Dick Cheney

Richard Bruce Cheney was born on January 30, 1941, in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Marjorie Lorraine (née Dickey) and Richard Herbert Cheney. He was of predominantly English, as well as Welsh, Irish, and French Huguenot ancestry. His father was a soil conservation agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his mother was a softball star in the 1930s; Cheney was one of three children. He attended Calvert Elementary School before his family moved to Casper, Wyoming, where he attended Natrona County High School.

He attended Yale University, but by his own account had problems adjusting to the college and dropped out. Among the influential teachers from his days in New Haven was H. Bradford Westerfield, whom Cheney repeatedly credited with having helped to shape his approach to foreign policy. He briefly attended Casper College before enrolling at the University of Wyoming, where he earned both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in political science while working as a lineman. He subsequently started doctoral studies in political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was a full-time student for three semesters, part-time for one semester, and was shy of finishing his doctorate by a dissertation; he left to accept a congressional fellowship in Washington, D.C.

In November 1962, at age 21, Cheney was convicted of driving while intoxicated (DWI). He was arrested for DWI again in 1963. Cheney said the arrests made him "think about where I was and where I was headed. I was headed down a bad road if I continued on that course."

In 1964, Cheney married Lynne Vincent, his high-school sweetheart.

When Cheney became eligible for the draft, during the Vietnam War, he applied for and received five draft deferments. In 1989, after Cheney was nominated for secretary of defense, The Washington Post writer George C. Wilson interviewed him. When asked about his deferments, Cheney said, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." Cheney testified during his confirmation hearings in 1989 that he received deferments to finish a college career that lasted six years rather than four owing to subpar academic performance and the need to work to pay for his education. Upon graduation, Cheney was eligible for the draft, but at the time, the Selective Service System was not inducting married men. On October 26, 1965, the draft expanded to include married men without children; Cheney's first child, Elizabeth, was born nine months and two days later. Cheney's fifth and final deferment granted him "3-A" status, a "hardship" deferment available to men with dependents. On January 30, 1967, Cheney turned 26 and was no longer eligible for the draft.

In 1966, Cheney dropped out of the doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin to work as staff aide for Governor Warren P. Knowles.

In 1968, Cheney was awarded an American Political Science Association congressional fellowship and moved to Washington, D.C.

Early career

Cheney's political career began in 1969, as an intern for Congressman William A. Steiger during the Richard Nixon Administration. He then joined the staff of Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity from 1969 to 1970. He held several positions in the years that followed: White House Staff Assistant in 1971, assistant director of the Cost of Living Council from 1971 to 1973, and Deputy Assistant to the president from 1974 to 1975. As deputy assistant, Cheney suggested several options in a memo to Rumsfeld, including use of the U.S. Justice Department, that the Ford administration could use to limit damage from an article, published by The New York Times, in which investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reported that U.S. Navy submarines had tapped into Soviet undersea communications as part of a highly classified program, Operation Ivy Bells.

White House chief of staff

Cheney was Assistant to the President and White House deputy chief of staff under Gerald Ford from December 1974 to November 1975. When Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defense, Cheney became White House chief of staff, succeeding Rumsfeld. He was campaign manager for Ford's 1976 presidential campaign.

Private-sector career

Between 1987 and 1989, during his last term in Congress, Cheney was on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations foreign policy organization.

With the inauguration of the new Democratic administration under President Bill Clinton in January 1993, Cheney joined the American Enterprise Institute. He also served a second term as a Council on Foreign Relations director from 1993 to 1995.

From October 1, 1995 to July 25, 2000, he was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Halliburton, a Fortune 500 company. Cheney resigned as CEO on the same day he was announced as George Bush's vice-presidential pick in the 2000 election.

Cheney's record as CEO was subject to some dispute among Wall Street analysts. A 1998 merger between Halliburton and Dresser Industries attracted the criticism of some Dresser executives for Halliburton's lack of accounting transparency. Halliburton shareholders pursued a class-action lawsuit alleging that the corporation artificially inflated its stock price during this period, though Cheney was not named as an individual defendant in the suit. In June 2011, the United States Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling and allowed the case to continue in litigation. Cheney was named in a December 2010 corruption complaint filed by the Nigerian government against Halliburton, which the company settled for $250 million.

