Former vice president Dick Cheney says Americans are less safe under President Obama's new detainee policies.

As promised, the new administration overturned several of the former president's terrorism-fighting initiatives.

Obama will suspend military trials for suspected terrorists, close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, require CIA interrogation rules to follow U.S. Army field manual regulations, and eliminate waterboarding.

Cheney defended the Bush policies and said they were essential in preventing further attacks after 9/11.

"I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," Cheney said on CNN's State of the Union.

"I think that's a great success story. It was done legally. It was done in accordance with our constitutional practices and principles," he said.

"President Obama campaigned against it all across the country. And now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack."