In the News The Veep Sticks to His Guns

December 22, 2008

“They began to spy on Americans in an unprecedented way, in a way that they never had done before.”
James Risen, New York Times reporter, on Bush Administration post-9/11 intelligence-gathering

Regrets? Second thoughts? Not from Vice President Cheney, who took to the airwaves on Sunday to defend the Bush Administration's expansion of presidential power on matters of national security. The vice president's unapologetic views on the subject will come as no surprise to anyone who saw Cheney's Law on FRONTLINE last year. In that program, and a series of others on the Bush years, producer Mike Kirk and his colleagues explored the difficult constitutional questions that arose, and the fierce internal battles that ensued, when the president and his v.p. began to push the envelope on executive authority after 9/11.

For an in-depth look at the story, visit the Cheney's Law webpage, where you can see the hour broadcast in its entirety, and dip into the extensive background interviews conducted with key observers and participants. These latter are organized by theme; our staff picks: Cheney's View of the World, and Presidential Power -- The Bush Legacy.

Finally, to whet your appetite, we've put a brief excerpt from the film on this page; it is the memorable story of the now famous hospital room confrontation that pitted the president's men against their own Department of Justice.