Cheney Memoir: Former VP Uncloaks His Frustration With Bush

WASHINGTON Former Vice President Dick Cheney believes his old boss, President George W. Bush, gradually turned away from his advice during their second term in the White House, showing a surprising independence as he started taking more flexible positions on a range of issues, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Cheney, often described as the most influential vice president in U.S. history, has been discussing his years in office in informal talks with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues, the Post said, as he works on a memoir due out in 2011 from Simon & Schuster's Threshold Editions.

Robert Barnett, who negotiated Cheney's book contract, passed word to potential publishers that the memoir would be packed with news, said the article published on the Post Web site, and Cheney himself has said, without explanation, that "the statute of limitations has expired" on many of his secrets.

The book will cover Cheney's long career from chief of staff under President Gerald Ford to vice president under Bush.

"When the president made decisions that I didn't agree with, I still supported him and didn't go out and undercut him," Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. "Now we're talking about after we've left office. I have strong feelings about what happened. ... And I don't have any reason not to forthrightly express those views."

According to the author of the Post piece, Barton Gellman, who earlier wrote a book on Cheney called "Angler," the former vice president believes Bush made concessions to public sentiment, something Cheney views as moral weakness. After years of praising Bush as a man of resolve, Cheney now intimates that the former president turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end, Gellman says.

"In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him," Gellman quoted a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney's reply. "He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney's advice. He'd showed an independence that Cheney didn't see coming."

The Post quoted John P. Hannah, Cheney's second-term national security adviser, as saying Cheney remains driven, now as before, by the possibility of terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons from a nation hostile to the U.S.

What is new, Hannah said, is Cheney's readiness to acknowledge "doubts about the main channels of American policy during the last few years," a period encompassing most of Bush's second term.

Comments

[Lahonda]

12:44 AM on 08/14/2009

Dick and George... Ferengis! I kneeeew it!

[peterg76]

11:43 PM on 08/13/2009

Bush stood up to Cheney's psychopathy? I wouldn't believe that coming from a credible source.

[Oonagh]

11:20 PM on 08/13/2009

Two nuts and they are not cashews.

[LeslieAnne]

10:57 PM on 08/13/2009

Still trying to rewrite history I see.

[Helloise]

10:44 PM on 08/13/2009

This reminds me of the time a friend of mine told me his girlfriend had just broken up with him. When I asked him why, he said, "I dunno know. I guess she just came to her senses." If only Cheney was that self aware ..

[water57]

10:06 PM on 08/13/2009

Cheney is acting like a scare man, could it be he is a scare that Scooter Libbey will start talking the truth. Libbey took the fall for Cheney, and he did not get what he wanted out of the deal. I wonder how much money someone is willing to pay Scooter to start talking. Cheney is a mad race to distort the truth.

[JohnHKennedy]

09:36 PM on 08/13/2009

I was in my 20's
during the Nixon Watergate Scandal years
and
I am positive that the abuse of our Constitution and our rights as citizens
and the deliberate violations of our Federal Laws
were far worse
and far more numerous
under
Bush and Cheney.

Cheney and his far right neocon comrades
who are trying to derail Obamas effort
to improve health care in America
are some of the most evil political operatives we've seen at any time in American history.

The right cares only about power
and is willing do anything to obtain it.

First they knowingly violate the
Federal Anti-Torture Laws that were
signed into law
and supported
by their own idol President Ronald Reagan.

Then they, through Bush's appointee lawyers
create MEMOS that are supposed to have
the effect of overriding the Federal Torture Laws enacted by Congress
(which of course they cannot legally do).

Their effort to render our Torture laws moot
is a Conspiracy to Torture,
which probably went all the way
to Bush and Cheney.

Keep up the pressure for investigation
and prosecution.

Keep asking ALL politicians at ALL public events
"Why do they support Torture?"

If they aren't actively calling for enforcement
of our Federal Torture Laws,
They Support Torture.

SIGN THE PETITIONS
Demanding
both a Commission of Inquiry
and a Special Prosecutor
For All Their Crimes

at ANGRYVOTERS.ORG

http://ANGRYVOTERS.ORG

Only Prosecution Stops Torture!

[Renatakilol]

09:30 PM on 08/13/2009

dear god, robocheney is becoming more annoying than palin, and more camera hogging than biden.

why on earth did they extend secret service protection for a multimillionaire who can afford his own protection?

[CMarks]

09:23 PM on 08/13/2009

I can't wait for Cheney's book. I love a good work of fiction.

[Luca]

09:14 PM on 08/13/2009

Who would believe anything this man has to say?

[henri09]

09:00 PM on 08/13/2009

I still want to know what is up with their ears!

[JohnDewey]

09:03 PM on 08/13/2009

Good catch. That's a strange photo manipulation to use without explanation.

Even more off-putting is the possibility that the HuffPo editors didn't notice the ears when they decided to use the photo.

[MissCupcake]

09:43 PM on 08/13/2009

I just noticed that their ears are giant in the pic! LOL!

[JudgeMoonbox]

08:39 PM on 08/13/2009

One of the things that upset Cheney was that Bush fired Defense Secretary Rumsfeld after the 2006 elections. Picture two alternative scenarios:

1) Bush fired Rumsfeld in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

2) Bush kept Rumsfeld on through the remainder of his administration.

I had read an article a few months ago that said that Rumsfeld had kept a squadron of helicopters at Hurlburt AFB grounded after the hurricane because he placed more importance of appearing to be in control than actually doing so. As I understand this theory, sending the helicopters when the issue reached his desk would have been an admission that he wasn't ready. When the issue reached Bush's attention, he blew his stack. Firing Rumsfeld would have been the right thing to do, but Bush's sense of loyalty to immediate subordinates kept him from that.

Its more speculative, but I feel that Rumsfeld would not have conducted the Surge as well as Gates did.

So the alternatives are; first, if Bush fired Rumsfeld after Katrina, not only would he have blunted a lot of anger directed at himself, but he would have started the Surge a year sooner and had more to show for it on Election Day 2008.

In the second scenario, Bush would have had less success than he did in subduing the Insurgency.

I think these scenarios prove that Cheney's motto, "No Hugging, No Learning" (Wait, that was Seinfeld) left the Republican party more vulnerable.

[SgtMac]

08:53 PM on 08/13/2009

Consider that the Army Flight School, with dozens of helicopters is at Ft Rucker AL, and the Army base at Ft Polk LA, with its own aviation assets, is 15 minutes flight time north of New Orleans. To me it is unbelievable that the White House and FEMA couldn't get any pilot close enough to see what was going on. I was in Iraq when Katrina hit, we saw it on AFN, and I'd trained before deployment at Ft Polk , so I knew that there were aviation assets that easily could have been used. There is no excuse for people suffering at the N.O Convention Center and Superdome for 3 days before FEMA saw some video from a news chopper and reacted.
A heckuva job indeed.

[SgtMac]

08:22 PM on 08/13/2009

perhaps the boy had a flash of common sense after all.

[kdtaxes]

07:59 PM on 08/13/2009

And he is disappointed because the first fours years went so well!
Cheney and Rumsfield both were so out of touch with reality. I think Cheney protests too much!
What is he truly trying to defend?

[booboo111]

08:12 PM on 08/13/2009

I have a title suggestion for his upcoming book,........ "The Dick, Cheney."

[Prakosh]

07:46 PM on 08/13/2009

If ignorance is bliss why are all these people so angry???