The Cheney Factor
How the scars of public life shaped the vice president's unyielding view of executive power
Cheney's crucible as vice president, of course, was 9/11. He was in Washington looking forward to a busy day at the White House while Bush was giving a talk at an elementary school in Florida. Minutes after the attacks, Cheney found himself in charge of Washington's response to the crisis. Cheney was hustled out of his office--lifted at the elbows by his Secret Service bodyguards and deposited in the Presidential Emergency Operating Center in the White House basement. Coordinating with his boss by secure phones and videoconferences, Cheney was unflappable, aides say, but the incident seared him. It was Cheney who recommended to Bush that he not return to Washington immediately because his safety couldn't be guaranteed. And it was Cheney who persuaded Bush to authorize Air Force pilots to intercept and, if necessary, destroy any commercial jetliners that seemed headed for another strike. Cheney describes this as "the toughest decision" he and Bush made that day. "He had a very conservative reaction to 9/11," says a Cheney associate. "He put the wagons in a circle and started shooting."
"Defeat, smash, and kill." Another confidant says Cheney concluded that America's policy from then on must be to "go out and defeat, smash, and kill the terrorists." Whether it's spying on terrorism suspects without a warrant, invading Afghanistan, occupying Iraq, or allowing American operatives to detain suspected terrorists, Cheney has been willing to do whatever it takes to prevent another 9/11. He is extremely proud that the administration has been successful so far. "It's not an accident that we haven't been hit in four years," he declares.
His critics say he has become a rigid ideologue, attempting to push democracy in the Middle East far beyond what is realistic for a region traditionally governed by autocrats. Some Democrats have accused Cheney and Bush of misleading the country about the necessity of war with Iraq, which Cheney denies. But he has made his share of blunders. He suggested, wrongly, that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq; he blames the mistake on intelligence failures. He predicted that American soldiers would be greeted as "liberators," not regularly bombed in the streets of Baghdad. Last spring, he said the insurgency was in its "last throes," further damaging his credibility.
Yet Cheney is undeterred in trying to work his will, mostly in private meetings with the president or through aides and allies in the executive branch who operate on his behalf. One of the consequences of the indictment and resignation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby as Cheney's chief of staff in the Valerie Plame/CIA leak case has been to deprive Cheney of a powerful and energetic advocate within the government. Libby was a savvy infighter who represented his boss at many senior-level meetings and aggressively promoted his agenda.
Mixed bag. Inside the White House, Cheney doesn't win every fight. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seems to have more influence than her predecessor, Colin Powell, in pushing for international coalitions and departing from Cheney's first-term preference for a more unilateral approach to foreign-policy and security issues. The administration, for example, is working with China to curb the North Korean nuclear threat and with Europe to limit the nuclear threat from Iran (story, Page 27).
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