Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson said over the weekend that former Vice President Dick Cheney fears being tried as a war criminal.

Before serving as Powell’s chief of staff while Powell was Secretary of State, [Col. Lawrence] Wilkerson worked in the first Bush administration as a special assistant to Powell, who was then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Cheney was serving as Secretary of Defense. He’s known Cheney for decades, but says now, “I simply don’t recognize Mr. Cheney anymore” and calling him a “very vindictive person.”

“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 told ABC News, explaining that Cheney may have “angst” because of receiving deferments instead of serving in the Vietnam War like Wilkerson and others in the administration.