Cheney: Terrorists still threaten U.S.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday the United States remains under threat of terrorist attack and warned against complacency about enemies who he said were weakened but still lethal.

Cheney, speaking at a fundraiser for Republican Sen. Jim Talent, defended progress in Iraq and the war on terror and painted Democrats as soft on national security.

"It seems more than obvious to say that our nation is still at risk of attack," Cheney told an enthusiastic crowd of more than 100 Republican supporters who paid between $250 and $3,500 a head for the buffet reception at a Springfield hotel.

"Yet as we get farther away from Sept. 11, some in Washington are yielding to the temptation to downplay the threat, to back away from the business at hand. That mind-set is dangerous," Cheney said.

Talent praised Cheney for defending the administration's warrantless surveillance program, which Talent said was based on "the president's inherent power to protect this nation by conducting surveillance where he deems it necessary of terrorist communications."

"I don't know about you, but if there's an international phone call and al-Qaida is on one end of the line, I want the president to have the power to engage in surveillance," Talent said to applause from the audience.

Cheney's visit comes a day before President Bush will travel to Jefferson City for a brief visit to discuss the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Bush's appearance will be the third high-level visit from the White House to Missouri in a week. Last week, first lady Laura Bush was in St. Louis to promote her Helping America's Youth Initiative and raise money for Talent's re-election campaign.

Talent, facing a challenge from Democratic State Auditor Claire McCaskill, plans to appear with the president Tuesday.

Cheney told Talent's supporters the senator represented conservative Missouri values in Washington, D.C.

"This is a good man. He has earned another term as United States senator," he said.

Cheney did not take questions, nor did he comment on a court filing by federal independent prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald last week that revealed details about the release of a prewar intelligence document.

In the filing, Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, told a grand jury that Bush authorized him, through Cheney, to leak information from a classified document that detailed intelligence agencies' conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.