2007-07-19T05:00:00Z tag:blog.washingtonpost.com,2007:/cheney//314 Copyright (c) 2007, WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive 2007-07-19T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-27:/cheney/2007/06/leaving_no_tracks.html

By Jo Becker and Barton Gellman Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, June 27, 2007; Page A01 Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the 19th-ranking Interior Department official, arrived at her desk in Room 6140 a few months after Inauguration Day 2001. A phone message awaited her. "This is Dick Cheney," said the man on her voice mail, Wooldridge recalled in an interview. "I understand you are the person handling this Klamath situation. Please call me at -- hmm, I guess I don't know my own number. I'm over at the White House." Getty Images"> Getty Images">Enlarge Photo The vice president has intervened in many cases to undercut long-standing environmental rules for the benefit of business. Here, Cheney is photographed during an August 2004 family vacation in Moose, Wyoming. Getty ImagesMore photos >> Wooldridge wrote off the message as a prank. It was not. Cheney had reached far down the chain of command, on

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-07-19T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-26:/cheney/2007/06/a_strong_push_from_back_stage.html

By Jo Becker and Barton Gellman Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, June 26, 2007; Page A01 Air Force Two touched down at the Greenbrier Valley Airport in West Virginia on Feb. 6, 2003, carrying Vice President Cheney to the annual retreat of Republican House and Senate leaders. He had come to sell them on the economic centerpiece of President Bush's first term: a $674 billion tax cut. Corbis"> Corbis">Enlarge Photo When the president announced his economic package the day after this Cabinet meeting in January 2003, Cheney had one more thing to add. Corbis Cheney had spent months making sure the package contained everything he wanted. One thing was missing. The president had accepted Cheney's diagnosis that the sluggish economy needed a jolt, overruling senior economic advisers who forecast dangerous budget deficits. But Bush rejected one of Cheney's remedies: deep reductions in the capital gains tax on investments. The vice

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-07-19T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-26:/cheney/2007/06/taking_on_the_supreme_court_ca.html

When it came to vetting potential nominees, the vice president steered the selection committee. In May 2005, a small group of the president's senior advisers gathered to weigh a historic choice: who should succeed an ailing William H. Rehnquist as chief justice of the United States. The meeting wasn't held at the White House or the Justice Department. And the highest-ranking official in the room wasn't the attorney general, the White House chief of staff, the White House counsel or the president's chief political adviser, although they were all there. It was Vice President Cheney, and it was to an unpretentious room off the vice president's quarters that potential candidates were summoned for interviews. The handful of candidates who survived a grilling of more than two hours by the Cheney-led selection committee would go on to what one participant described as a much shorter and "far more relaxed" interview

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-07-19T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-26:/cheney/2007/06/expanding_authority_for_no_2_s.html

In 1980, as Ford was being wooed to run for vice president, Cheney played a key role in re-imagining the job 'If there is precedent for Dick Cheney's role, according to former vice president Dan Quayle, it is the might-have-been second vice presidency of Gerald R. Ford. Pollsters spoke of a "dream ticket" after Ronald Reagan won the 1980 Republican nomination and talk turned to Ford as his No. 2. Aides to both men tried to negotiate arrangements that might lure a former commander in chief into a secondary position. Contemporary accounts said Ford was represented by former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger and others. But at a 2000 conference of former White House chiefs of staff, Cheney disclosed that he had been deeply involved. He recalled an intense debate about how to shape expanded lines of authority in a job often ridiculed as largely ceremonial. Ford "made a

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-07-16T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-24:/cheney/2007/06/cheney_on_presidential_power.html

James A. Baker III came to see Wyoming's sole member of Congress on Nov. 19, 1980, days after Ronald Reagan won election as president. He was about to assume the post of White House chief of staff, which then-Rep. Dick Richard B. Cheney (R-Wyo.) had held at the age of 34. Cheney's advice, recorded in four pages of handwritten notes on Baker's yellow legal pad, began with this: 1. Restore power & auth to Exec Branch -- Need strong ldr'ship. Get rid of War Powers Act -- restore independent rights.****** Central theme we ought to push Cheney's muscular views on presidential power, then and now, offer one answer to the question raised often by former colleagues in recent years: What happened to the careful, mainstream conservative they once thought they understood? In fact, Cheney's views on executive supremacy -- like many of his core beliefs about foreign policy and defense

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-07-16T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-24:/cheney/2007/06/pushing_the_envelope_on_presi.html

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-07-16T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-24:/cheney/2007/06/chapter_1.html

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-08-03T14:55:03Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-24:/cheney/2007/06/cast_of_characters.html

David S. Addington, general counsel and later chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, worked under Cheney in Congress and at the Pentagon. He dominated White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales on issues of national security and executive authority, leading a legal triumvirate that also included Timothy E. Flanigan. Samuel A. Alito, Jr., selected by President Bush for the Supreme Court after a vetting process run by Cheney. John Ashcroft, Bush's first attorney general, clashed with Cheney on a role for the Justice Department in prosecuting suspected terrorists. James A. Baker III, White House chief of staff under Ronald Reagan, turned to Cheney for advice on how to run the executive branch. He calls Cheney "extraordinarily effective and adept at exercising power." John B. Bellinger III, the ranking national security lawyer in the White House, was kept in the dark about plans to use military commissions to try detainees.

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-07-16T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-24:/cheney/2007/06/about_this_series.html

Over the next four days, The Washington Post will present an in-depth investigation of the vice presidency of Dick Cheney, the most influential and powerful man ever to hold the office. The stories will examine Cheney's largely hidden and little-understood role in crafting policies for the War on Terror, the economy and the environment.

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-07-16T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-23:/cheney/2007/06/from_wyoming_to_the_white_hous.html

Dick Cheney, the 46th vice president of the United States, entered office with unique qualifications. He had been White House chief of staff under one president and defense secretary under another, and he had run a major corporation. The child of Depression-era Democrats, he remains one of the bedrock conservatives of the Bush administration and the leading proponent of the expansion of presidential power. Richard Bruce Cheney was born in Lincoln, Neb., on Jan. 30, 1941. His father was a soil-conservation agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His mother had been a softball star in the 1930s. In 1964, Cheney married his high school sweetheart, Lynne Vincent. After flunking out of Yale University, he earned a bachelor's and a master's degree in political science from the University of Wyoming. He entered a PhD program at the University of Wisconsin, but dropped out to go to work on Capitol Hill.

washingtonpost.com Editors 2007-07-16T05:00:00Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-06-22:/cheney/2007/06/cheneys_advice_to_baker.html

11/19/[80] CHENEY 1. Def & Treasury Secty's really too busy. Committee [?] them [?] and constitutencies of those depts not [?] will. [willing?] will be upset. 2. Clean House except military office -- but new top level military aides. 3. Keep Chief Clerk -- career profs. [career professionals, those two words double underlined] VIEW DOCUMENT: Baker's notes from his 1980 meeting with Cheney (PDF). 4. Keep all career profs. (about 1/2 of the employees) 5. Get rid of Eleanor Conner [?] 6. Keep Connie [?] Gerard & Nell Yates. 7. Darman -- good staff secty - familiarity w/ gov't. (Staffing loops are on a piece of paper showing who sees paper before it goes in.) [in margin with arrow from this point:] Give office space decisions to him. (Parking, tennis court, drivers.) 8. Can split Cab Secty & Staff Secty 9. C of S. Make all the trips w/

washingtonpost.com Editors