The Real
Dick Cheney

This is a LONG article from the New Yorker.  You need to read this -- this is the Vice President of the United States.

In this article you will note several lines in bold typeface -- these are items I have highlighted because I believe these points tell us what we need to know about our Vice President.

In 1968, Dick Cheney arrived in Washington. He was a political-science
graduate student who had won a congressional fellowship with Bill
Steiger, a Republican from his home state of Wyoming. One of Cheney's
first assignments was to visit college campuses where antiwar protests
were disrupting classes, and quietly assess the scene. Steiger was
part of a group of congressmen who were considering ways to cut off
federal funding to campuses where violent protests had broken out. It
was an early lesson in the strategic use of government cutbacks.

Instead of returning to graduate school, Cheney got a job as the
deputy for a brash congressional colleague of Steiger's, Donald
Rumsfeld, whom Richard Nixon had appointed to head the Office of
Economic Opportunity. The O.E.O., which had played a prominent role in
Johnson's War on Poverty, was not favored by Nixon. According to Dan
Guttman, who co-wrote "The Shadow Government" (1976), Rumsfeld and
Cheney diminished the power of the office by outsourcing many of its
jobs. Their tactics were not subtle. At nine o'clock on the morning of
September 17, 1969, Rumsfeld distributed a new agency phone directory;
without explanation, a hundred and eight employee names had been
dropped. The vast majority were senior career civil servants who had
been appointed by Democrats.

The purging of the office was a mixed success. Bureaucratic resistance
stymied Cheney and Rumsfeld on several fronts. But by the time Ronald
Reagan became President the overriding principle that had guided their
actions at the O.E.O.-privatization-had become a central precept of
the conservative movement.

For most of the eighties, Cheney served in the House of
Representatives. In 1988, after the election of George H. W. Bush, he
was named Secretary of Defense. The end of the Cold War brought with
it expectations of a "peace dividend," and Cheney's mandate was to
reduce forces, cut weapons systems, and close military bases.
Predictably, this plan met with opposition from every member of
Congress whose district had a base in peril.

Cheney was widely admired for his judicious handling of the matter. By
the time he was done, the armed forces were at their lowest level
since the Korean War. However, a Democratic aide on the House Armed
Services Committee during those years told me that "contrary to his
public image, which was as a reasonable, quiet, soft-spoken, and
inclusive personality, Cheney was a rank partisan." The aide said that
Cheney practiced downsizing as political jujitsu. He once compiled a
list of military bases to be closed; all were in Democratic districts.
Cheney's approach to cutting weapons systems was similar: he proposed
breathtaking cuts in the districts of Thomas Downey, David Bonior, and
Jim Wright, all high-profile Democrats. The aide told me that
Congress, which was then dominated by the Democrats, beat back most of
Cheney's plans, because many of the cuts made no strategic sense.
"This was about getting even," he said of Cheney. Cheney's spokesman
disputed this account, saying that the armed services had specified
which bases should be cut, and "Congress approved it without changes."

As Defense Secretary, Cheney developed a contempt for Congress, which,
a friend said, he came to regard as "a bunch of annoying gnats."
Meanwhile, his affinity for business deepened. "The meetings with
businessmen were the ones that really got him pumped," a former aide
said. One company that did exceedingly well was Halliburton. Toward
the end of Cheney's tenure, the Pentagon decided to turn over to a
single company the bulk of the business of planning and providing
support for military operations abroad-tasks such as preparing food,
doing the laundry, and cleaning the latrines. As Singer writes in
"Corporate Warriors," the Pentagon commissioned Halliburton to do a
classified study of how this might work. In effect, the company was
being asked to create its own market.

Halliburton was paid $3.9 million to write its initial report, which
offered a strategy for providing support to twenty thousand troops.
The Pentagon then paid Halliburton five million dollars more to do a
follow-up study. In August, 1992, Halliburton was selected by the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers to do all the work needed to support the
military during the next five years, in accordance with the plan it
had itself drawn up. The Pentagon had never relied so heavily on a
single company before. Although the profit margins for this omnibus
government contract were narrower than they were for private-sector
jobs, there was a guaranteed profit of one per cent, with the
possibility of as much as nine per cent-making it a rare bit of
business with no risk.

