CIA director Panetta suggests Cheney wants attack

WASHINGTON — CIA Director Leon Panetta told The New Yorker magazine that former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration's approach to terrorism almost suggests "he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point."

Cheney has said in several interviews that he thinks Obama is making the United States less safe for ordering the closure of the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, halting enhanced interrogations of suspected terrorists and reversing other Bush administration initiatives he says helped to prevent attacks on the U.S.

"When you read behind it," Panetta said, "it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."

The magazine also reported in April that Panetta fired Mitchell Jessen & Associates, a firm run by two psychologists who helped introduce waterboarding and other harsh methods to the agency's interrogation techniques.

The Senate Armed Services Committee reported on the role played by James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in developing "countermeasures to defeat" the resistance of captured enemy detainees from whom intelligence was being sought.

Panetta said he supported at one time the creation of a "truth commission" to look into the subject, but Obama discouraged the idea.