In an appearance on Meet the Press on September 16, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said: “the U.S. military might ‘have to work…sort of the dark side’ and ‘[a] lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using…methods that are available to our intelligence agencies…to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.’ When pressed by the interviewer [Tim Russert] concerning human rights restrictions placed on intelligence gathering and use of ‘unsavory characters,’ Cheney responded that ‘[y]ou need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if…you’re going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned. …It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena.’ “
– Jordan J. Paust, Beyond the Law, Page 12