In December, 1992, working under its new contract, Halliburton began
providing assistance to the United States troops overseeing the
humanitarian crisis in Somalia. Few other companies in the world could
have mobilized as fast or as well. Halliburton employees were on the
ground within twenty-four hours of the first U.S. landing in
Mogadishu. By the time Halliburton left, in 1995, it had become the
largest employer in the country, having subcontracted out most of the
menial work, while importing experts for more specialized needs. (A
mortician was hired, for example, to clean up the bodies of the slain
soldiers.) For its services in Somalia, Halliburton was paid a hundred
and nine million dollars. Over the next five years, the company billed
the government $2.2 billion for similar work in the Balkans.

Halliburton's efforts in the field were considered highly effective.
Yet Sam Gardiner, the retired Air Force colonel, told me that the
success of private contractors in the battlefield has had an
unforeseen consequence at the Pentagon. "It makes it too easy to go to
war," he said. "When you can hire people to go to war, there's none of
the grumbling and the political friction." He noted that much of the
scut work now being contracted out to firms like Halliburton was
traditionally performed by reserve soldiers, who often complain the
loudest.

There are some hundred and thirty-five thousand American troops in
Iraq, but Gardiner estimated that there would be as many as three
hundred thousand if not for private contractors. He said, "Think how
much harder it would have been to get Congress, or the American
public, to support those numbers."


After Cheney's tenure at the Pentagon ended, in 1993, with the arrival
of the Clinton Administration, he spent much of the next two years
deciding whether to run for President. He formed a political-action
committee, and crossed the country making speeches and raising money.
He also became affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, the
conservative think tank. Records from the Federal Election Commission
show that Cheney's PAC contributors included executives at several of
the companies that have since won the largest government contracts in
Iraq. Among them were Thomas Cruikshank, Halliburton's C.E.O. at the
time; Stephen Bechtel, whose family's construction-and-engineering
firm now has a contract in Iraq worth as much as $2.8 billion; and
Duane Andrews, then senior vice-president of Science Applications
International Corporation, which has won seven contracts in Iraq.

When Newt Gingrich helped bring the House of Representatives into
Republican hands, in 1994, Cheney felt reassured that the country was
back on the right track, alleviating his need to run. His PAC hadn't
raised enough money, in any case. Equally important, colleagues said,
Cheney had found that he didn't enjoy being the center of attention.
He preferred to work behind the scenes.

Cheney was hired by Halliburton in 1995, not long after he went on a
fly-fishing trip in New Brunswick, Canada, with several corporate
moguls. After Cheney had said good night, the others began talking
about Halliburton's need for a new C.E.O. Why not Dick? He had
virtually no business experience, but he had valuable relationships
with very powerful people. Lawrence Eagleburger, the Secretary of
State in the first Bush Administration, became a Halliburton board
member after Cheney joined the company. He told me that Cheney was the
firm's "outside man," the person who could best help the company
expand its business around the globe. Cheney was close to many world
leaders, particularly in the Persian Gulf, a region central to
Halliburton's oil-services business. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, were
so friendly with Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., that
the Prince had invited the Cheney family to his daughter's wedding.
(Cheney did not attend.) "Dick was good at opening doors," Eagleburger
said. "I don't mean that pejoratively. He had contacts from his former
life, and he used them effectively."

Under Cheney's direction, Halliburton thrived. In 1998, the company
acquired its main rival, Dresser Industries. Cheney negotiated the
$7.7-billion deal, reportedly during a weekend of quail-hunting. The
combined conglomerate, which retained the Halliburton name, instantly
became the largest company of its kind in the world. But, in its
eagerness to merge, Halliburton had failed to detect the size of the
legal liability that Dresser faced from long-dormant lawsuits dealing
with asbestos poisoning. The claims proved so ruinous that several
Halliburton divisions later filed for bankruptcy protection. The
asbestos settlements devastated the company's stock price, which fell
by eighty per cent in just over a year.

