In the smoke and chaos of 9/11, America was grieving. People were still calling missing loved ones. Firefighters were still pulling bodies from the rubble. The country was united in shock.

But inside the rooms where real power lived, something else was already happening.

This episode reveals how Iraq entered the conversation before the fires at the Pentagon were even out. Not because of intelligence. Not because of evidence. But because the same men who had spent a decade demanding regime change saw their moment opening. The “new Pearl Harbor” they once wrote about had arrived, and they wasted no time.

Episode 4A exposes how Dick Cheney built a parallel presidency—a shadow government operating inside the White House—and how that machine seized control in the days after the attacks. While President Bush was airborne and cut off from communication, Cheney sat in the bunker with the operators he had handpicked for this exact moment.

David Addington wrote the secret memos.
Scooter Libby controlled the information pipeline.
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz pushed Iraq before Afghanistan was even stabilized.
Douglas Feith built a backdoor intel shop to produce the answers the CIA refused to give.

This wasn’t analysis. It wasn’t caution. It wasn’t confusion.
It was intent.

You’ll hear how forged documents, fabricated defectors, and debunked rumors became “evidence” for war. How Curveball’s lies were elevated above seasoned analysts. How the Niger uranium papers survived every warning flag. How aluminum tubes that nuclear experts dismissed turned into “proof” of a nuclear program. And how Ahmed Chalabi fed the Pentagon a steady diet of stories tailor-made for the invasion he wanted.

Episode 4A shows that none of this was an intelligence failure. It was an intelligence operation.

By the end of 2002, the scaffolding was finished.
The legal restraints were ripped out.
The intel process was bent beyond recognition.
The narrative was baked.

All that remained was a trusted face to sell it.
That part begins in Episode 4B.

This podcast is produced by Bring Our Troops Home, a veteran-led effort to end endless war and restore the constitutional limits on when America fights. Our work centers on Defend the Guard legislation, which requires Congress to declare war before the National Guard deploys overseas. Not an authorization. A declaration. The standard the Constitution demands.

New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday. If this one hits you, share it. America cannot afford another generation that thinks Iraq was an accident.

Welcome to The Truth About Dick Cheney — The Road to Baghdad (Part 1).