NEW YORK, Dec 16: US Vice-President Dick Cheney has defended Bush administration’s anti-terror policies, including the use of waterboarding, and said the prison at Guantanamo Bay should remain open as long as there’s a war on terror.

In his first television interview since the November election, Mr Cheney held fast to his views on coercing information out of alleged terrorists, saying waterboarding was an appropriate means of getting information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.

Cheney opposed those who say the Bush has overstepped its bounds on torture, saying national intelligence is an art, not a science.

“On the question of so-called torture, we don’t do torture,” Mr Cheney told ABC News. “We never have. It’s not something that this administration subscribes to.

“I think those who allege that we’ve been involved in torture, or that somehow we violated the Constitution or laws with the terrorist surveillance programme, simply don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Mr Cheney was also asked whether he authorised the tactics used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

“I was aware of the programme, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do,” Mr Cheney said. “And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

“There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about Al Qaeda came from that one source,” he added.

“So, it’s been a remarkably successful effort. I think the results speak for themselves.”

The outgoing vice-president also disputed former Bush adviser Karl Rove’s recent comments about the decision to go to war in Iraq.

While discussing Bush’s legacy earlier this month, Mr Rove said he did not believe the administration would have gone to war had intelligence revealed Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

“I disagree with that,” Mr Cheney said. “As I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq, what they got wrong was that there weren’t any stockpiles.”

Mr Cheney said the prison at Guantanamo Bay could be responsibly shut down only after an end to the war on terror. Asked when that might be, he added: “Well, nobody knows. Nobody can specify that.”

He warned that prisoners

released from Guantanamo could prove dangerous to the United States, adding that the problem of what to do with released prisoners had not yet been solved.