Friday, March 1, 2013 - 12:15 PM

In an upcoming documentary about the life and legacy of Dick Cheney previewed by Foreign Policy, the former vice president lashes out at former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Brooding over one issue specifically, Cheney criticizes his former colleague for overriding his recommendation to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007.
"I
thought [destroying the reactor] would reassert the kind of authority and
influence we had back in '03 when we took down Saddam Hussein and eliminated
Iraq as a potential source of WMD," Cheney says in the film, The World
According to Dick Cheney. "Condi was on the wrong side of all those issues so we had
significant issues."
Back in
2007, the Bush administration received intelligence that Syria was secretly
building a nuclear reactor with the help of North Korea. Ultimately, the White House declined to
hit the facility to the dismay of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In the
film, Cheney criticizes Rice for advocating against a unilateral strike.
"Condi
recommended taking it to the United Nations. I strongly recommended that we
ought to take [the reactor] out," he said.
When reached
for comment, Rice told FP that refusing to bomb the reactor was the right
decision at that point in time. "The situation turned out exactly how it should
have," she said.
In an e-mail exchange, Rice's chief
of staff, Georgia Godfrey, added that U.S. intelligence officials were not 100 percent
certain the Syrians were housing a nuclear reactor, and that the Israeli
government dealt with the threat anyway. (In 2011, a U.N. investigation found that Syria "very likely"
was working on a nuclear reactor prior to the Israeli bombing of the facility as part of its so-called Operation Orchard in September 2007.)
Regardless,
Cheney appears on camera saying the United States had an opportunity to communicate an
important message, and Rice got in the way. "There are certain bright lines out
there and you do not cross them and one of those bright lines is you do not
provide nuclear technology to terror-sponsoring states," he says. "You don't
want Syria to have that kind of capability that they might be able to pass on
to Hamas or Hezbollah or al Qaeda."
This is the
second time Cheney has singled out Rice, a rumored 2016
presidential candidate, for criticism since leaving office. In his
2011 memoir In My Times, Cheney called the
former diplomat "naive" for her attempts to negotiate with North Korea and said
she once "tearfully admitted" her mistakes to him in his office. At the time, Rice fired back, saying, "I would
never - I don't remember coming to the vice president tearfully about anything
in the entire eight years that I knew him."
The film, directed by R.J. Cutler
of The War Room and The September Issue acclaim, debuts on Showtime March 15.
Passport, FP’s flagship blog, brings you news and hidden angles on the biggest stories of the day, as well as insights and under-the-radar gems from around the world.
Read More