Powell Aide: Cheney Fears War Crime Trial

It doesn't look as if the Colin Powell-Dick Cheney feud is going to end any time soon. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's longtime chief of staff, says that Cheney—whose new memoir is sharply critical of Powell—"fears being tried as a war criminal" and "was president for all practical purposes for the first term of the Bush administration." Wilkerson describes Cheney as a "very vindictive person" who misled Powell ahead of the war in Iraq.

With the memoir, "I think he's just trying to, one, assert himself so he's not in some subsequent time period tried for war crimes and, second, so that he somehow vindicates himself because he feels like he needs vindication. That in itself tells you something about him," Wilkerson tells ABC News. Cheney, he says, may have angst because he received deferments instead of serving in Vietnam. Powell himself accuses Cheney of taking "cheap shots" in the memoir. (More Dick Cheney stories.)