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The Dark Side

In July 2003, United States Vice President Dick Cheney stands outside
the Oval Office as he listens to President George W. Bush speak about
Iraq in the Rose Garden at the White House. Credit: ?Brooks Kraft/Corbis

FRONTLINE <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/>

The Dark Side

coming Jun. 20, 2006 at 9pm (check local listings)

On September 11, 2001, deep inside a White House bunker, Vice President
Dick Cheney was

1.    ordering U.S. fighter planes to shoot down any commercial airliner still in the air above America.

 

At that moment, CIA Director George Tenet was meeting with his counter-terrorism team in Langley, Virginia. Both leaders acted fast, to prepare their country for a new kind of war. But soon

 

2.    a debate would grow over the goals of the war on terror, and the decision to go to war in Iraq.

 

3.    *Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and others saw Iraq as an
important part of a broader plan

 

     a.     to remake the Middle East

     b.     and project American power worldwide*.

 

_*Meanwhile Tenet, facing division in his own organization, saw
non-state actors such as Al Qaeda as the highest priority*. _
FRONTLINE's investigation of the ensuing conflict includes more than
forty interviews, thousands of pages of documentary evidence, and a
substantial photographic archive. It is the third documentary about the
war on terror from the team that produced /Rumsfeld's War/ and /The
Torture Question/. (read the press release)
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/#press>

*WEB SITE FEATURES*
Extended interviews with former members of the U.S. intelligence
community, journalists, and White House and Congressional officials
involved in intelligence oversight; Analysis of some of the main themes covered in the program;
A chronology of events;
Plus, the opportunity to watch the full program again in streaming
video, readings and links, and more.


*PRESS RELEASE*
*FRONTLINE INVESTIGATES VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY'S ROLE AS CHIEF ARCHITECT OF THE WAR ON TERROR AND HIS BATTLE WITH THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE FOR CONTROL OF THE "DARK SIDE"

FRONTLINE presents
/THE DARK SIDE/
Tuesday, June 20, 2006, 9 to 10:30 P.M. ET on PBS

http://www.pbs.org/frontline/darkside/*

Amid daily revelations about prewar intelligence and a growing scandal
surrounding the indictment of the vice president's chief of staff and
presidential adviser, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, FRONTLINE goes behind the
headlines to investigate the internal war that was waged between the
intelligence community and Richard Bruce Cheney, the most powerful vice
president in the nation's history.

"A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly,
without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to
our intelligence agencies,"

 

Cheney told Americans just after 9/11.* He warned the public that the government would have to operate on the "dark side."*

In /The Dark Side/, airing June 20, 2006, at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local
listings), FRONTLINE tells the story of the vice president's role as

1.    the chief architect of the war on terror

2.    and his battle with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the "dark side."

Drawing on more than 40 interviews and thousands of documents, the film
provides a step-by-step examination of what happened inside the councils
of war.

3.    *Early in the Bush administration, Cheney placed a group of allies
throughout the government

     a.     who advocated a robust

     b.     and pre-emptive foreign policy, especially regarding Iraq.

 

But a potential obstacle was Tenet, a holdover from the Clinton administration who

1.     had survived the transition by bypassing Cheney

2.     and creating a personal bond with the president*.

After the attacks on 9/11,

1.     Cheney seized the initiative

2.     and pushed for expanding presidential power,

3.     transforming America's intelligence agencies,

4.      and bringing the war on terror to Iraq.

 

Cheney's primary ally in this effort was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

"You have this wiring diagram that we all know of about national
security, but now there's a new line on it. There's a line from the vice
president directly to the secretary of defense, and it's as though
there's a private line, private communication between those two," former
National Security Council staffer Richard Clarke tells FRONTLINE.

In the initial stages of the war on terror, Tenet's CIA was rising to
prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. *But when Tenet
insisted in his personal meetings with the president that there was no
connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated a
secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the agency and
Tenet.* Through interviews with DoD staffers who sifted through
mountains of raw intelligence, FRONTLINE tells the story of how
questionable intelligence was "stovepiped" to the vice president and
presented to the public.

*From stories of Nigerian yellowcake to claims that 9/11 hijacker
Mohamed Atta had met with Iraqi agents in Prague, /The Dark Side/
dissects the now-familiar assertions that led the nation to war. * *The
film also examines how that stovepiped intelligence was used by the vice
president in unprecedented visits to the CIA, where he questioned
mid-level analysts on their conclusions. CIA officers who were there at
the time say the message was clear: _Cheney wanted evidence that Iraq
was a threat.
_
*At the center of the administration's case for war was a classified
October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that found evidence of an
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program. But Paul Pillar, one of the
report's principal authors, now admits to FRONTLINE that the NIE was
written quickly in a highly politicized environment, one in which the
decision to go to war had already been made. Pillar also reveals that he
regrets participating in writing a subsequent public white paper on
Iraqi WMD. "What was the purpose of it? The purpose was to strengthen
the case for going to war with the American public. Is it proper for the
intelligence community to publish papers for that purpose? I don't think
so, and I regret having had a role in it," Pillar says.

For the first time, FRONTLINE tells of George Tenet's personal struggle
in the runup to the Iraq war through the accounts of his closest advisers.

"He, I think, asked himself whether or not he wanted to continue on that
road and to be part of it. And I think there was a lot of agonizing that
George went through about what would be in the best interest of the
country and national interest, or whether or not he would stay in that
position and continue along a course that I think he had misgivings
about," says John O. Brennan, former deputy executive director of the CIA.
*Tenet chose to stay, but after the failure to find Iraqi WMD, the
tension between the agency and Cheney's allies grew to the point that
some in the administration believed the CIA had launched a covert war to
undermine the president. The film shows how in response, Cheney's office
waged a campaign to distance itself from the prewar intelligence the
vice president had helped to cultivate.*

Under pressure, Tenet resigned. Cheney's chief of staff,* Scooter Libby,
would later admit to leaking key sections of the NIE -- authorized, he
says, by Cheney*. Libby also stated that the vice president told him
that President Bush had declassified the material. Insiders tell
FRONTLINE that the leak was part of the battle between the vice
president and the CIA.

/The Dark Side/ is a FRONTLINE co-production with the Kirk Documentary
Group. The producer, writer and director is Michael Kirk. The
co-producer is Jim Gilmore. FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is
broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided by the
Park Foundation and through the support of PBS viewers. FRONTLINE is
closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. FRONTLINE is a
registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. The executive
producer for FRONTLINE is David Fanning.


*http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ImpeachBushNOW *
**