The self-appointed Vice President, who still likes to insist Saddam had WMD and worked with Al Qaeda, told Dan Quayle, when approached with Dan's description of what the usual powerless function of the office had been, that he, Dick, had "a different understanding with the president." Indeed.
Cheney preferred, and Bush approved, a mandate that gave him access to "every table and every meeting," making his voice heard in "whatever area the vice president feels he wants to be active in."[...]
"Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him, has approached the levers of power obliquely, skirting orderly lines of debate he once enforced as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford. He has battled a bureaucracy he saw as hostile, using intimate knowledge of its terrain. He has empowered aides to fight above their rank, taking on roles reserved in other times for a White House counsel or national security adviser. And he has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did not assert.
Over the past six years, Cheney has shaped his times as no vice president has before.
[...]
In roles that have gone largely undetected, Cheney has served as gatekeeper for Supreme Court nominees, referee of Cabinet turf disputes, arbiter of budget appeals, editor of tax proposals and regulator in chief of water flows in his native West.
Cheney has also invented a new category for documents, "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI," to protect unclassified information he wants to keep secret. He won't disclose the number or names of his staff, doesn't publish a public calendar, and has even ordered Secret Service to destroy visitor logs to his office. As we heard recently in the context of the missing emails, Cheney has designated his office as neither part of the executive or legislative branches, and therefore exempt from the rules governing either. He is an office of government unto himself. And a very powerful one at that.
On September 11, it was Cheney who took command while Bush was dawdling at a Florida school and then wasting time in the air circling around until he got an all clear to land, after Cheney had taken care of the planning for the country's next moves.Cheney gave (unannounced) orders to rout all communication with the NSA (Condi Rice at the time) through his office first. Amazingly enough, those orders were carried out. Not so amazingly, his office wrote up statements for then WH counsel Alberto Gonzales to sign as his own.
It was Cheney's office that drew up the illegal surveillance program that would eventually earn the White House trouble with the courts.
On Oct. 25, 2001, the chairmen and ranking minority members of the intelligence committees were summoned to the White House for their first briefing on the eavesdropping and were told that it was one of the government's most closely compartmented secrets. Under Presidents George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton, officials said, a conversation of that gravity would involve the commander in chief. But when the four lawmakers arrived in the West Wing lobby, an aide led them through the door on the right, away from the Oval Office."We met in the vice president's office," recalled former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.). Bush had told Graham already, when the senator assumed the intelligence panel chairmanship, that "the vice president should be your point of contact in the White House." Cheney, the president said, "has the portfolio for intelligence activities."
It was Cheney who drew up the orders for treatment of enemy combatants in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, simply saying they don't apply to terrorists, much as he says rules of conduct that cover the executive branch don't apply to him. Cheney drew up the military orders in secret and had Bush sign them before anyone else could get a look, despite strict procedures about how orders should be reviewed before signing.
"What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part.
Attorney General Ashcroft had a run-in with Cheney over the military tribunals, as Ashcroft was incensed that the Justice Department had been left out of the loop. He "got no audience with Bush" on the matter. (Given that we now know Cheney had Gonzo signing statements that Cheney's office had written and claiming them as his own, can we re-speculate on how Ashcroft ended up in emergency with a sudden mysterious illness and was sent two goons from the White House to his bedside in the middle of the night?)
I wouldn't be reluctant to bet that Cheney's grand plan when he appointed himself Vice President was to create a presidential office with near dictatorial powers (which he has done) and then run for the office himself. Some unfortunate events, such as shooting his hunting partner in the face and his connection to the Valerie Plame outing case, may have derailed his chances, but it's not over, as the saying goes, till the fat lady sings. And Cheney still has the reigns.
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