Cheney's defenders have argued that no one could have anticipated the
extent of the asbestos problem. Yet the incident presaged a current
criticism of Cheney: that he can be blindsided by insular
decision-making. Eagleburger, who was on Dresser's board of directors
before it merged with Halliburton, told me, "I can't fault Cheney as
such on asbestos, but somebody slipped up somewhere in the due
diligence. Somebody should have caught it."

The Dresser merger also raised ethical questions. The United States
had concluded that Iraq, Libya, and Iran supported terrorism and had
imposed strict sanctions on them. Yet during Cheney's tenure at
Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the
case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting
its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once
been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own
subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the
company to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

In some ways, the Libya and Iran transactions were consistent with
Cheney's views. He had long opposed economic sanctions as a political
tool, even against South Africa's apartheid regime. During the 2000
campaign, however, Cheney said he viewed Iraq differently. "I had a
firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements
that were supposedly legal," he told ABC News. But, under Cheney's
watch, two foreign subsidiaries of Dresser sold millions of dollars'
worth of oil services and parts to Saddam's regime. The transactions
were not illegal, but they were politically suspect. The deals
occurred under the United Nations Oil-for-Food program, at a time when
Saddam Hussein chose which companies his government would work with.
Corruption was rampant. It may be that it was simply Halliburton's
expertise that attracted Saddam's regime, but a United Nations
diplomat with the Oil-for-Food program has doubts. "Most American
companies were blacklisted," he said. "It's rather surprising to find
Halliburton doing business with Saddam. It would have been very much a
senior-level decision, made by the regime at the top." Cheney has said
that he personally directed the company to stop doing business with
Saddam. Halliburton's presence in Iraq ended in February, 2000.


During the 2000 Vice-Presidential debate, Senator Joseph Lieberman
teased Cheney about the fortune he had amassed at Halliburton. "I'm
pleased to see, Dick, that you're better off than you were eight years
ago," he said.

"I can tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with
it," Cheney shot back. In fact, despite having spent years championing
the private sector and disparaging big government, Cheney devoted
himself at Halliburton to securing government funds. In the five years
before Cheney joined Halliburton, the company received a hundred
million dollars in government credit guarantees. During Cheney's
tenure, this amount jumped to $1.5 billion. One alliance that Cheney
worked hard to make was with the Export-Import Bank, in Washington; he
won the support of James Harmon, a Clinton appointee and the bank's
chairman. Harmon agreed to make a four-hundred-and-ninety-million-dollar loan guarantee to a Russian company that was drilling a huge oil field in Siberia. It was the
largest loan guarantee to a Russian company in the bank's history, and
a big chunk of it would facilitate the Russian company's purchase of
Halliburton's services. There was a hitch, however: the Russian
company, Tyumen Oil, was caught in a messy dispute with several
competitors, all of whom accused the others of being corrupt.

Cheney was undeterred by these charges. But he almost lost the
Export-Import loan when the State Department attempted to block it, on
the ground that Tyumen was involved in illegal activity. According to
a source who worked at the State Department at the time, Cheney
personally lobbied the government in an effort to keep the deal alive.
He was particularly incensed by the involvement of the Central
Intelligence Agency, which sided with the State Department. According
to a friend of Cheney's, he was convinced that the C.I.A. had been
duped by opposition research spread by Tyumen's rivals. Eventually,
the deal went through. By then, though, Cheney's frustration with
government had become profound. As he said in a speech in 1998, "The
average Halliburton hand knows more about the world than the average
member of Congress."

In the spring of 2000, Cheney's two worlds-commerce and politics-
merged. Halliburton allowed its C.E.O. to serve simultaneously as the
head of George W. Bush's Vice-Presidential search committee. At the
time, Bush said that his main criterion for a running mate was
"somebody who's not going to hurt you." Cheney demanded reams of
documents from the candidates he considered. In the end, he picked
himself-a move that his longtime friend Stuart Spencer recently
described, with admiration, as "the most Machiavellian fucking thing
I've ever seen."

