The US National Archives released photos showing former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney after the attacks on September 11, 2001.
The never-before-seen 9/11 photos show George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and senior officials in their immediate response to the attacks.
The photos, taken by then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff photographer, show the scene inside the president’s Emergency Operations Center as officials worked the phones amid the fallout.
Dick Cheney is seen in several photos watching on a small square television in his office as smoke billows from the World Trade Center, and other photos show him with his glasses off and hands clasped.
Photo US National Archives
Former CIA Director George Tenet, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell are seen in the photographs, along with first lady Laura Bush.
Many photos show blank or grim expressions as officials speak among themselves or watch President George W. Bush address the nation hours after the attacks.
The photos were released as part of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Colette Hanna, a documentary coordinating producer for films appearing on Frontline.
More than 350 photos from 9/11 can be viewed on the US National Archives’ Flickr page here.
President George W. Bush was “fully informed” about CIA interrogation techniques condemned in a Senate report, his vice-president, Dick Cheney, says.
Speaking to Fox News, Dick Cheney said George W. Bush “knew everything he needed to know” about the program, and the report was “full of crap”.
The CIA has defended its use of methods such as waterboarding on terror suspects after the 9/11 attacks.
The Senate report said the CIA misled politicians about the program.
However, George W. Bush dismissed this, saying: “The notion that the committee is trying to peddle that somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis and that we weren’t being told – that the president wasn’t being told – is a flat-out lie.”
In the interview on December 11, Dick Cheney said the report was “deeply flawed” and a “terrible piece of work”, although he admitted he had not read the whole document.
A summary of the larger classified report says that the CIA carried out “brutal” and “ineffective” interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the US and misled other officials about what it was doing.
The information the CIA collected using “enhanced interrogation techniques” failed to secure information that foiled any threats, the report said.
However, Dick Cheney said the interrogation program saved lives, and that the agency deserved “credit not condemnation”.
“It did in fact produce actionable intelligence that was vital in the success of keeping the country safe from further attacks,” he said.
The UN and human rights groups have called for the prosecution of US officials involved in the 2001-2007 program.
“As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice,” Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, said in a statement made from Geneva.
He said there had been a “clear policy orchestrated at a high level”.
Correspondents say that the chances of prosecuting members of the Bush administration are unlikely, not least because the US justice department has said that it has already pursued two investigations into mistreatment of detainees since 2000 and concluded that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain a conviction.
None of the countries where the prisons were located has been identified in the report, but several countries suspected to have hosted so-called “black sites” reacted strongly to the publication.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is among the world leaders to have condemned how the agency imprisoned and questioned al-Qaeda suspects.
He said the program “violated all accepted norms of human rights in the world”.
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he hoped that the publication of the report would “help us leave these techniques where they belong – in the past”.
He banned harsh interrogation techniques after taking office in 2009, and has acknowledged that some methods amounted to torture.
Some Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a minority report, accusing the Senate of having a “flawed analytical methodology”, “inadequate objectivity” and “political considerations”.
However, influential Republican Senator John McCain argued that torture “rarely yields credible information” and that even in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden the most important lead came from “conventional interrogation methods”.
Liz Cheney has decided to drop out of the Senate primary after her bid to unseat Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi sparked a round of warfare in the Republican Party and even within her own family.
The official announcement from Liz Cheney – the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney – could come as early as Monday.
Liz Cheney’s election bid in the deeply conservative state was controversial from the outset.
Liz Cheney has decided to drop out of the Senate primary after her bid to unseat Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi sparked a round of warfare in the Republican Party and even within her own family
Her Wyoming credentials were challenged in spite of her family’s deep roots in the state, because she spent much of her youth and adult life in Virginia.
Last summer, Liz Cheney committed an embarrassing political gaffe in a state where hunting and fishing are taken very seriously by mistakenly buying the wrong fishing license after living in Wyoming for just a few months.
Another scandal erupted when Liz Cheney’s sister, Mary Cheney, and her wife, Heather Poe, took to social media to blast the elder sister for her continued opposition to gay marriage.
Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney is accused of favoritism over his heart surgery, as he was too old to receive a heart transplant on Friday.
Critics are complaining that 71-year-old Dick Cheney was given special consideration because of his position.
Though they do not think that Dick Cheney was moved up the transplant list, he was given the organ that could have gone to thousands of younger recipients who would have more years to live with it.
“Most centers wouldn’t put somebody on at Cheney’s age,” said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan, who has testified before many panels on organ sharing issues.
“I’ve been arguing for a long time that the system should pay more attention to age because you’ll get a better return on the gift because younger people are more likely to live longer with a donor organ,” Art Caplan said.
Dick Cheney’s case reopens debate about whether rules should be changed to favor youth over age in giving out scarce organs.
As it stands now, time on the waiting list, medical need and where you live determine the odds of scoring a new heart – not how many years you’ll live to make use of it.
Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney is accused of favoritism over his heart surgery, as he was too old to receive a heart transplant
Dick Cheney, who served as President George W. Bush’s vice president for both terms, from 2001 to 2009, received the transplant Saturday at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, the same place where he received an implanted heart pump that has kept him alive since July 2010.
It appears the former vice president went on the transplant wait list around that time, 20 months ago.
Dick Cheney had severe congestive heart failure and had suffered five heart attacks over the past 25 years.
He has had countless procedures to keep him going – bypasses, artery-opening angioplasty, pacemakers and surgery on his legs. Yet Dick Cheney must have had a healthy liver and kidneys to qualify for a new heart, doctors said.
“We have done several patients hovering around age 70 although that’s about the upper limit for a transplant,” said Dr. Mariell Jessup, a University of Pennsylvania heart failure specialist and American Heart Association spokeswoman.
“The fact he waited such a long time shows he didn’t get any favors.”
More than 3,100 Americans are waiting now for a new heart, and about 330 die each year before one becomes available.
When one does, doctors check to see who is a good match and in highest medical need. The heart is offered locally, then regionally and finally nationally until a match is made.
“You can’t leapfrog the system,” said Dr. Allen Taylor, cardiology chief at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.
“It’s a very regimented and fair process and heavily policed.”
That said, there is no formal rule disqualifying anyone above the age of 70 from receiving a new heart, though many hospitals enforce an unstated version of the rule in an effort to allow younger patients access to the lifesaving procedure.
“The ethical issues are not that he had a transplant, but who didn’t?” tweeted Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at Scripps Health in La Jolla, California.
Preferential treatment to wealthy patients is also a hot topic when it comes to transplants because they often are able to sign up to more than one transplant list in an effort to be considered ‘local’ in more places.
In order for that to work, the patient has to have the ability to fly to the hospital in question on very short notice.
Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was one example of that, as he was on a transplant list in Tennessee and received a new liver at a hospital there in 2009 even though he lived in California.
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