The Cheney Factor
How the scars of public life shaped the vice president's unyielding view of executive power
To that end, Cheney has been a hard-liner on national security and executive privilege. In 1987, as a member of Congress from Wyoming with a safe Republican seat, his view was that no matter what happened in the congressional investigation of the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages scandal in the Reagan administration, it was important for Congress not to harm the presidency. He opposed limiting the institution's powers to make war, conduct foreign policy, and keep secrets.
He often took a tough stance as defense secretary during the George H.W. Bush administration, from 1989 to 1993, gaining the reputation as an unrepentant cold warrior. But he couldn't push too far because his boss and other senior officials, including Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, wouldn't go along. Says a longtime Cheney colleague who served with him in the first Bush administration: "He always had an ideological side, but the power was not there, so he had to bend to get things done. His attitudes are the same as they were before he became vice president, but now he has power and doesn't have to bend to the will of others."
Cheney was a constant defender of the military during the Persian Gulf War. When American bombs hit what Iraqis said was a "baby milk factory," Cheney took a typically hard line. He said the administration shouldn't accept all the blame for civilian casualties there because it was Saddam Hussein's fault that the noncombatants were placed in harm's way.
Swatting gnats. At the Pentagon after the end of the Cold War, Cheney supervised reductions in the Defense Department budget, including cuts in troop strength, bases, and weapons systems. Faced with constant opposition from Capitol Hill, he derided lawmakers as "a bunch of annoying gnats," a friend recalls. Business leaders, Cheney believed, were far more pragmatic with their no-nonsense focus on the bottom line, deepening his belief in privatization of some government operations. Cheney became a "principal player" in expanding the "military-industrial-congressional complex," according to Wilkerson, the former State Department official. One example: outsourcing elements of the Iraq occupation with contracts to Halliburton, the Houston-based oil services and construction company where Cheney was chief executive from 1995 to 2000.
His tenure at Halliburton was considered modestly successful, despite a merger he oversaw with Dresser Industries that cost Halliburton hundreds of millions of dollars because of huge asbestos liabilities (Cheney himself made more than $40 million in his five years there). A deft administrator and a decisive leader, Cheney came to see at Halliburton how much easier it is to conduct business in secret than in the public eye. "There's a fair amount of secrecy in the business, just to keep competitors from getting an edge on you," says Allen Mesch, an energy consultant in Texas. "But that kind of thing can be a style thing with him--the closed-door meeting. And the higher up you go in a company, the more paranoid you become about real and perceived threats."
"Cheney was not directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the company," adds Mesch, who is president of PetroStrategies Inc. "He was not a chief strategist, which is often played by someone in his position. His role was more of a door opener, leveraging his variety of international contacts. But that shouldn't be counted as a negative."
advertisement
