Cheney Chooses Chief Propagator of False Iraq-9/11 Link To Be Official Biographer

Think Progress

Vice President Cheney — “the man running the country” — is now working on an official biography.

But don’t hold out any hope that the biography will offer any revealing insight into “Dick Cheney’s dark, secretive mind-set.” The author of the book, according to U.S. News, will be Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes:

We hear that the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes is hot on the case and plans to publish a bio titled, naturally enough, Cheney as early as next spring. “I’m not a historian,” Hayes fesses up.

No, Hayes is not a historian. What are his qualifications? He’s a journalist who has cultivated close ties within the White House and has become the go-to source for insiders seeking to peddle false claims on Iraq. Here are some highlights of Hayes’ record:

1. This January, Cheney was asked by then-Fox News radio host Tony Snow, “Were there links to — between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?” Cheney answered, “Well, I think Steve Hayes has done an effective job in his article of laying out a lot of those connections.” Hayes wrote an article entitled “Dick Cheney Was Right” about the Vice President’s effort to connect Saddam to 9/11. But even President Bush said most recently that Iraq had “nothing” to do with 9/11.

2. In 2003, Hayes declared “case closed” in an article purporting to show the links between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cheney recommeneded it to the Rocky Mountain news as the premier source of information on the issue. (”[Y]ou ought to go look is an article that Stephen Hayes did in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago…That’s your best source of information.”) Hayes relied on a classified Defense Department memo produced by Douglas Feith. The Defense Department shot down Hayes’ article, stating the Feith memo was “not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.”

Each and every one of Hayes’ attempts to link Iraq to 9/11 have been thoroughly discredited, but he continues to push the argument. It’s quite fitting that Cheney chose him to be his official biographer.

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