Sharing the information with Cheney was in itself an unusual step at the outset of a criminal investigation in which potential White House witnesses were being ordered by their superiors not to talk to each other about the Plame matter.

"It turns out that I have a note that I had heard about" Plame's CIA identity "from you," Libby says he told the vice president.

And what did Cheney say in response? Fitzgerald asked Libby in front of a federal grand jury six months later.

"He didn't say much," Libby replied. "You know, he said something about 'From me?' something like that, and tilted his head, something he does commonly, and that was that."

Cheney's version of the conversation, as related in the FBI interview summary?

Cheney "cannot recall Scooter Libby telling him how he first heard of Valerie Wilson. It is possible Libby may have learned about Valerie Wilson's employment from the vice president ... but the vice president has no specific recollection of such a conversation."

On another basic point, Cheney simply refused to answer.

Fitzgerald had gathered evidence that Cheney apparently persuaded President George W. Bush to hurriedly declassify portions of a prewar National Intelligence Estimate on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The declassification was followed by Libby providing the information to a New York Times reporter while simultaneously talking to reporters about Plame's CIA identity.

As Fitzgerald pressed the issue in the FBI interview, Cheney refused to confirm any discussion with Bush, saying that he must refrain from commenting about any private or privileged conversations he may have had with the president.

It was an instance of Libby, who had testified two months earlier to a federal grand jury, being more forthcoming than Cheney.

Prosecutors obtained information about the leaking of the declassified NIE from Cheney's chief of staff, who testified that he had talked to New York Times reporter Judith Miller about the National Intelligence Estimate following the "president's approval relayed to me through the vice president."

Cheney's FBI interview is a study in contrasts.

Expressing uncertainty on many areas he was being questioned about and refusing to discuss another area altogether, Cheney was emphatic on at least one basic point.

According to the FBI summary, Cheney said there was no discussion of using Plame's employment with the CIA to counter her husband's criticism that the Bush administration had manipulated prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. There was no discussion, Cheney insisted, of "pushing back" on Joseph Wilson's credibility by raising the issue of nepotism, the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, the same agency that dispatched him to the African nation of Niger to run down the report of an agreement to supply uranium "yellowcake" to Iraq.

It was one example of Cheney being categorical and Libby seeming uncertain.

"In a prior FBI interview, you indicated it was possible that you may have talked to the Vice President on Air Force Two ... about whether you should share the information with the press about Wilson's wife?" the prosecutor asked Libby in his grand jury testimony.

"It's possible that would have been one of the times I could have talked to him about what I had learned," Libby replied.

"As you sit here today, do you recall whether you had such a conversation with the vice president on Air Force Two?" the prosecutor asked.

"No, sir. My, my best recollection of that conversation was what I had on my note card which we have produced which doesn't reflect anything about that," Libby replied.

Libby was indicted, tried and convicted for perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI. The president commuted his 30-month prison sentence, but rejected Cheney's pleas in the last days of the administration to pardon the vice president's former chief of staff.

The Cheney interview summary was released Friday to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sued to get the material under the Freedom of Information Act.

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On the Net:

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

http://www.citizensforethics.org

Where do I begin? How does a man who spent much of his vice presidency hiding in a secret bunker get off accusing the president of being "afraid"? How does a guy who got five deferments from service in Vietnam, because he famously had "other priorities," call someone else a coward? (Still, Chickenhawk Cheney had no problem sending other people's children off to die in needless wars.) How does a guy who dropped the ball on the Afghan war, letting Osama bin Laden escape and the Taliban retrench, blame someone else for "dithering" on Afghanistan?

Now, as Obama is forced to dig out of another Bush-Cheney mess he inherited, and the former veep is savaging him again? The irony is that it's true that Obama approved a troop increase that had been requested during the Bush-Cheney administration, but as press secretary Robert Gibbs notes, that's because it "sat on desks in this White House, including the vice-president's, for more than eight months."

It's great to watch people step up to smack Cheney down. Retired Gen. Paul Eaton blasted back today, and I couldn't say it any better:

"The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for 7 years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1. Deny it. 2. Ignore it. 3. Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq, and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11.

"The only time Cheney and his cabal of foreign policy 'experts' have anything to say is when they feel compelled to protect this failed legacy. While President Obama is tasked with cleaning up the considerable mess they left behind, they continue to defend torture or rewrite a legacy of indifference on Afghanistan. …

"No human endeavor can be as profound as sending a nation's youth to war. I am very happy to see serious men and women working hard to get it right."

Former GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander defended Obama too:

"I think President Obama is entitled to take sufficient time to decide what our long-term role ought to be in Afghanistan. Then I think he should come to Congress and say to the American people what that plan is and see if he can persuade us and all of the American people of the rightness of it because he needs to have support all the way through to the end of that mission, so I want him to take the time to get it right."

Maybe the tide is turning on Cheney, and even responsible Republicans are starting to realize he is one of the most unpopular figures in American history, whose administration will be remembered for its unwon wars and economic collapse. I think Cheney should take a break from speechifying, maybe spend more time at home with his family, frightening his grandchildren.

But the Center for Security Policy was founded by Frank Gaffney, who remains the organization's president. And in recent months, Gaffney has been an even harsher critic of Obama's than Cheney himself -- and a much more extreme one.

Just this past June, Gaffney wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times that was headlined, "America's First Muslim president?" He didn't really seem to mean it as a question, either, saying:

During his White House years, William Jefferson Clinton -- someone Judge Sonia Sotomayor might call a "white male" -- was dubbed "America's first black president" by a black admirer. Applying the standard of identity politics and pandering to a special interest that earned Mr. Clinton that distinction, Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America's first Muslim president ...

