Cheney Speaks
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
Cheney Speaks On Clinton's pardons, 9/11 as seen from the White House bunker, mistakes made in Iraq, and more By Stephen F. Hayes On January 20, 2001, Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne accompanied...
...As the United States contemplated military action after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Thatcher had famously told George H.W...
...The vice president had grown increasingly concerned about the level of violence in Iraq over the eight months since the U.S...
...the intelligence division...
...He was very steady, very calm," says Josh Bolten, then deputy White House chief of staff...
...Dozens of mobile light towers illuminated the deep gash across the fagade of the massive building...
...President Bush was in New York for much of the day, so the vice president represented the administration at commemorations at the White House and the Pentagon...
...In time, neither man would be able to recall what it was that had been so important...
...The vice president regularly asked why the bureaucra-cies—the CIA and the Pentagon—were not devoting more resources to understanding the insurgency and coming up with new ways to defeat it...
...The Shia had been treated for centuries as second-class citizens, governed by the Sunnis, and in recent decades the Baathists, under Saddam Hussein...
...Cheney gave it without hesitating...
...It's not to say that George W. Bush hasn't had experience here, but Dick Cheney knows this town extremely well...
...A plane has hit the World Trade Center," she told him...
...But his concern is consistent with the recollections of his staff...
...McConnell is an unassuming and erudite man from Bayfield, Wisconsin, a town of 625 on the northern tip of the state, with a square jaw that is softened by his prominent dimples and easy smile...
...He reviewed the events of the past hour...
...A massive American flag was unfurled from the roof of the Pentagon, released by the men who famously did the same thing five years earlier...
...They looked appropriately somber...
...Together with Cheney and National Security Adviser Con-doleezza Rice, he spent the morning trying to track planes by their tail numbers to determine how many might have been a part of the plot...
...The panic following the terrorist attacks could spell disaster for the U.S...
...He did not very often say, 'This is what I think we should do.' It's not his style...
...Liz Cheney, having heard about the first plane hitting the north tower on her car radio, called her father on his private line...
...And, pursuant to the president's instructions I gave authorization for them to be taken out...
...Because a passenger aircraft is not going to crash into the World Trade Center...
...He was rarely happy with the answers...
...He carried an oversized black briefing book under his right arm...
...The picture—from a different angle now—showed perhaps the top 50 floors of the towers, both engulfed in smoke...
...Cheney broke character in a conversation with Bremer in early November, after a bloody end to October...
...As usual, he said little in National Security Council meetings and saved his advice for one-on-one meetings with the president...
...We know of these and so many similar acts of courage and kindness on that terrible morning...
...For the man who had repeatedly evaded questions about how those attacks affected him personally, this was his answer...
...A wrong turn...
...For several impossible minutes, Cheney believed that a pilot following his orders had brought down a plane full of civilians in rural Pennsylvania...
...And then you start getting a sick feeling...
...Less than thirty minutes later, another tradition was discarded when Cheney and his family settled into the Aspen Lodge at Camp David, the facility typically reserved for the president...
...Cheney, backed by other senior officials and the Secret Service, continued to advise against it...
...Surely men and women here, and aboard Flight 77, were in their last moments holding and comforting one another...
...And that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their hands, to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and to comply with the United Nations resolutions and then rejoin the family of peace-loving nations...
...Cheney Speaks On Clinton's pardons, 9/11 as seen from the White House bunker, mistakes made in Iraq, and more By Stephen F. Hayes On January 20, 2001, Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne accompanied George and Laura Bush to worship services at historic St...
...My impression is that the Pentagon's mindset is that the war's over and they're now in the 'mopping up' phase...
...When he finished, the congregation joined him in singing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee...
...McConnell had arrived early at his office in the Old Executive Office Building, as usual...
...Sometimes said, particularly among the skeptical about George W. Bush here, that he'll be the one with real influence in the city...
...I think everybody was," he would say later...
...In the other, facing this collection of the nation's most powerful, were National Park Service groundskeepers who had probably worked overtime to prepare the grounds for the short ceremony...
...The vice president and Mrs...
...The building must have been charged, thought David Adding-ton, counsel to the vice president, who was standing against the outer wall of the bunker...
...The alternative is not, we go back to the way the world was before 9/11...
