Former Vice President Walter Mondale today accused the current vice president, Dick Cheney, of a wholesale assault on the Constitution, the balance of powers, and the system that evolved since World War II to coordinate intelligence and defense policy.

"They wrecked that system," Mondale said this morning at a University of Minnesota scholarly conference on the vice presidency.

This isn't some academic difference of opinion over the proper balance between branches of the federal government, Mondale said, during a question and answer session after his prepared remarks:

"I think this was a brutal, deliberate policy to ignore a wide range of written laws and constitutional principles and the legitimate powers of Congress…It's different than anything we've seen in American history and I think it ought to be seen not as two responsible positions, but ought to be seen as a dramatic challenge to American's system of government."

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In the case that led to the conviction of Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Mondale said Cheney functioned as "an ideological enforcer, silencing dissent, punishing critics, to sustain a flawed war policy based on cooked facts. It's all there. Read the case."

Mondale challenged an occasional theme that arises in interpreting the Cheney vice presidency, holding that because Cheney had no presidential ambitions of his own, he was more useful and faithful to the president. On the contrary, Mondale argued, this freedom from higher political ambition freed Cheney to disrespect the Congress, the American people and the law.

Mondale said: "The other morning, Mr. Cheney was on 'Good Morning America.' A reporter asked him: 'Well, polls now show that two thirds of the American people are opposed to this war. Shouldn't that mean something?' And [Cheney] said, 'So?'

"Y'know, maybe he didn't say it correctly or say it the way he meant it. And I don't say that public opinion should govern everything. But public opinion deserves respect and the president and the vice president ought to be worried about it.

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