"To Catch a Cheney"

by: Jeff Cohen, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

I have a plan to get NBC out of last place in the ratings. I'm promising blockbuster audience and international buzz. As a once disgruntled ex-employee, I now just want to be positive and help NBC, which needs all the free advice it can get.

Here's my idea: A series of NBC News prime-time specials featuring spectacular ambushes of big-time criminals lured into what they expect to be pleasurable surroundings. But, with hidden cameras whirring, the startled villain is dramatically confronted with the evidence of his massive crimes as millions of viewers look on in scorn and righteous amusement.

If it sounds familiar, it's because NBC News has scored huge ratings with its "To Catch a Predator" sleaze-fest - in which potential sex offenders by the bushel were lured via the Internet to what they thought would be sex with kids and instead got caught by NBC cameras and cops in hiding.

But my proposal doesn't involve sex abusers. I'm talking about men who've launched illegal war, mass murder, torture, dictatorship. And they're household names.

[. . . ]

To lure Dick Cheney from his undisclosed location, NBC's "To Catch a War Criminal" producers could pretend to be booking "Meet the Press." Cheney has been as comfy on that show as Alec Baldwin on "Saturday Night Live." It came out under oath in the Scooter Libby trial that Vice President Cheney's office viewed "Meet the Press" as "our best format," a program in which Cheney could "control the message." Putting him on that show, testified his communications chief, "was a tactic we used often."

It was on "Meet the Press" after 9/11 that Cheney warned: "We have to work the dark side, if you will. We're going to spend time in the shadows."

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