During Cheney's term, Halliburton changed its accounting practices regarding revenue realization of disputed costs on major construction projects. Cheney resigned as CEO of Halliburton on July 25, 2000. As vice president, he argued that this step, along with establishing a trust and other actions, removed any conflict of interest. Cheney's net worth, estimated to be between $19 million and $86 million in 2003, was largely derived from his position at Halliburton. Cheney earned $36 million in 2000, primarily from a severance payment from Halliburton. His 2006 gross joint income with his wife was nearly $8.82 million, primarily from exercising Halliburton stock options.

He was also a member of the board of advisors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) before becoming vice president.

Cheney was a member of the United Methodist Church and was the first Methodist vice president to serve under a Methodist president. His brother, Bob, is a former civil servant at the Bureau of Land Management.

His wife, Lynne, was chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1996. She is a public speaker, author, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. They had two daughters, Elizabeth ("Liz") and Mary Cheney, and seven grandchildren. Liz, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, is married to Philip Perry, a former general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security. Mary, a former employee of the Colorado Rockies baseball team and the Coors Brewing Company, was a campaign aide to the Bush re-election campaign; she lives in Great Falls, Virginia, with her wife Heather Poe. Cheney publicly supported gay marriage after leaving the vice presidency.

Residences

Since 1993, Cheney owned a house in Teton County, Wyoming. In 1987, Cheney purchased a house in McLean, Virginia for $450,000; he sold it to Joe Allbaugh in 2001 for $690,000. In 2000, he sold a multimillion-dollar house in Dallas, where he lived while he was chairman of Halliburton. In 2000, he acquired a lot in McLean for $1.35 million and filed plans to build a 21,000 square foot home. In 2008, Cheney purchased a home on Chain Bridge Road in McLean, Virginia, which he tore down for a replacement structure to be built. At the time of his death, the house had a market value of $5.8 million. In 2019, he sold his vacation house in Saint Michaels, Maryland on Eastern Shore of Maryland for $2.1 million, at a loss; he had paid $2.67 million for the house in 2005.

Political climate and agenda

Cheney publicly expressed concern that nations such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, could acquire nuclear components after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact obliged the first Bush Administration to reevaluate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) purpose and makeup. Cheney believed that NATO should remain the foundation of European security relationships and that it would remain important to the United States in the long term; he urged the alliance to lend more assistance to the new democracies in Eastern Europe.

Cheney's views on NATO reflected his skepticism about prospects for peaceful social development in the former Eastern Bloc countries, where he saw a high potential for political uncertainty and instability. He felt that the Bush Administration was too optimistic in supporting General Secretary of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor, Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Cheney not only wanted the break-up of the USSR but also of Russia itself. Cheney worked to maintain strong ties between the United States and its European allies.

Cheney persuaded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to allow bases for U.S. ground troops and war planes in the nation. This was an important element of the success of the Gulf War, as well as a lightning-rod for Islamists, such as Osama bin Laden, who opposed having non-Muslim armies near their holy sites.

At a congressional hearing, he rejected the idea that gays in the military posed a security risk.

CIA leak scandal

On October 18, 2005, The Washington Post reported that the vice president's office was central to the investigation of the Valerie Plame CIA leak scandal, for Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was one of the figures under investigation. Libby resigned his positions as Cheney's chief of staff and assistant on national security affairs later in the month after he was indicted.

In February 2006, The National Journal reported that Libby had stated before a grand jury that his superiors, including Cheney, had authorized him to disclose classified information to the press regarding intelligence on Iraq's weapons. That September, Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, publicly announced that he was the source of the revelation of Plame's status. Armitage said he was not a part of a conspiracy to reveal Plame's identity and did not know whether one existed.

On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted on four felony counts for obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators. In his closing arguments, independent prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that there was "a cloud over the vice president", an apparent reference to Cheney's interview with FBI agents investigating the case, which was made public in 2009. Cheney lobbied President George W. Bush vigorously and unsuccessfully to grant Libby a full presidential pardon up to the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, likening Libby to a "soldier on the battlefield". Libby was subsequently pardoned by President Donald Trump in April 2018.