overseas where at least one party is not a U.S. person. In 2005, The New York Times disclosed that technical glitches resulted in some of the intercepts including communications which were "purely domestic" in nature, igniting the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. Later works, such as James Bamford's The Shadow Factory, described how the nature of the domestic surveillance was much, much more widespread than initially disclosed. In a 2011 New Yorker article, former NSA employee Bill Binney said that his colleagues told him that the NSA had begun storing billing and phone records from "everyone in the country."
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Angler may refer to:
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Barton David Gellman is an American author and journalist known for his reports on the September 11 attacks, on Dick Cheney's vice presidency, and on the global surveillance disclosure. Beginning in June 2013, he authored The Washington Post's coverage of the U.S. National Security Agency, based on top secret documents provided to him by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden. He published a book for Penguin Press on the rise of the surveillance-industrial state in May 2020.
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