Condoleezza Rice veterans, intelligence officials, military judges, human rights organizations, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and many senior politicians, including U.S. President Barack Obama. In 2003 Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft met with the CIA again and were briefed on the use of waterboarding and other methods including week-long sleep deprivation, forced nudity and the use of stress positions. The Senate report says that the Bush administration officials "reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy". The Senate report also "suggests Miss Rice played a more significant role than she acknowledged in written testimony
Dick Cheney the US Department of Commerce must disclose NEPDG documents, containing references to companies that had made agreements with the previous Iraqi government to extract Iraq's petroleum. Beginning in 2003, Cheney's staff opted not to file required reports with the National Archives and Records Administration office charged with assuring that the executive branch protects classified information, nor did it allow inspection of its record keeping. Cheney refused to release the documents, citing his executive privilege to deny congressional information requests. Media outlets such as "Time" magazine and CBS News questioned whether Cheney had created a "fourth branch of government" that was