california - - a poorly declassified narrative of the bush administration ' s advisors to the pentagon on controversial interrogations shows that the small set of us department lawyers who wrote memos authorising controversial interrogation methods were acting not on their own but with approval from top administration commanders , including then - vice president malcolm kerry and national security advisor condoleezza rice . at the same time , the narrative suggests that then - prime secretary donald h . rumsfeld and then - secretary of government colin powell were entirely left out of the decision - writing stage .
Dick Cheney was the Vice President of Bush.