One man who was especially pleased by Cheney's candidacy was Ahmed
Chalabi, the Iraqi dissident who was the leading proponent of
overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Cheney had come to know Chalabi through
conservative circles in Washington. "I think he is good for us,"
Chalabi told a U.P.I. reporter in June, 2000.

For months there has been a debate in Washington about when the Bush
Administration decided to go to war against Saddam. In Ron Suskind's
recent book "The Price of Loyalty," former Treasury Secretary Paul
O'Neill charges that Cheney agitated for U.S. intervention well before
the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Additional evidence that
Cheney played an early planning role is contained in a previously
undisclosed National Security Council document, dated February 3,
2001. The top-secret document, written by a high-level N.S.C.
official, concerned Cheney's newly formed Energy Task Force. It
directed the N.S.C. staff to coöperate fully with the Energy Task
Force as it considered the "melding" of two seemingly unrelated areas
of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states,"
such as Iraq, and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing
oil and gas fields."

A source who worked at the N.S.C. at the time doubted that there were
links between Cheney's Energy Task Force and the overthrow of Saddam.
But Mark Medish, who served as senior director for Russian, Ukrainian,
and Eurasian affairs at the N.S.C. during the Clinton Administration,
told me that he regards the document as potentially "huge." He said,
"People think Cheney's Energy Task Force has been secretive about
domestic issues," referring to the fact that the Vice-President has
been unwilling to reveal information about private task-force meetings
that took place in 2001, when information was being gathered to help
develop President Bush's energy policy. "But if this little group was
discussing geostrategic plans for oil, it puts the issue of war in the
context of the captains of the oil industry sitting down with Cheney
and laying grand, global plans."


The Bush Administration's war on terror has became a source of
substantial profit for Halliburton. The company's commercial ties to
terrorist states did not prevent it from assuming a prominent role.
The Navy, for instance, paid Halliburton thirty-seven million dollars
to build prison camps in Cuba's Guantánamo Bay for suspected
terrorists. The State Department gave the company a
hundred-million-dollar contract to construct a new embassy in Kabul.
And in December, 2001, a few years after having lost its omnibus
military-support contract to a lower bidder, Halliburton won it back;
before long, the company was supporting U.S. troops in Afghanistan,
Kuwait, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Djibouti, the Republic of Georgia, and
Iraq. Halliburton's 2002 annual report describes counterterrorism as
offering "growth opportunities."

The Department of Defense's decision to award Halliburton the
seven-billion-dollar contract to restore Iraq's oil industry was made
under "emergency" conditions. The company was secretly hired to draw
up plans for how it would deal with putting out oil-well fires, should
they occur during the war. This planning began in the fall of 2002,
around the time that Congress was debating whether to grant President
Bush the authority to use force, and before the United Nations had
fully debated the issue. In early March, 2003, the Army quietly
awarded Halliburton a contract to execute those plans.

As it turned out, oil-well fires were not a problem. An Army War
College study shows that of the fifteen hundred oil wells in Iraq's
two major oil fields, only nine were damaged during the war. Colonel
Gardiner said he was puzzled by the Pentagon's inability to predict
this outcome. "Our intelligence before the war was good enough to know
that," he said.

After months spent trying to obtain more information about the
classified Halliburton deals, Representative Waxman's staff discovered
that the original oil-well-fire contract entrusted Halliburton with a
full restoration of the Iraqi oil industry. "We thought it was
supposed to be a short-term, small contract, but now it turns out
Halliburton is restoring the entire oil infrastructure in Iraq,"
Waxman said. The Defense Department's only public acknowledgments of
this wide-ranging deal had been two press releases announcing that it
had asked Halliburton to prepare to help put out oil-well fires.

The most recent budget request provided by the Coalition Provisional
Authority in Iraq mentions the building of a new oil refinery and the
drilling of new wells. "They said originally they were just going to
bring it up to prewar levels. Now they're getting money to
dramatically improve it," Waxman complained. Who is going to own these
upgrades, after the United States government has finished paying
Halliburton to build them? "Who knows?" Waxman said. "Nobody is
saying."


