WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – CIA director Leon Panetta  says it’s almost as if former vice president Dick Cheney would  like to see another attack on the United States to prove he is  right in criticizing President Barack Obama for abandoning the  “harsh interrogation” of terrorism suspects.

“I think he smells some blood in the water on the national  security issue,” Panetta said in an interview published in The  New Yorker magazine’s June 22 issue.

“It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read  behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country  would be attacked again, in order to make his point.”