Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

Tim Grieve, Salon
summarizes the ten top points from the Washington Post's
four-part series on Vice President Dick Cheney.
(Thanks to Allan Roland for forwarding this to me.

1. The vice president's "understanding" with the
boss. Just after Cheney took office, former
Vice President Dan Quayle warned him about the ceremonial nature of the
job. Cheney smirked and told Quayle: "I have a different understanding
with the president." Quayle says Cheney saw himself as what Quayle calls a
"surrogate chief of staff." Bush's actual chief
of staff, Josh Bolten, says Cheney's deal with Bush guarantees him a seat
at "every table and every meeting" and the right
to make his voice heard in "whatever area the vice president
feels he wants to be active in."

2. How it works. The
Post says Cheney "holds his purchase on an unrivaled portfolio
across the executive branch." Bush deals at the level of
"broad objectives, broadly declared." Cheney, on the other hand,
"inhabits an operational world in which means are matched with ends
and some of the most important choices are made. When particulars rise to
presidential notice, Cheney often steers the preparation of options and
sits with Bush, in side-by-side wing chairs, as he is briefed."

3. The secrecy. The vice
president's Dracula-and-sunlight-like aversion to transparency is well
known, but the Post adds two nice details: The "daily work" of the Office
of the Vice President is stored in "man-size Mosler safes," typically used
by other government agencies only for classified material. And in Cheney's
office, just about everything is classified, or treated that way:
The vice president apparently invented a new classification for pseudo
secrets to be used even for not-so-secret documents like press talking
points: "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI."

4. The power.
Even as the twin towers fell on 9/11, Cheney and his then legal aide,
David Addington, began planning an expansion of presidential powers. The
Post explains: "Down in the bunker, according to a colleague
with firsthand knowledge, Cheney and Addington began contemplating the
founding question of the legal revolution to come: What extraordinary
powers will the president need for his response?"

5. Cheney's team. On
matters of presidential power, it consisted of John Yoo, Tim Flanigan and
Addington. "Gonzales, a former Texas judge, had the seniority and the
relationship with Bush," the Post says. "But Addington -- a
man of imposing demeanor, intellect and experience -- dominated the group.
Gonzales 'was not a law-of-war expert and didn't have very developed
views,' Yoo recalled, echoing blunter observations by the Texan's White
House colleagues."

6. The order. In the
Post's telling, Cheney and his team pretty much single-handedly came up
with the plan to send detainees to military tribunals rather than civilian
courts; they shortcircuited a panel that was supposed to be considering
the issue, rejected the complaints of Attorney General John Ashcroft, and
kept their plan secret from Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. After
ordering that the plan be kept out of any staff review, Cheney got Bush to
sign it by hand-walking it to him at lunch in the private dining room near
the Oval Office.

7. Torture.
The Post says Cheney's office "played a central role in
shattering limits on coercion in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending
legal opinions that the Bush administration has since portrayed as the
initiatives, months later, of lower-ranking officials." How
they did it: "Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen
current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between
forbidden 'torture' and permitted use of 'cruel, inhuman or degrading'
methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or
reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they
translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational
language of government."

8. More torture. Former
Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee wasn't the author of the infamous
August 2002 memo that smashed through the limits to what the United States
could or couldn't do to people in its custody. Although the White House
has attributed the work to Yoo, Yoo tells the Post that the other members
of the Cheney team contributed. Addington, Cheney's legal advisor, was
behind what the Post calls the memo's "most radical claim":
If the president authorizes an interrogation method, it can't be
illegal because ... the president has authorized it. A second
memo, also prepared by Team Cheney, approved of a long list of
interrogation techniques the CIA wanted to use -- including, the Post
says, "waterboarding."

9. And still more torture. The signing
statement in which Bush all but
eviscerated John McCain's Detainee Treatment Act by saying its language
would be construed "in a manner consistent with the constitutional
authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and
as Commander in Chief"? It came from Cheney's office.

10. Guantánamo. Last
week's talk of a high-level meeting and an
impending decision to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba? The Post says Cheney is actually in favor of expanding the facility.
He's almost alone in that view, the Post says, but he has
succeeded so far in keeping Gitmo open.