Former Vice President Walter Mondale had harsh words for the current vice president Friday during the first panel of the conference honoring President Jimmy Carter.

“I think [Dick] Cheney has stepped way over the line,” said Mondale, during a panel session called, “The Carter Reforms of the Vice Presidency.”

While several members of the conference’s first two panels criticized the Carter administration, an equal number of jabs were aimed at the current administration.

“I think that Cheney has been at the center of cooking up all these farcical estimates of half risks, weapons of mass destruction, 9/11′s connection with Iraq, assuring us that nuclear weapons were shortly on their way, the missile system and on and on and on up until today,” Mondale said.

Mondale said that he had been told that Cheney had pressured agencies such as the CIA to “change the advice they were going to give…undermining and bending the information that the president should hear about.”

Aside from Mondale’s remarks, most of the panel’s discussion praised the Carter administration for strengthening the role of the vice presidency.

“The modern vice presidency began Jan. 1, 1977, when we took office,” said Stuart Eizenstat, former chief domestic affairs advisor to Carter.

Mondale was the first vice president to have an office in the West Wing and had much greater responsibilities and access to the president than previous presidents, Eizenstat said.

The conference, “The Carter Presidency: Lessons for the 21st Century,” is aimed at applying lessons from Carter’s administration to current challenges facing the nation.

John Maltese, conference director and a professor of political science, said Carter was “eager that it be a very balanced conference” with “people who were critical of his administration and people who worked for his administration.”

True to Carter’s wishes, several members of Friday’s second panel, “Reassesing the Carter Presidency: Seeking Lessons for the 21st Century,” pulled no punches in their criticism of his administration.

“I don’t think the Carter administration was a failed administration, but I don’t think it was an entirely successful administration,” said Leo Ribuffo, a professor of history at George Washington University.

Members praised Carter for his record on human rights and for negotiating peace between Egypt and Israel in the Camp David Accords.

But a couple of panelists criticized the president for his uneasy relationship with Congress and a lack of “political strategy.”

Mondale said he thought one of the biggest contributions of the Carter presidency was unifying the nation, since Carter “came to the office as a champion of civil rights.”

Mondale summed up the administration in a sentence that was repeated throughout the day: “We told the truth, we obeyed the law and we kept the peace.”