WASHINGTON (AP) — Dick Cheney, the fervent conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate of invading Iraq, has died at age 84.
Cheney died Monday night of complications from pneumonia and cardiovascular disease, his family said in a statement.
“Dick Cheney served our country for decades, serving as White House Chief of Staff, Wyoming Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President of the United States,” the statement said. “Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren a love of country, courage, honor, love, kindness and the life of fly fishing. We are immeasurably grateful for all that Dick Cheney did for our country, and we are immeasurably blessed to have loved and been loved by this noble giant.”
Quietly powerful, Cheney served both father and son presidents and led the military during the Gulf War as secretary of defense. President George H.W. Bush before returning to public life as vice president under Bush’s son George W. Bush.
Cheney was effectively the chief operating officer of the young Bush administration. Despite decades of heart disease and a post-heart transplant, he was often involved in commanding roles in implementing the president’s most important decisions and those that mattered to him as well. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary measures of surveillance, detention, and interrogation used in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Years after leaving office, she became a target of President Donald Trump, especially because of her daughter. liz cheney After his election loss and President Trump’s actions in the presidential race, he became the Republican Party’s leading critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to remain in power. Riots of January 6, 2021 At the Capitol.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, no one has posed a greater threat to our country than Donald Trump,” Cheney said. TV ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election through lies and violence in order to remain in power after being rejected by voters. He is a coward.”
In a move unimaginable to Democrats at the time, Dick Cheney said last year that he would vote for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris against President Trump.
Mr. Cheney, who had suffered five heart attacks, long thought he was living on borrowed time, but in 2013 he declared that he now wakes up every morning and smiles, grateful for another day, a strange image for a man who always seemed to be on a rampart.
Cheney, whose vice presidency marked the era of terrorism, revealed that years ago she had turned off the wireless capabilities of defibrillators out of fear that terrorists could remotely deliver fatal shocks to the heart.
During his time in office, the vice presidency was no longer merely ceremonial. Instead, Cheney created a network of back channels to influence Iraq, terrorism, presidential power, energy, and other conservative policy fundamentals.
Cheney, fixed in a half-smile that seemed to last forever (detractors called it a fake smile), joked about his extraordinary reputation as a stealth operator.
“Am I some evil genius who sits in a corner and no one sees me come out of the hole?” he asked. “It’s actually a great way to operate.”
A hardliner on Iraq who had become increasingly isolated as other hawks left the government, Cheney was proven wrong one after another in the Iraq war, but never lost his belief that he was essentially right.
He claimed there was a link between the 2001 attacks on the United States and prewar Iraq that did not exist. He said the US military would be welcomed as liberators. They weren’t.
In May 2005, he declared the Iraqi insurgency to be in its final throes. At that time, 1,661 U.S. military personnel were killed, less than half the casualties at the end of the war.
For his fans, he remained true to his faith in uncertain times, standing firm even as his country opposed war and its leaders waged war.
But as President Bush entered his second term, Cheney’s influence waned due to changing courtroom and political realities.
The court ruled against an effort he supported to expand the president’s powers and give special harsh treatment to terrorist suspects. His hawkish positions on Iran and North Korea were not fully accepted by President Bush.
Cheney spent most of the time in the months after the 2001 attack operating from an undisclosed location, distancing herself from Bush to ensure either of them survived any subsequent attacks on the nation’s leaders.
On that fateful day, as President Bush was out of town, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents lifted him off his feet and carried him away, a scene the vice president later comically described.
From the beginning, Cheney and Bush struck a strange, unspoken but well-understood deal. Shelving any ambitions she might have had to succeed Bush, Cheney was given powers comparable in some ways to the presidency itself.
This negotiation was almost successful.
Cheney’s friend Dave Gribbin, who grew up with him in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington, once said: “He’s naturally thoughtful. He’s amazingly loyal.”
Cheney says: “When I signed the contract with the president, I made the decision that my agenda was the president’s only and that I was going to be different than most vice presidents. How I was going to get elected president at the end of my term was difficult.”
His secrecy and behind-the-scenes maneuvering had a price. He came to be seen as a shallow Machiavellian orchestrating a failed response to criticism of the Iraq war. And in 2006, when he shot a hunting buddy in the torso, neck and face with an accidental shotgun blast, he and his companions were slow to realize the unusual turn of events.
The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim’s friend Harry Whittington recovered and quickly forgave her. Comedians talked about it relentlessly for months. Mr. Whittington passed away in 2023.
When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had retreated into the oil business. Mr. Cheney led the team that found a running mate.
President Bush decided that the person chosen to help make the choice was the best choice.
Together, the two faced a protracted battle after the 2000 election before declaring victory. A series of recounts and court challenges — a storm that took the state of Florida all the way to the nation’s highest court — left the country in limbo for weeks.
Cheney assumed responsibility for the presidential transition before victory was clear, and helped ensure a smooth start to the administration despite the loss of time. During his tenure, disputes between departments vying for a larger share of President Bush’s limited budget often came to his desk and were resolved there.
At the Capitol, Cheney lobbied for the president’s program in the halls she once walked. very conservative member of parliament and the No. 2 Republican leader in the House of Representatives.
There were a lot of jokes about Cheney being the real No. 1 in town. Bush didn’t seem to mind and deciphered some of it himself. But later in Bush’s presidency, as he clearly came to terms with his own ideas, such comments became less appropriate.
Cheney retired several years later to Jackson Hole, not far from where Liz Cheney bought her home, and lived in Wyoming until 2016, when she won her old House seat. The fate of father and daughter also grew closer as the Cheney family became one of President Trump’s favorite targets.
Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defense in 2022, juggling his leading role on the commission investigating January 6th and his bid for re-election in deeply conservative Wyoming.
Liz Cheney, who voted in favor of impeaching Trump after the insurrection, received praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But despite that praise and her father’s support, she suffered a crushing defeat in the Republican primary, rapidly rising to the No. 3 spot in the House Republican leadership before suffering a dramatic fall.
Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a member of Congress. He became a protégé of Congressman Donald Rumsfeld (R-Ill.), working for him in two government agencies and in President Gerald Ford’s White House, becoming the youngest chief of staff in history at age 34.
After serving in that position for 14 months, Cheney returned to Casper, where he grew up, and ran for the sole seat in the state Legislature.
During that first House election, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, which caused him to become angry that he was trying to form a group called Cardiacs for Cheney. Still, he won a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.
In 1989, Cheney became Secretary of Defense under the first President George W. Bush, and led the Pentagon during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, which drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. During the two Bush administrations, Cheney led the Dallas-based Halliburton Corporation, a major engineering and construction company serving the oil industry.
Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of a longtime USDA employee. President of his senior class and co-captain of the football team at Casper, he attended Yale University for one year on a full scholarship, but dropped out after failing grades.
He returned to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming, and renewed his relationship with his high school sweetheart, Lynn Ann Vincent, whom he married in 1964. He is survived by his wife, Liz, and his second daughter, Mary.
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Associated Press writer Meade Gruber in Cheyenne, Wyoming, contributed to this report.
