Dick Cheney, one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in US history, dies at 84

WASHINGTON AP Dick Cheney the hard-charging conservative who became one of the the greater part powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U S history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq has died at George W Bush s vice president died Monday from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disorder his family revealed Tuesday in a announcement In Cheney s hands the vice presidency became a nexus of influence and manipulation no longer the timid office whose occupants had tended their boss ambitions gone to endless banquets and often waited in the wings for their own shot at the prize When he bunkered in secure undisclosed locations after the Sept attacks that was less an inconvenience for Cheney than a metaphor for a life of power that he exercised to maximum effect from the shadows He was the small man operating big levers as if from Oz Machiavelli with a sardonic grin The Darth Vader of the administration as Bush described the society s view No one seemed more amused at that perception than Cheney himself Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole he solicited It s a nice way to operate certainly The force was with him Cheney served father and son presidents leading the armed forces as defense chief during the Persian Gulf War under President George H W Bush before returning to constituents life under his son Cheney was in effect the chief operating officer of the younger Bush s presidency He had a hand often a commanding one in implementing decisions most of key to the president and selected of surpassing interest to himself all while living with decades of heart affection and post-administration a heart transplant Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance detention and inquisition employed in response to the Sept attacks History will remember him as among the finest constituents servants of his generation a patriot who brought integrity high intelligence and seriousness of purpose to every position he held Bush stated Tuesday Years after leaving office Cheney became a target of President Donald Trump especially after his daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump s desperate attempts to stay in power after his polling defeat and his actions in the Jan riot at the Capitol In our nation s -year history there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump Cheney announced in a television ad for his daughter He tried to steal the last voting using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him He is a coward In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined Cheney mentioned last year he was voting for their candidate Kamala Harris for president against Trump For all his conservatism Cheney was privately and publicly supportive of his daughter Mary Cheney after she came out as gay years before gay marriage was broadly supported then legalized Freedom means freedom for everyone he explained A survivor of five heart attacks Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in that he awoke each morning with a smile on my face thankful for the gift of another day an odd image for a figure who reliably seemed to be manning the ramparts Cheney made his vice presidency a grid of back channels from which to influence program on Iraq terrorism presidential powers potency and other conservative cornerstones Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile detractors called it a smirk Cheney joked about his outsize reputation as a stealthy manipulator The Iraq War A hard-liner on Iraq who was increasingly isolated as other hawks left executive Cheney was proved wrong on point after point in the Iraq War without losing the conviction he was essentially right He alleged links between the attacks and prewar Iraq that didn t exist He disclosed U S troops would be welcomed as liberators they weren t He declared the Iraqi insurgency in its last throes in May back when U S amenity members had been killed not even half the toll by war s end For admirers he kept the faith in a shaky time resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it But well into Bush s second term Cheney s clout waned checked by courts or shifting political realities Courts ruled against efforts he championed to broaden presidential authority and accord special harsh remedy to terrorism accused Bush did not fully embrace his hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea Cheney s relationship with Bush From the beginning Cheney and Bush struck an odd bargain unspoken but well understood Shelving any ambitions he might have had to succeed Bush Cheney was accorded power comparable in particular methods to the presidency itself That bargain largely held up As Cheney put it I made the decision when I signed on with the president that the only agenda I would have would be his agenda that I was not going to be like majority vice presidents and that was angling trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over with His penchant for secrecy and backstage maneuvering had a price He came to be seen as a thin-skinned figure orchestrating a bungled response to criticism of the Iraq War And when he shot a hunting companion in the torso neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in he and his coterie were slow to disclose that episode It was one of the worst days of my life Cheney mentioned The victim his friend Harry Whittington recovered and expeditiously forgave him Comedians were relentless about it for months When Bush began his presidential quest he sought help from Cheney a Washington insider who had retreated to the oil business Cheney led the association to find a vice presidential candidate Bush decided the best choice was the man picked to help with the choosing Together the pair faced a protracted postelection battle before they could claim supremacy Recounts and court challenges left the nation in limbo for weeks Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before preeminence was clear and helped give the Republican administration a smooth launch despite the lost time In office disputes among departments vying for a bigger piece of Bush s constrained budget came to his desk and often were settled there On Capitol Hill Cheney lobbied for the president s programs in halls he had walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No Republican House leader Jokes abounded about how Cheney was the real No in town Bush didn t seem to mind and cracked a scant himself But such comments became less apt later in Bush s presidency as he clearly came into his own On Sept with Bush out of town the president gave Cheney approval to authorize the military to shoot down any hijacked planes still in the sky By then two airliners had hit the World Contract Center and a third was bearing down on the capital from nearby Dulles airport in Virginia A Secret System agent burst into the West Wing room grabbed Cheney by the belt and shoulder and led him to a bunker underneath the White House He didn t say Shall we go Cheney reported NBC News years later He wasn t polite about it Cheney talked to Bush again from the bunker and informed him Washington was under attack as well as New York After Bush s return to the White House that night Cheney was taken to a secret location to keep the president and vice president separated and try to ensure that at least one of them would survive any further attack Cheney commented his first reaction to hearing of the crash of the fourth hijacked plane in Pennsylvania was that the U S might have shot it down per his order It came down after passengers fought the hijackers He became the youngest chief of staff Politics first lured Cheney to Washington in when he was a congressional fellow He became a prot g of Rep Donald Rumsfeld R-Ill serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff the youngest ever at age Cheney held the post for months then returned to Casper Wyoming where he had been raised and ran for the state s lone congressional seat In that first race for the House Cheney suffered a mild heart attack prompting him to crack he was forming a group called Cardiacs for Cheney He still managed a decisive preeminence and went on to win five more terms In Cheney became defense secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the - Persian Gulf War which drove Iraq s troops from Kuwait Between the two Bush administrations Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton Corp a large engineering and construction company for the oil industry Cheney was born in Lincoln Nebraska son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but failed out He moved back to Wyoming eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent marrying her in He is survived by his wife and daughters Associated Press writer Mead Gruver in Cheyenne Wyoming contributed to this account Source