VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY said yesterday that suggestions the former Iraqi regime did not have a relationship with al Qaeda are “not accurate,” and said he would like to see the U.S. government declassify some of the intelligence that supports Bush administration claims about an Iraq-al Qaeda connection.
“I think we should declassify as much as we can,” Cheney said in a wide-ranging, 45 minute interview in the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington. Cheney said the desire to make public some of the intelligence about Iraq and al Qaeda must be balanced against the need to protect sources and methods. “There is always the temptation to respond to the pressures of the moment by putting as much stuff out there as possible. But you don’t want to do so in a way that is damaging to our capacity to collect information in the future.” The call for declassification of material relating to the Iraq-al Qaeda connection has come from a variety of sources, including this magazine and the New York Times editorial page.
