Dick Cheney in In My Time, by Vice President Dick Cheney

On Drugs: Two DUI arrests, in 1962 & 1963

[Later,] Rumsfeld called me into his office and asked if it was true I had been arrested twice. I said I had. He asked if I had put the arrests on the original form. I said I had. Rumsfled studied the form closely; "Ok, that's good enough for me."

Five days before the 2000 election, we learned a story was breaking that in 1976, Bush had been arrested for DUI. I was sure the news of the governor's DUI would bring up stories of my own DUIs from nearly 40 years earlier, but that didn't happen because they had already been written about. They were old news. B ut this Bush story, even though it was 24 years old, was now completely new. The late revelation hurt us.

On Foreign Policy: Effective diplomacy: stand with allies, & learn from history

1. First is the importance of not losing sight of the objective. Our goal was getting the North Koreans to give up their nuclear weapons program.
2. The most effective diplomacy happens when America negotiates from a position of strength. We should have taken action ourselves to destroy the North Korean-built nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert.
3. Red lines must mean something, [like] when the North Koreans tested a nuclear weapon in Oct. 2006.
4. Effective diplomacy requires that we think strategically. In 2001 the Chinese engaged in our efforts.
5. America's position is strengthened when we stand with allies. In this instance we failed to do that, sidelining two key allies--the Japanese and the South Koreans.
6. Finally, effective diplomacy requires that our diplomats study and learn from our history. In this case, recent history with North Korea was a pretty effective guide to how they would behave.

On Homeland Security: Spent 9-11 in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center

We stopped at the bottom of the stairs in a tunnel outside the PEOC. I watched as Secret Service agents positioned themselves at the top, middle, and bottom of the staircase, creating layers of defense in case the White House itself should be invaded. The Agent had evacuated me from my office, he said, because he'd gotten word over his radio that "an inbound unidentified aircraft was headed for 'Crown,'" code name for the White House. Within moments another report came in. An agent said, "the plane headed for us just hit the Pentagon." Now I knew for certain that Washington as well as NY was under attack.

On Homeland Security: Recommended Bush stay away from DC during 9-11

This was the second call I had made to President Bush since hijacked airliners flew into the World Trade towers, and he'd been trying to reach me as well. A communications glitch had cut us off earlier, and as I waited to talk to him now, I watched images of the burning towers on an old television set that had been set up in the tunnel. When the president came on the line, I told him that the Pentagon had been hit and urged him to stay away from Washington. The city was under attack, and the White House was a target. I understood that he didn't want to appear to be on the run, but he shouldn't be here until we knew more about what was going on.

On Homeland Security: 9-11: Authorized shootdown of non-responsive civilian planes

At about 10:15, a plane, believed hijacked, was 80 miles out and headed for DC. [An aide] asked me whether our combat air patrol had authority to engage the aircraft. Did our fighter pilots have authority, in other words, to shoot down an American commercial airliner believed to have been hijacked? "Yes," I said without hesitation. A moment later he was back. "It's 60 miles out. Do they have authorization to engage?" Again, yes.

There could have been no other answer. As the last hour had made brutally clear, once a plane was hijacked it was a weapon in the hands of the enemy. In one of our earlier calls, the president approved my recommendation that the combat air patrol be authorized to fire on a civilian airliner if it had been hijacked and would not divert.

On Homeland Security: 2002: Enhanced interrogation techniques worked

The techniques worked. Zubaydah gave up information about Ramzi bin al Shibh, who had assisted the 9/11 hijackers. Information from Zubaydah and bin al Shibh led in turn to the capture of KSM, who after being questioned with enhanced techniques became a fount of information. A CIA report, declassified at my request, notes that KSM was the "preeminent source on al-Qa'ida." According to the 2004 report: "Debriefings since his detention have shed light on the plots, capabilities, the identity and location of al Qa'ida operatives and affiliated terrorist organizations and networks."

On Homeland Security: 2002: CIA acted lawfully with enhanced interrogation

Despite the invaluable intelligence we were obtaining through the program of enhanced interrogation, in 2005 there was a move on Capitol Hill, led by Sen. John McCain & Lindsey Graham, to end it and require that all US government interrogations be conducted under the rules of the US Army Field Manual.

On Homeland Security: The sixteen words were true; Saddam sought Niger uranium

I was under the impression that the president had decided against a public apology, and was therefore surprised a few days later when National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the White House press pool, "We wouldn't have put it in the speech if we had known what we know now." The result was the conflagration I had predicted. Rice realized sometime later that she had made a major mistake by issuing a public apology. She came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right. Unfortunately, the damage was done.

On Homeland Security: Effective nonproliferation policy holds rogues accountable

On Principles & Values: Scooter Libby should have been pardoned, not just commuted

Pres. Bush commuted Scooter's sentence so he would not have to go to prison. While that was appreciated, I flet strongly that Scooter deserved a pardon.

Source: In My Time, by V.P. Dick Cheney, p.408-410 Aug 30, 2011

On War & Peace: Prevent next 9-11 by going on offense in Afghanistan & Iraq

We also had to realize that defending the homeland would require going on the offense. Relying only on defense was insufficient. The terrorists had to break through our defenses onl one time to have devastating consequences. We needed to go after them where they lived in order to prevent attacks before they were launched.

Although we had discussed Iraq earlier in the day, I also took time now to say that Afghanistan, where the 9/11 terrorists had trained and plotted, should be first. I believed it was important to deal with the threat Iraq posed, but not until we had an effective plan for taking down the Taliban and denying al Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan.

On War & Peace: 2000: UN & CIA concluded that Saddam had WMDs

There were also by this time sixteen UN Security Council resolutions aimed at mitigating the danger arising from Iraq. Saddam repeatedly violated them, ignoring requirements related to WMD as well as those that had to do with terrorism. Resolution 687, passed in 1991, had declared that Iraq must not commit or support terrorism, or allow terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq. But in 1993 the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) attempted to assassinate former Pres. George H. W. Bush, and throughout the 1990s, the IIS participated in terrorist attacks.

On War & Peace: Post-9-11 no president could ignore reports of Saddam's WMDs

For a period extending back to the first Gulf War, the US intelligence community had been providing detailed assessments concerning Saddam Hussein's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, carry on biological and chemical weapons programs, and support terror. The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate was a continuation of earlier evaluations, and sobering as its judgments were, what the president and I read in our daily briefings was even "more assertive," as Director Tenet would later write.

After 9/11 no American president could responsibly ignore the steady stream of reporting we were getting about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. We had experienced an unprecedented attack on our homeland [killing] 3,000 Americans.

On War & Peace: Even with benefit of hindsight Saddam was nexus of terrorism

When we looked around the world in those first months after 9/11, there was no place more likely to be a nexus between terrorism and WMD capability than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. With the benefit of hindsight--even taking into account that some of the intelligence we received was wrong--that assessment still holds true. We could not ignore the threat or wish it away, hoping naively that the crumbling sanctions regime would contain Saddam. The security of our nation and of our friends and allies required that we act. And so we did.

On War & Peace: We lost sight of goal of non-nuclear North Korea

On War & Peace: Should have destroyed North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria

That is why I argued that we should have taken action ourselves to destroy the North Korean-built nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert. It would have sent an unmistakable message to the Syrians, the Iranians and the North Koreans that our words meant something, that we would not tolerate the proliferation of nuclear technology.