Cheney admits he's been working on Domestic Spying for the past 30 years

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-19-2006/0004322834&EDATE=

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THE VICE PRESIDENT: I've been directly involved on behalf of the
President negotiating with members of both the House and the Senate in the
intelligence committees in setting up the new arrangements. We negotiated an
arrangement whereby there'll be subcommittees in both the House and the Senate
of the intelligence committees that a larger number of members -- for example,
seven members now in the Senate instead of just the two that have been briefed
previously off the committee -- will be fully briefed into the program. And
we've already had that briefing. Shortly, we'll have a similar briefing for
the House.


We are working with them to give them broad oversight with respect to
this program. But it's a very important program. It is totally in compliance
with the laws and constitution of the United States. It has been a major

success in preventing attacks against the United States, and it needs to be
preserved and protected.


Now, the intelligence area is one of the areas the President asked me to
work on when I first came onboard, and I've had an interest in this subject
going back 30 years to my days in the Ford administration. So it's an
appropriate one for me to work on. But it also means going out publicly and
defending it. A lot of people would perhaps run for the hills or avoid
controversy. And obviously, I don't feel that way.

At the height of the resistance to the war, Brown & Root became a target of protesters, and soldiers in Vietnam derided it as Burn & Loot.

Around this time, in 1968, Dick Cheney arrived in Washington. He was a political-science graduate student who had won a congressional fellowship with Bill Steiger, a Republican from his home state of Wyoming. One of Cheney’s first assignments was to visit college campuses where antiwar protests were disrupting classes, and quietly assess the scene. Steiger was part of a group of congressmen who were considering ways to cut off federal funding to campuses where violent protests had broken out. It was an early lesson in the strategic use of government cutbacks.