On NPR yesterday, the former chief of staff to the secretary of state said that he had uncovered a "visible audit trail" tracing the practice of prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers directly back to Vice President Cheney’s office.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, told National Public Radio he had traced a trail of memos and directives authorizing questionable detention practices up through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s office directly to Cheney’s staff.
"There was a visible audit trail from the vice president’s office through the secretary of defense, down to the commanders in the field," authorizing practices that led to the abuse of detainees, Wilkerson said. [...]
Washington Post story
Wilkerson also told National Public Radio that Cheney’s office ran an "alternate national security staff" that spied on and undermined the president's formal National Security Council.
He said National Security Council staff stopped sending e-mails when they found out Cheney’s staff members were reading their messages.