From Sunday’s Fox News interview:

Calling it a “terrible decision” that undermines national security and devastates CIA morale, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed the Obama administration’s probe of aggressive interrogation of terrorists.
“It’s an outrageous political act that will do great damage, long-term, to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions, without having to worry about what the next administration is going to say,” Cheney told “FOX News Sunday” in a no-holds-barred interview.
In blunt, unsparing language, Cheney accused President Obama of setting a “terrible precedent” by allowing an “intensely partisan, politicized look back at the prior administration.”
He said the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a probe into alleged abuse of prisoners under the prior administration “offends the hell out of me,” as he seemed to question Obama’s fitness as commander-in-chief.
“I have serious doubts about his policies,” Cheney told FOX News’ Chris Wallace in Jackson Hole, Wyo. “Serious doubts, especially, about the extent to which he understands and is prepared to do what needs to be done to defend the nation.”
As evidence, Cheney pointed to Obama’s decision last week to assert White House control over a newly formed unit that will interrogate terrorists. The new arrangement shifts control of such interrogations away from the CIA and toward the FBI, although oversight will be exercised by the National Security Council, which is located in the White House and reports directly to the president.
Administration officials are vague about which agency will retain ultimate authority. Obama spokesman Bill Burton initially said the new unit “will report to the director of the FBI,” although the Justice Department, which encompasses the FBI, insisted the unit is “not a sub-unit of the FBI or the Justice Department.”
Burton explained: “Just like other interagency processes, if there are disagreements, the different agencies are able to come together and make a decision.”
Cheney ridiculed the new unit, which will be known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG).
“It’s not even clear who’s responsible,” he marveled. “The Justice Department is, then they claim they aren’t. The FBI is responsible, and they claim they aren’t. It’s some kind of interagency process by which they’re going to be responsible for interrogating high-value detainees.
“If we had tried to do that back in the aftermath of 9/11, when we captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, we’d have gotten no place,” he said.
Cheney predicted the new unit will be incapable of effectively interrogating “people that may have knowledge about imminent attacks.”
“They’re going to have to have meetings and decide who gets to ask what question and who’s going to Mirandize the witness,” he said. “I think it’s silly. It makes no sense. It doesn’t appear to be a serious move in terms of being able to deal with the nation’s security.”
Cheney warned that curtailing the CIA’s role in interrogations is a grave mistake.
“I think it’s a direct slap at the CIA. I don’t think it will work,” he said. “It moves very much in the direction of going back to the old way of looking at these terrorist attacks — that these are law enforcement problems, that this isn’t a strategic threat to the United States.”
But Cheney reserved his strongest criticism for Holder’s decision Monday to appoint a prosecutor and open a criminal investigation into alleged abuses by CIA agents who interrogated terrorists during the administration of former President George W. Bush. The former vice president accused Obama of breaking a promise not to prosecute the agents.
“We had the president of the United States, President Obama, tell us a few months ago there wouldn’t be any investigation like this, that there would not be any look back at CIA personnel who were carrying out the policies of the prior administration,” Cheney said. “Now they get a little heat from the left wing of the Democratic Party, and they’re reversing course on that.”

Liz Cheney vs. Sam Donaldson (during which Ms. Cheney cites Andy McCarthy on NRO).