Dick Cheney Flexes Rare Influence
Vice President Led Fight for Domestic Wiretapping Program
Sep 16, 2008
Dick Cheney has amassed more power than any vice president in history and he used that influence to push for a domestic spying program that threatened to tear apart the Bush administration, according to a book by Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman.
In "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," Gellman details how Cheney maneuvered behind the scenes to continue allowing U.S. intelligence agents to intercept the telephone conversations and emails of American citizens without first getting warrants despite Justice Department claims that the program was illegal.
Bush Didn't Know
Cheney's office pushed for weeks to get the Justice Department to sign off on the wiretapping program, which was intended to identify terrorists operating within the United States, But President Bush never knew what was going on, Gellman reported in excerpts of the book run by The Washington Post.
Moreover, Cheney's office purposely didn't invite the president's top national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, to key meetings at which the legality of the wiretaps was discussed, according to "Angler," a title that plays on Cheney's Secret Service codename.
Justice, FBI Officials Threaten to Quit
The behind-the-scenes drama culminated in a showdown between White House and Justice Department officials in the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had suffered an acute attack of gallstone pancreatitis. Despite his fragile state and the intense pressure from Cheney's office, Ashcroft refused to approve the program, Gellman reports.
Five of Bush's top officials at the Justice Department, including the FBI director, decided they would have to resign. Not since the "Saturday Night Massacre" of Watergate, in which the top two Justice officials quit rather than carry out President Richard Nixon's orders to fire a special prosecutor, had a president come so close to seeing his administration torn apart, Gellman wrote.
Up until the very day the president was supposed to approve continuing the program, Gellman writes, "Bush had yet to learn that his government was coming apart."
Bush Sides Against Cheney
When Bush did find out, he sided with the Justice Department and the rules for the surveillance program were rewritten to accommodate the department's legal concerns, according to Gellman
Administration officials said that while Cheney was taking only national security issues into account when shaping the surveillance program, Bush had to consider the political fallout possible if the government were found to be running an illegal wiretapping program, according to Gellman.
Cheney Seeks a More Powerful Presidency
Cheney's chief motivation in the dispute was his overarching belief that the president should have what one official called "supreme" power, the power to create programs like the domestic surveillance program on his own without input from Congress or the public, according to Gellman.
And while Cheney may not have gotten all he wanted in the showdown over that particular program, Gellman reports, the influence he continues to exert over the Executive Branch has made him history's most powerful vice president.
"Dick Cheney changed history, defining his times and shaping a White House as no vice president has before- yet concealing most of his work from public view," he wrote.
