Condoleezza Rice blasts Cheney's "attack on my integrity"
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she does not "appreciate" the attack on her integrity implicit in former Vice President Dick Cheney's comments about her in his forthcoming book.
The book, which has already ruffled the feathers of a number of former Bush administration officials, alleges that Rice acted with "naïveté in the efforts to forge a nuclear weapons agreement with North Korea," according to a report by the New York Times.
Rice disputed that assessment in an interview with Reuters.
"I kept the president fully and completely informed about every in and out of the negotiations with the North Koreans," she said. "You can talk about policy differences without suggesting that your colleague somehow misled the president."
"You know, I don't appreciate the attack on my integrity that that implies," she added.
Rice is not the only former Bush official to take issue with the book's claims.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a Sunday appearance on "Face the Nation" that Cheney took "cheap shots" in the memoir, and that he was taking his aggressive promotional techniques "a bit too far."
"My head isn't exploding, I haven't noticed any other heads exploding in Washington, D.C.," Powell pointed out. "From what I've read in the newspapers and seen on television it's essentially a rehash of events of seven or eight years ago."
