Former US vice president dies aged 84

During his time in office, the vice presidency was no longer merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney turned it into a network of back channels that could influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of the conservative agenda.

Fixed in a seemingly permanent half-smile, Cheney joked about his extreme reputation as a sneaky manipulator — which detractors described as a grin.

“Am I the evil genius in the corner that no one can see coming out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s actually a nice way to work.”

Cheney, who took a strict stance on Iraq, which became increasingly isolated as other hawks left the government, was proven wrong at every point in the Iraq War, but he never lost his belief that he was essentially right.

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He claimed there were non-existent connections between the 2001 attacks on the United States and pre-war Iraq. He said US troops would be welcomed as liberators; they were not.

In May 2005, when 1,661 US soldiers had been killed, not even half the death toll at the end of the war, he declared that the Iraqi insurgency was in its final throes.

To his admirers, he stood firm and kept his faith during a tumultuous time, even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders who waged it.

But by Bush’s second term, Cheney’s influence had diminished, been checked by the courts, or political realities had changed.

Courts have ruled against efforts he supports to expand presidential power and give special harsh treatment to suspected terrorists. His hawkish stance on Iran and North Korea was not fully embraced by Bush.

Cheney often operated from undisclosed locations in the months after the 2001 attacks, keeping separate from Bush to ensure that one or the other survived any subsequent attacks on the country’s leadership.

With Bush out of town that fateful day, Cheney was a steady presence in the White House, at least until Secret Service agents swept him off his feet and carried him away; in a scene the vice president later described to comic effect.

From the very beginning, Cheney and Bush made a strange, unspoken but well-understood bargain. Putting aside his ambitions to succeed Bush, Cheney was given power that in some respects was comparable to the presidency.

This bargaining was largely realized.

“He’s built to be the No. 2 guy,” said friend Dave Gribbin, who grew up with Cheney in Casper, Wyoming, and worked with him in Washington. “He’s naturally level-headed. He’s fiercely loyal.”

As Cheney put it: “I decided that the only agenda I signed off on with the president would be his agenda, that I wasn’t going to be like most vice presidents — and that was about trying to figure out how I was going to be elected president when his term was over.”

His penchant for secrecy and behind-the-scenes maneuvering came at a price. He came to be seen as a thin-skinned Machiavelli who orchestrated an incompetent response to criticism of the Iraq war. And when he shot a hunting buddy in the torso, neck and face with an errant shotgun blast in 2006, he and his circle were slow to explain this extraordinary turn of events.

The vice president called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The victim, his friend Harry Whittington, recovered and quickly forgave him. Comedians have been relentless about this for months. Whittington died in 2023.

When Bush began his presidential quest, he sought help from Cheney, a Washington insider who had been drawn into the oil business. Cheney led the team in finding a vice presidential candidate.

Bush decided the best choice was someone who would help elect him.

The two faced a protracted post-election battle in 2000 before claiming victory. A series of recounts and court challenges, a whirlwind that stretched from Florida to the nation’s highest court, left the nation in limbo for weeks.

Cheney took charge of the presidential transition before victory was clear, helping the administration get off to a smooth start despite the lost time. In the office, disputes between departments competing for a larger share of Bush’s limited budget came to his desk and were often resolved there.

On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied for the president’s programs in the halls where she walked as a deeply conservative member of Congress and the No. 2 leader in the House Republican.

Jokes abounded about Cheney being the town’s real No. 1; Bush didn’t care and broke a few himself. But such comments became less appropriate as Bush clearly came into his own later in his presidency.

Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, where Liz Cheney bought a home a few years later and not far from where she resided in Wyoming before winning her former House seat in 2016. As the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favorite targets, the fates of father and daughter grew closer.

Dick Cheney joined his daughter’s defense in 2022 as he balanced his leadership role on the committee investigating Jan. 6 with his re-election bid in deeply conservative Wyoming.

Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump following the insurrection earned praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and his father’s support didn’t stop him from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after his rapid rise to No. 3 in the House GOP leadership.

Politics first drew Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressman. He was placed under the tutelage of Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill., served under him at two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House, and rose to become the youngest-ever chief of staff at 34.

Cheney held the job for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he grew up, and ran for the state’s only congressional seat.

During the first race for the House of Representatives, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, which prompted him to form a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed to achieve a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.

In 1989, Cheney became secretary of defense under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, which forced Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney ran Dallas-based Halliburton Corp., a major engineering and construction company for the oil industry.

Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of longtime Department of Agriculture employees. The senior class president and football co-captain at Casper went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but failed with his grades.

He returned to Wyoming, eventually enrolling at the University of Wyoming, and renewed his relationship with his high school sweetheart, Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964. He is survived by his wife, Liz, and his second daughter, Mary.

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