The Dark Side of Former Vice President Dick Cheney
Halliburton Settlement Too Little, Avoids Answering Question of Cheney’s Responsibility for Accounting Irregularities
This was the screaming August 3, 2004 headline from the watchdog group Public Citizen.
After a lengthy investigation the SEC ordered Halliburton to pay a rather piddly $7.5 Million which pales in comparison to the estimated $120 million by which accounting tricks boosted Halliburton’s profits during Cheney’s stewardship. Cheney was Halliburton’s CEO from 1995 to 2000.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/halliburton-to-pay-sec-75m/
https://www.citizen.org/news/halliburton-settlement-too-little-avoids-answering-question-of-cheneys-responsibility-for-accounting-irregularities/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/05/dick-cheney-iraq-and-the-making-of-halliburton/
Cheney’s record as CEO of Halliburton illuminated a dark side that later would shade his legacy as Vice President from 2001 – 2009.
Following 9/11, Cheney was instrumental in providing a primary justification for a renewed war against Iraq. Cheney helped shape Bush’s approach to the “war on terror,” making numerous public statements alleging Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction which, was proven false after the conflict ended. In order to understand some of the unsettling facets associated with 9/11 let’s begin with a Washington-based think tank.
The New Pearl Harbor
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a think tank based in Washington DC staffed by individuals whose united goal was to “promote American global leadership.” Its ideology was summarized in a major position paper, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, in 2000. Here is a key sentence:
The process of transformation even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130817122719/http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf Page 51
Of the twenty-five people who signed PNAC’s founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz (as Deputy Sec. Of Defense).
https://alchetron.com/Project-for-the-New-American-Century
Four Star General and top NATO commander Wesley Clark described how under the cover of 9/11Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz launched what he called “a policy coup.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sALa-E56Zms&t=9121s 2:26:01 Minutes
“[After 9/11] we had a policy coup in this country … some hard-nosed people took over the direction of American policy and they never bothered to inform the rest of us. …
“This country was taken over by a group of people with a policy coup: Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld and you could name a half-dozen other collaborators from the Project for a New American Century. They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East to turn it upside down.
“Was there a national dialogue on this? Did senators and congressmen stand up and denounce this plan? Was there a full-fledged American debate on it? Absolutely not!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcWs4TFSjrY General Clark on the Iraq invasion (3 Minutes long)
Here is another piece of the Cheney conundrum. Internationally acclaimed journalist Seymour Hersh has trail-blazed a stellar career. In 1969, he exposed the My Lai massacre, when between 200 and 500 South Vietnamese civilians were murdered by U.S. soldiers, and its cover-up.
Hersh’s first book (1968), Chemical and Biological Warfare: America’s Hidden Arsenal dealt with the stockpiling of deadly chemical and biological weapons. That topic was highlighted that same year by the Dugway sheep incident, in which an aerial test of VX nerve agent at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah inadvertently killed more than 6,000 sheep owned by local ranchers.
That event and Hersh’s reporting led to public hearings and international pressure, contributing to President Nixon’s decision to end – at least on paper – the U.S. biological weapons program in 1969.
Hersh’s boldest contribution to investigative journalism may well be when he exposed the existence of a Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense.
https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2009/03/investigative-reporter-seymour-hersh-describes-executive-assassination-ring/ (Emphasis added.)
On June 4, 2010 Max Fisher wrote in The Atlantic that,
“Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, confirmed that Vice President Dick Cheney would personally give orders to JSOC commanders, circumventing many levels of the chain of command.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20110513173621/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/the-end-of-dick-cheneys-kill-squads/57707/
Seymour Hersh went on to describe JSOC as an executive assassination squad:
“Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially …
“Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.”
https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2009/03/investigative-reporter-seymour-hersh-describes-executive-assassination-ring/
Let us see where things stand. It is well established that Cheney pushed for a war with Iraq under the false pretense that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction only to be discredited when no such weapons were found. Now we learn that Cheney single-handedly was running a veritable assassination ring!
At this point it may be instructive to recall the words of Raymond L. McGovern – Former Chairman, National Intelligence Estimates, CIA, responsible for preparing the President’ Daily Brief for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
“I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 report is a joke. … [T]his is the bottom line for me, just as Hitler in 1933 cynically exploited the burning of the parliament building, the Reichstag, this is exactly what our President did in exploiting 9/11. The cynical way in which he played on our trauma, used it to justify attacking, making a war of aggression on a country [Iraq] that he knew had nothing to do with 9/11.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20061130033956/http://patriotsquestion911.com/
These views are backed up by Col. Robert Bowman, U.S. Air Force Director of Advanced Space Programs
Development with over 100 combat missions. PhD in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Cal Tech.
“A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible. … There’s a second group of facts having to do with the cover up. … I think the case is pretty clear that it’s highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney.” https://web.archive.org/web/20061130033956/http://patriotsquestion911.com/
Then there is Former Army Intelligence officer Capt. Eric H. May, who is convinced and went on record that 9/11 was an “Active execution of a plot by rogue elements of government, starting with the White House itself…”
https://web.archive.org/web/20061130033956/http://patriotsquestion911.com/
The intrigue continues.
Dr. Steve Pieczenik trained in Psychiatry at Harvard and has both an M.D. from Cornell University Medical College and a Ph.D. in International Relations from MIT served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and/or Senior Policy Planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker. https://web.archive.org/web/20080709033107/http://www.stevepieczenik.com/bio.htm
Pieczenik has publicly declared that a general on the staff of Paul Wolfowitz confided to him that 9/11 was a false flag operation and that he will swear under penalty of perjury in federal court.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynSGT-9zrHs
Herein lies a key question: Did Cheney take advantage of the turmoil associated with 9/11 to launch a war with Iraq as advocated by the Project for the New American Century, even going so far as to set up his own assassination squad?
– Mark Adams National Security Commentator