After his five months in office, and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich ...

[T]here is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself .... In the final analysis, it may be beside the point whether Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim. In the speech and elsewhere, he has aligned himself with adherents to what authoritative Islam calls Shariah -- notably, the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood -- to a degree that makes Mr. Clinton's fabled affinity for blacks pale by comparison.

Before that, back in April, Gaffney was saying, during an appearance on MSNBC, that Obama had been signaling to the world's Muslims that the U.S. would submit to Sharia law. And in an October 2008 column for the Times, Gaffney aligned himself with the Birthers, writing, "Another question yet to be resolved is whether Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. There is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii .... Curiously, Mr. Obama has, to date, failed to provide an authentic birth certificate which could clear up the matter."

As for Cheney's speech, it struck predictable chords. According to the prepared text as provided to the Weekly Standard, the former vice president called the Obama administration's decision to scrap missile defense in Eastern Europe "a strategic blunder and a breach of good faith," slammed the administration's positions on Iran and Iraq, said of Afghanistan that the White House is "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger" and defended the Bush administration's anti-terror policies.

An excerpt from that last section of Cheney's remarks is below.

Our administration always faced its share of criticism, and from some quarters it was always intense. That was especially so in the later years of our term, when the dangers were as serious as ever, but the sense of general alarm after 9/11 was a fading memory .... Eight years into the effort, one thing we know is that the enemy has spent most of this time on the defensive -- and every attempt to strike inside the United States has failed. So you would think that our successors would be going to the intelligence community saying, “How did you did you do it? What were the keys to preventing another attack over that period of time?”

Instead, they’ve chosen a different path entirely -- giving in to the angry left, slandering people who did a hard job well, and demagoguing an issue more serious than any other they’ll face in these four years. No one knows just where that path will lead, but I can promise you this: There will always be plenty of us willing to stand up for the policies and the people that have kept this country safe.

On the political left, it will still be asserted that tough interrogations did no good, because this is an article of faith for them, and actual evidence is unwelcome and disregarded. President Obama himself has ruled these methods out, and when he last addressed the subject he filled the air with vague and useless platitudes. His preferred device is to suggest that we could have gotten the same information by other means. We’re invited to think so. But this ignores the hard, inconvenient truth that we did try other means and techniques to elicit information from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and other al-Qaeda operatives, only turning to enhanced techniques when we failed to produce the actionable intelligence we knew they were withholding. In fact, our intelligence professionals, in urgent circumstances with the highest of stakes, obtained specific information, prevented specific attacks, and saved American lives.

In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.

For all that we’ve lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings – and least of all can that be said of our armed forces and intelligence personnel. They have done right, they have made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.

Given the group’s principals, there should be little surprise about the main issues with which Keep America Safe is concerning itself. It’s basically your big neoconservative three: detention, torture and bombing. Nor is the argumentative style of the group and its members exactly a breath of fresh air. Bill Kristol explained the group’s purpose to Politico this way: “The Left has dozens of organizations and tens of millions of dollars dedicated to undercutting the war on terror. The good guys need some help too.” On Twitter, Michael Goldfarb wrote, “Why doesn't the left want to Keep America Safe...sort of surprised by all the hostility.”

The Politico article on the group also highlights a two-minute promotional video that it produced. You won’t exactly be enlightened by the content, which is a series of intensely misleading half-truths. The basic gist is, to paraphrase Goldfarb, that President Obama doesn’t want to Keep America Safe. 

So here's a quick breakdown of the video’s claims. Thanks goes out to “Keep America Safe” for the “rhetoric vs. reality” format, which I will shamelessly appropriate:

• Keep America Safe rhetoric: Barack Obama gives a good speech.
• Reality: Okay, this one is basically true.

• Keep America Safe rhetoric: Obama is scrapping the European missile shield, creating an opening for Iranian missiles to pour into Europe.
• Reality: Unmentioned, naturally, is the fact that Obama junked the plan in order to secure Russian cooperation in pressuring Iran.

• Keep America Safe rhetoric: Obama isn’t interested in protecting the CIA; you can tell this because his attorney general is investigating possible violations of the law by interrogators, which past CIA chiefs dislike.
• Reality: This is, strictly, true. However, it neglects to point out that we do not traditionally rely on the chiefs of an agency to determine whether lawbreaking by their subordinates should be punished. We -- typically -- count on the judiciary for that instead.

• Keep America Safe rhetoric: Obama promised to send more troops to Afghanistan, but hasn’t done it yet.
• Reality: The military has already significantly enlarged its presence in Afghanistan, technically fulfilling the president’s campaign promise. Further, it came out recently that Obama quietly sent 13,000 new troops to Afghanistan. But yes, he’s still considering sending tens of thousands more, and on that front, he is taking a bit of time to think over his options.

• Keep America Safe rhetoric: The president isn’t protecting the country because he’s slacking off, going on TV and golfing and vacationing and jet-setting to Copenhagen.
• Reality: The trip to Copenhagen took, like, a day. Obama was already in New York when he went on the Tonight Show. And as for the golf game, well, remember which president spent the most days on vacation? On a related note, do you really want to be criticizing presidents for spending too long thinking over whether and how to commit American soldiers to battle? (Maybe better not to answer that one.)

Here it might be instructive to go back to Center for American Progress for a moment. As it happens, Politico recently ran an article on Think Progress, a CAP-based blog. Among the people asked for a quote was none other than Keep America Safe’s Michael Goldfarb. Said Goldfarb, “They’re a shameless bunch of lying, distorting, propagandists, which I respect, and I don’t know what MSNBC would do without them. But I think the high watermark for Think Progress is long past.”

And with that, Goldfarb went back to his office in the Cheney administration in exile.