Dick Cheney and the Legacy of Post-9/11 Surveillance, Intelligence, and War Powers
WASHINGTON (AP) – Dick Cheney was the public face of the George W. Bush administration’s boundary-pushing approach to surveillance and intelligence collection in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. As an unabashed proponent of broad executive power in the name of national security, Cheney placed himself at the center of a polarizing public debate over detention, interrogation, and spying—a debate that endures two decades later.
“I do think the security state that we have today is very much a product of our reactions to Sept. 11, and obviously Vice President Cheney was right smack-dab in the middle of how that reaction was operationalized from the White House,” said Stephen Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor.
A Prominent Booster of the Patriot Act
Cheney was arguably the administration’s most prominent booster of the Patriot Act, the law enacted nearly unanimously after 9/11 that granted the U.S. government sweeping surveillance powers. He also championed a National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless wiretapping program aimed at intercepting international communications of suspected terrorists in the U.S., despite concerns over its legality from some administration figures.
Cheney asserted that if such authority had been in place before Sept. 11, it might have helped the U.S. “pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon.”
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies still retain key tools born out of this era, including national security letters that permit the FBI to order companies to turn over information about customers. However, courts have increasingly questioned the legal justification of the government’s surveillance apparatus, and the Republican Party that once solidly supported Cheney’s national security worldview has grown significantly more fractured.
The bipartisan consensus on expanded surveillance powers that emerged after Sept. 11 has given way to increased skepticism, especially among some Republicans who believe spy agencies used those powers to undermine President Donald Trump’s campaign by investigating ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign.
In 2020, Congress allowed three provisions of the Patriot Act to expire—provisions the FBI and Justice Department considered essential for national security, including one that permitted investigators to surveil subjects without establishing they were acting on behalf of an international terror organization.
A program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—which permits the U.S. government to collect, without a warrant, the communications of non-Americans located outside the country for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence—was reauthorized last year after significant negotiations.
“I think for someone like Vice President Cheney, expanding those authorities wasn’t an incidental objective—it was a core objective,” Vladeck said. “And I think the Republican Party today does not view those kinds of issues—counterterrorism policy, government surveillance authorities—as anywhere near the kind of political issues that the Bush administration did.”
Intelligence as a Political Tool
As an architect of the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Cheney pushed spy agencies to find evidence to justify military action. Along with others in the administration, Cheney claimed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al-Qaida. This intelligence was used to persuade Congress and the American public to support the war, though it was later debunked.
The faulty intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq is considered a significant failure by America’s spy agencies—a demonstration of what can happen when political aims influence intelligence gathering. The arguments for war fueled widespread distrust among many Americans, a sentiment that still resonates with some in Trump’s administration.
“For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation building,” said Tulsi Gabbard, director of the Office of National Intelligence, last week in the Middle East.
Many lawmakers who voted to authorize force in 2003 have come to regret it. “It was a mistake to rely upon the Bush administration for telling the truth,” said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., on the invasion’s 20th anniversary.
Expanded War Powers
While Trump has long criticized Cheney, he has nonetheless relied on a legal doctrine popularized during Cheney’s time in office to justify deadly strikes on alleged drug-running boats in Latin America. The Trump administration claims the U.S. is engaged in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, designating them unlawful combatants.
“These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on social media. “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”
After 9/11, the Bush-Cheney administration authorized the U.S. military to attack enemy combatants acting on behalf of terror organizations, raising questions about the legality of killing or detaining people without prosecution. Cheney’s involvement in expanding executive power and surveillance—and “cooking the books of the raw intelligence”—has echoes in today’s strikes, said Jim Ludes, director of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University.
“You think about his legacy, and some of it is very troubling. Some of it is maybe what the moment demanded,” Ludes said. “But it’s a complicated legacy.”
Vladeck noted an enduring legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration was “to blur, if not entirely collapse, lines between civilian reactions to threats and military ones.” He pointed to designating foreign terrorist organizations—a tool that predates the Sept. 11 attacks but became prevalent in the years that followed. Trump has used this label for several drug cartels.
Contemporary Conflicts Inside the Government
Protecting the homeland from espionage, terrorism, and other threats is a complicated endeavor that spans government agencies. During Cheney’s vice presidency, agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were established.
As was the case then, questions remain over the division of labor among agencies. Recently, a dispute has arisen between Director Kash Patel’s FBI and the intelligence community led by Gabbard. The FBI expressed in a letter to lawmakers vigorous disagreement with a legislative proposal that would remove the bureau as the government’s lead counterintelligence agency, replacing it with a counterintelligence center under ODNI.
“The cumulative effect,” the FBI warned in the letter obtained by The Associated Press, “would be putting decision-making with employees who aren’t actively involved in CI operations, knowledgeable of the intricacies of CI threats, or positioned to develop coherent and tailored mitigation strategies.” The bureau argued this would harm national security.
Spokespeople for the agencies later issued a statement saying they are working together with Congress to strengthen counterintelligence efforts.
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Tags: Dick Cheney, National Security, Patriot Act, Surveillance, Intelligence, Executive Power, Bush Administration, Trump Administration, War Powers, Counterintelligence
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