This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," April 20, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And we are 91 days into the most radical left-wing administration in a generation, but those are not my words, that is the opinion of the former Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, and tonight in an exclusive interview, Mr. Cheney, he pulls no punches and openly talks about his concerns for this country and the direction that this administration is taking us all.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HANNITY: We often hear from former President Carter, former President Clinton. We often hear from Vice President Gore, but it seemed that every time since you've left office that you speak out, people are critical that you still have opinions.

Does that surprise you?

RICHARD CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: No, I don't — after all this time, I'm not surprised by much of anything in this business. Yes. No, I've done a couple of interviews. This is the third one, I guess. I'm often asked my views on administration policy, and I'm happy to give them.

I think there is — it's important not to personally attack the new president, I've never done that, but I do think they are addressing big issues, and those positions they take should not go unanswered. I think it's important that we respond to them. We've seen a lot of decisions made, especially in this administration with respect to the War on Terror, which is no longer a War on Terror, it's an overseas contingency operation.

This whole question of detainees is extraordinarily important. The terrorist surveillance program is important. We were challenged in very fundamental ways after 9/11. The nation was threatened, we lost 3,000 people that day.

The biggest task we had as an administration was to make certain that that never happened again, and do everything we could to prevent those kinds of attacks. We put in place certain policies to do that.

The Obama administration campaigned against those policies. And they're now in the process of dismantling some of them. And I think it's perfectly appropriate for those of us who have a different point of view that we have the opportunity to express it, and that the American people have the opportunity to evaluate whether or not the Obama administration is doing the right thing with respect to some of these important challenges.

HANNITY: Well, we're going to maybe go through these one by one and get into some great specificity. But it was interesting because after the last interview that you gave, you know, Joe Biden came out almost immediately. It seemed like he was the point man to criticize you and at one point had even referred to you as the most dangerous vice president in American history.

Did that concern you in any way? Or do you have any response or...

CHENEY: No. I — it doesn't concern me. I mean, Joe Biden has been saying a lot. He has been a senator for, what, 30-some years. He's never been one who couldn't come up with a comment.

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY: He's known for that.

CHENEY: Joe has got the job. And I wish him well. I hope he's able to prosper and make a contribution. So I'm — you know, I've been criticized by experts, Sean, I don't worry a lot about it.

HANNITY: About criticism. Well, I did notice that the administration — the outgoing administration, President Bush made great outreach to the incoming administration, and one thing I couldn't find or didn't — wasn't able to read anywhere, did Joe Biden ever in any way reach out to you and ask any questions about the job of being VP in spite of maybe the public posturing?

CHENEY: You know, we had a — we had one session where he and his wife came to the house and basically we talked about the house. We showed him the vice president's residence and so forth.

And I gave him at that point some administrative information basically about how many slots I had had, how big the budget was, how much of it came from the Congress through the Senate, how much of it came from the executive branch and so forth. But that was it. We never talked policy.

He suggested he might want to call me before January 20, I said I'd be happy to talk to him. But I think they got busy on their side and so we've never talked much about policy.