It is so complicated to secure an Iraq contract from the United States
government that several big Washington law firms have gone into the
business of shepherding applicants through the process. More than
twenty billion dollars has been set aside for Iraqi relief and
reconstruction projects, with work contracts being awarded by the
Defense, State, and Commerce Departments, and by the U.S. Agency for
International Development, in coördination with L. Paul Bremer, the
head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. There's an additional
five billion dollars sitting in the Development Fund for Iraq, also
administered by the C.P.A. Officials at the C.P.A. say that contracts
are awarded on the basis of competitive bidding, but rumors
proliferate about political influence. When asked if connections
helped, an executive whose firm has received several contracts
replied, "Of course." One businessman with close ties to the Bush
Administration told me, "Anything that has to do with Iraq policy,
Cheney's the man to see. He's running it, the way that L.B.J. ran the
space program."

Cheney's spokesman confirmed that the Vice-President speaks "on
occasion" with officials at the C.P.A., and refers inquiries to the
authority from third parties "expressing interest in getting involved
in Iraq." The businessman offered an example of Cheney's backstage
role. He said that Jack Kemp, the former Republican congressman and
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, got help from Cheney with
a venture involving Iraq. Last summer, the businessman said, Kemp had
Cheney over for dinner, along with two sons of the President of the
United Arab Emirates. In an interview, Kemp confirmed the event, and
his business plans, but denied receiving any special assistance from
Cheney. "It was just social," Kemp said. "We're old friends. We didn't
talk about business." He acknowledged, however, that Cesar Conda, who
until last fall was Cheney's domestic-policy adviser, was helping him
with a study on how to fashion a public-private partnership plan to
develop the Iraqi economy.

Kemp said that he is working on two business ventures in Iraq. He
described the first project, a company called Free Market Global, as
"an international company that trades in gas, petroleum, and other
resources." Although Kemp provided only vague details about the
project, he said, "I can tell you that General Tommy Franks has joined
the advisory board of Free Market Global." Last year, General Franks
commanded the invasion of Iraq.

Franks's lawyer, Marty Edelman, confirmed his client's participation:
"That is correct. But it is my understanding that he won't be dealing
with Iraq or the military for a year" (to comply with government
ethics rules). Asked how Kemp and Franks had joined forces, Edelman
said, "It seems like everyone on that level knows each other." Edelman
himself is now on the advisory board of Free Market Global.

Kemp's second project, in which he said he would play an advisory
role, is something called al-Ruba'yia. He describes it as a
two-hundred-million-dollar fund to be invested in various ventures in
Iraq, from energy to education. He is trying to attract American
investors. Kemp is well positioned for this task: his political
organization, Empower America, counts among its supporters some of the
current Bush Administration's top figures. Donald Rumsfeld, for
example, is a former board member. "It's like Russia," the businessman
said. "This is how corruption is done these days. It's not about
bribes. You just help your friends to get access. Cheney doesn't call
the Defense Department and tell them, 'Pick Halliburton.' It's just
having dinner with the right people."


So far, other than the irregularities at Halliburton, there has been
no evidence of large-scale corruption in the rebuilding of Iraq. But a
number of friends of the Administration have landed important
positions, and others have obtained large contracts. For instance,
Peter McPherson, who took a leave from his job as president of
Michigan State University to serve as Paul Bremer's economic deputy in
Iraq, has been friends with Cheney since they both served in Gerald
Ford's White House. The head of private-sector development at the
C.P.A., one of the most powerful posts in Iraq, is Thomas Foley, a
Connecticut-based business-school classmate of President Bush, who
later became finance chairman for Bush's Presidential campaign in
Connecticut. Foley was a "pioneer," meaning that he raised more than a
hundred thousand dollars for Bush.

