Cheney may disappear from intel report

Published June 22, 2004 3:25PM (EDT)

Will Dick Cheney's name get scrubbed from the Senate Intelligence Committee report that by all accounts is highly critical of prewar intelligence -- which he played a big role in? This Time magazine piece says the CIA is pressing to have even titles removed from the report to make the actors in the prewar intelligence drama, including Cheney, unrecognizable.

"To suggestions that the redaction request could be interpreted as an effort to provide political cover for Cheney, a CIA official responds that 'the purpose of declassification review is to protect intelligence sources, methods and other classified matters which, if disclosed, could be helpful to adversaries, like weapons proliferators and terrorists. It is not to stifle criticism.' Leaders of the Senate panel don't see it the same way. 'The Committee is extremely disappointed by the CIAs excessive redactions to the report,' Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, and Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller, and West Virginia Democrat, said in a statement last week, without mentioning any specific CIA-proposed edits."


By Geraldine Sealey

Geraldine Sealey is senior news editor at Salon.com.

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