The World Turns

They were the two words that came to signify much of the decade—and the debate about the decade—that followed.

The “dark side” was where former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney famously described we were headed after the September 11, 2001, attacks jolted the world. “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will,” Cheney mused to host Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press. “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”

The interview came five days after the attacks, as the gruesome wreckage of New York’s World Trade Center smouldered and Pentagon officials mapped out the...