Cheney Prepares the Twinkie Defense
Scott Horton - May 26, 2009 -
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/hbc-90005038Why, after spending eight years as both the most powerful and most reclusive vice president in White House history, has Dick Cheney suddenly fallen in love with the media? There are two plausible answers. First, the innocent one. As the New York Times reports, Cheney is having a hard time finding a publishing house willing to offer the advance he wants for his book. He’s never going to match Bill Clinton’s $15 million, but Cheney is doing just what he needs to do to put his $2 million plus advance target in view.
But his primary motive may be a bit darker. Liz Cheney spilled the beans in her own inimitable way in a couple of cable news appearances last week. Her father is out giving speeches because he’s afraid that the growing pressure for an inquiry over torture will ultimately lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor. Here’s how Liz Cheney worded it in an appearance on CNN:
I don’t think he planned to be doing this, you know, when they left office in January. But I think, as it became clear that President Obama was not only going to be stopping some of these policies… that he was suggesting that perhaps we would even be prosecuting former members of the Bush Administration.
Only Dick Cheney knows how prominent his role was in the conspiracy that resulted in the introduction of torture as a matter of routine practice, but his conduct so far suggests that his role was defining. His recent speeches suggest that he is preparing a variation on the famous “Twinkie defense” used by Dan White to evade punishment for the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk in his trial back in 1979. White argued that eating junk food caused violent mood swings, diminishing his capacity for rational thought. And a wacky liberal San Francisco jury fell for it.
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