...Smoke continued to billow out of the hole...
...But just think about it...
...The morning newspapers, now completely irrelevant, sat on the left side of Cheney's desk, next to a thick rubber band...
...That is correct," said Cheney...
...What's our strategy to win...
...The entire room paused after Cheney had given the final order as the gravity of his order became clear...
...The United States," he declared, "will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts...
...They were unsuspecting of danger and undeserving of their fate...
...As soon as she saw that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, Mayfield charged into her boss's office...
...she asked...
...Liz Cheney and her young family joined her father and mother at Camp David...
...Cheney understood their concerns but the idea still held a certain crawl-before-you-walk appeal...
...It's not World War II...
...When he arrives, he joins President Bush for his intelligence briefing at 7:45...
...Two chairs on each side of the sofa form a semicircle...
...it was a beautiful day in New York City, as it was in Washington...
...The vexing security problems contributed to the political difficulties of postwar Iraq...
...In Iraq, Cheney thought it important to establish Iraqi political legitimacy as soon as possible...
...There's another way for the bloodshed to stop," Bush had said...
...Libby and Hannah listened to her report...
...At other times he would simply share his views in the course of a conversation...
...The chyron across the bottom of the screen read simply: "ABC News Live Coverage...
...At 10:18 a.m., Bolten suggested that Cheney notify the president that he had communicated the "shoot-down" order...
...On February 15, 1991, George H.W...
...Rumsfeld followed, and Cheney spoke last...
...Eventually, Mineta directed that all aircraft be grounded...
...It seems to me that our policy is driven more by our troop rotation schedule than by a strategy to win...
...Bush had urged Iraqis to overthrow Saddam Hussein...
...Bad weather...
...The ceremony on the Pentagon's River Parade grounds began at precisely 9:37 a.m...
...In the Old Executive Office Building, Scooter Libby's young assistant Jennifer Mayfield was also monitoring the developments in New York on her television...
...This is about preserving and protecting the presidency...
...Cheney and McCon-nell watched as a second plane appeared on the right hand side of the screen, banked slightly to the left, and plunged into the south tower...
...government overseas...
...The day started the same way Inauguration Day had started almost six years earlier: with a church service at St...
...Moments after the second plane hit, Cheney "popped out of his chair," says McConnell, and walked across the hallway to the office he had occupied as chief of staff in the Ford administration...
...Cheney was wearing a grey pinstriped suit, a crisply pressed white shirt, and a black tie with a silver, linked-chain pattern...
...This is not about appeasing the press or being the macho guy who is going to face down danger...
...The TVs also were the source of considerable frustration...
...Before the meeting started, he had given Mayfield strict orders: Do not interrupt this meeting...
...In others, he simply ignored the question...
...Mr...
...He was obviously moved...
...And I remember sitting in the living room there, turning on the television, watching the reruns, and I suppose that was the moment, as much as any, that it really hit home what the country had been through that day...
...And then we had to wait some more, and then we had to wait some more, and then we had to wait some more...
...And when we think of them, it will always be with a special feeling of empathy and sorrow...
...troops and, more frequently, Iraqis themselves...
...He put the phone down and told me: passenger jet...
...They fail to see that we're in a major battle against terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere...
...The headquarters of the U.S...
...Libby had just begun a meeting with John Hannah, a top national security adviser to Cheney...
...The Secret Service had told Cheney that another aircraft was rapidly approaching Washington, D.C...
...For Cheney, it was his first opportunity to reflect...
...After one minute, a lone bugler played "Taps...
...The last of these seemed unlikely...
...So he asked the vice president a third time...
...Nobody came to their assistance," Cheney says...
...Cheney regarded Thatcher as a hero and was eager to accommodate her request...
...I think we should have probably gone with the provisional government of Iraqis from the very outset, maybe even before we launched...
...Shortly after Bush's speech, the White House operator sent a call from the Federal Reserve to the communications team in the bunker: Alan Greenspan, Cheney's good friend from the Ford administration, was stuck in Switzerland...
...Once they got to the White House, the couples passed some time in the kind of small talk Cheney typically avoids...
...Sometimes he meant it literally— the Northern Alliance battling the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan...
