EXCLUSIVE: Cheney defends war on terror's morality

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By Jon Ward

• Though leaving government for the fourth time in his career, Mr. Cheney, 67, said, "I'm not at the stage, of a mind, to retire," but added that he hadn't decided what to do next.

• He identified James Madison as his favorite Founding Father, and noted that his wife, Lynne, had just signed a contract to write a biography about the fourth president. "I think Madison's an intriguing figure who had an enormous impact and doesn't get the kind of attention that some of the others do," said the vice president, who has a reputation of wielding power behind the scenes without calling attention to himself. "Not a very flashy guy -- small man, but huge impact."

On one of the most controversial issues of the Bush presidency, Mr. Cheney squarely addressed the question of whether morality, and not simply pragmatism, was considered when deciding how far to go in pressuring suspected terrorists to divulge coveted intelligence.

"In my mind, the foremost obligation we had from a moral or an ethical standpoint was to the oath of office we took when we were sworn in, on January 20 of 2001, to protect and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. And that's what we've done," he said.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 people in New York, suburban Washington and Pennsylvania, Mr. Cheney said that he, the president and others "made the judgment ... that wasn't going to happen again on our watch."

"And I feel very good about what we did. I think it was the right thing to do. If I was faced with those circumstances again I'd do exactly the same thing," Mr. Cheney said.

"Was it torture? I don't believe it was torture," the vice president said. "We spent a great deal of time and effort getting legal advice, legal opinion out of the [Justice Department's] office of legal counsel.

"I thought the legal opinions that were rendered were sound. I thought the techniques were reasonable in terms of what [the CIA was] asking to be able to do. And I think it produced the desired result. I think it's directly responsible for the fact that we've been able to avoid or defeat further attacks against the homeland for 7 1/2 years."

He said only 33 high-value detainees in the war on terror were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques to extract information that the government lacked about al Qaeda's operational capability and future attack plans, and only three were "waterboarded," a technique that simulates drowning. He identified the three subjected to waterboarding as Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and al Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

"I think it would have been unethical or immoral for us not to do everything we could in order to protect the nation against further attacks like what happened on 9/11," Mr. Cheney said.