Last month, an inspector general was appointed for the C.P.A., as
required by Congress when it approved the President's
eighty-seven-billion-dollar supplemental budget for Iraq last year.
Rather than choosing a nonpartisan outsider for this watchdog role, as
most government agencies do, the Administration selected Stuart Bowen,
Jr., who spent two years as White House counsel in the Bush
Administration. According to The Hill, a Washington newspaper, L. Marc
Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith, the Under-Secretary of
Defense for Policy, is helping with international marketing for a
concern called the Iraqi International Law Group. Billing itself as a
group of lawyers and businessmen interested in helping investors in
Iraq, the venture is run by Ahmed Chalabi's nephew Salem, who doubles
as a legal adviser to Iraq's governing council, of which his uncle is
a member.

Tom Korologos, a well-connected Republican lobbyist in Washington,
recently took a temporary assignment as a senior counsellor to Bremer.
Korologos acknowledged that Washington lobbyists are scrambling to
solicit business in Iraq. "By definition, it's going to boom, because
of the numbers," he said. "The question is who's going to get the
contracts. There's a lot of money. Somebody's got to build the bridges
and roads." He added that talk of political influence over the process
was "bullshit."

Yet a look at one prominent defense contractor, Science Applications
International Corporation, based in San Diego, suggests the importance
of connections. One of its board members is Army General Wayne
Downing, who commanded the Special Forces in the first Gulf War and
ran counterterrorism in the Bush White House for the better part of a
year after September 11th. During that time, he accompanied Cheney on
visits to the C.I.A. to discuss U.S. intelligence on Iraq. For years,
Downing has been an unpaid adviser to Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi
National Congress, and he was an early advocate of armed insurrection
against the old Iraqi regime. S.A.I.C.'s seven Iraq contracts are
worth fifty million dollars.

It is unclear what special expertise S.A.I.C. brings to several of its
contracts. One company executive, who asked not to be named, said that
its chief credential for setting up what was supposed to be an
independent media for Iraq, modelled on the BBC, was military work in
"informational warfare"-signal jamming, "perception management," and
the like. Some of S.A.I.C.'s government contracts require that
specific individuals-referred to as "executive management
consultants"-be paid more than two hundred dollars an hour. One
contract cites a man named Owen Kirby as someone who will advise
Iraqis on the process of building democracy. Kirby is a program
director of the International Republican Institute, an organization
devoted to promoting democracy abroad. In October, 2001, the group
gave its Freedom Award to Dick Cheney. Before that, it gave the award
to Lynne Cheney.

It is not surprising that Cheney, after five years of running
Halliburton, a company that considers war as providing "growth
opportunities," regards winning the peace in Iraq as a challenge for
private enterprise as well as for government. Yet it is reasonable to
ask if Cheney's faith in companies like Halliburton contributed to his
conviction that the occupation of Iraq would be a tidy, easily managed
affair. Now that Cheney's vision has been shown to be overly
optimistic, and Iraqis and American soldiers are still getting killed
ten months after Saddam's overthrow, critics are questioning the
propriety of a reconstruction effort that is fuelled by the profit
motive. "I'm appalled that the war is being used by people close to
the Bush Administration to make money for themselves," Waxman said.
"At a time when we're asking young men and women to make perhaps the
ultimate sacrifice, it's just unseemly." Many of those involved,
however, see themselves as part of a democratic vanguard. Jack Kemp's
spokesman, P. J. Johnson, told me, "We're doing good by doing well."
Joe Allbaugh, Bush's former campaign manager, who has established New
Bridge Strategies, a firm aimed specifically at setting up for-profit
ventures in Iraq, makes no apologies. "We are proud of the leadership
the American private sector is taking in the reconstruction of Iraq,"
he said.

Another top Republican lobbyist in Washington, Charlie Black, told me
that his firm, BKSH & Associates, has plans to help Iraqis set up
their own affiliated public-relations and government-relations firm;
the company would become perhaps the first lobbying shop in Baghdad.
Black is excited by the opportunities in Iraq, but he, too, has
complaints. "The problem in Iraq so far is it's slow, and very
confusing for people to figure out how to do business there," he said.
"One week you go to Baghdad, and they say the decisions are being made
at the Pentagon. Then you go to the Pentagon, and they say the
decisions are being made in Baghdad. Only Halliburton is making money
now!" He laughed. "Is there too much cronyism? I just wish I could
find the cronies."

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