...Bolten and Mineta stood behind him to his left, Libby and Rice to his right...
...His importance lies in the office he holds...
...He asked again, and Cheney once again gave the authorization...
...And I think to some extent the terrorists are betting that they can run out the clock on the Bush-Cheney administration and that it will be easier for them in the future because they won't face the kind of determined action that this administration has taken to take them on, to take the fight to them, to put in place first-rate defenses here at home, to do all those things we've done that have kept us safe and secure for the last five years...
...Not long after he sat down, at 9:58 a.m., the small group in the bunker watched as the south tower crumbled, floor after floor, sending a massive cloud of smoke and debris that chased terrified New Yorkers throughout lower Manhattan...
...Their conversation was interrupted by a bizarre news report on the television over Heiden's desk...
...occupation of Iraq would breed resentment among the Iraqi populace, and by the summer of 2004 his concerns had been realized...
...He was always very supportive of what we were trying to do...
...For most of the day, one was tuned to CNN and the other to the Fox News Channel...
...military is still smoking, and we're flying over on our way to hide the vice president," Addington thought...
...Even then, he had no regrets...
...World Trade Center...
...Cheney wanted Greenspan back home as soon as possible...
...Vice President Cheney, an old, old Washington hand," said ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, as the cameras captured Cheney joining the ceremony...
...The session was unremarkable...
...government response to the attacks was run from the conference room in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center beneath the White House, colloquially known as the bunker...
...We're told that one aircraft is down but we do not have a pilot report that did it...
...Cheney told Card's secretary that he wanted to speak with Card when he called back to the White House and returned to his office...
...There were several serious injuries and Lieutenant Colonel Charles H. Buehring Jr., a top communications adviser to Bremer, was killed...
...They kept trying...
...I don't know—there's all kinds of stories around all the time about how the people on his staff were working with the neocons at the Pentagon," he says...
...On the other hand, you maybe saved thousands of lives...
...An inexperienced pilot...
...You haven't had any lunch," she said to the vice president...
...Cheney says there wasn't time to consider the gravity of the order he had just communicated...
...Everyone had the same question, says Rice...
...A light rain began to fall as the vice president opened his remarks...
...The view from "the bunker" Much of the U.S...
...In a six-car motorcade that races across downtown Washington, D.C., blowing through stoplights, it takes five minutes to cover the three miles from Cheney's home at One Observatory Circle to the White House...
...Bremer shared his concerns about the deteriorating security situation...
...He joined in the rescue effort, and stayed in the work even after learning his wife could not possibly have survived...
...Seconds later, he had his answer...
...I think the Coalition Provisional Authority was a mistake, wasted valuable time...
...On a typical day, Cheney gets into the car waiting to take him to the White House at 7:30...
...I mean, you must know...
...You don't think in those personal terms...
...Cheney's chief of staff was not available and Bremer was surprised when the vice president himself picked up the phone...
...At 9:49 a.m.—11 minutes after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon—the Federal Aviation Administration carried out Mineta's order...
...He listened for a moment and then hung up...
...Those instances were rare, however, particularly in discussions about postwar Iraq...
...He remembers being surprised...
...Cheney told Bush that he supported such a directive...
...Other stories, we will never know...
...Cheney was accessible—he deliberately left gaps in his schedule for "staff time"—but his White House colleagues quickly learned to keep their impromptu sessions with the vice president short and to the point...
...I don't want to say that...
...And guys who haven't run since the high school track team were sprinting down the street...
...Mistakes in Iraq In Iraq, in the fall of2003, the teams assigned to find and secure Saddam Hussein's WMD stockpiles had little to show for their efforts...
...Cheney met briefly in his West Wing office with Scooter Libby, his chief of staff...
...The conference table in the bunker became cluttered with pens and paper, platters of sandwiches and cookies, a thermal coffee dispenser and cups, bottles of water, and cans of Diet Coke...
...Cheney, too, was exasperated...
...There's been at least three instances here where we've had reports of aircraft approaching Washington," said Cheney...
...Two planes have hit," he responded...
...You must know," Rice insisted in one phone call to the Pentagon...
...Bomb-sniffing German shepherds inspected the outside of the small yellow building...
...Is this terrorism...
...It was just kind of, 'Oh man, look at that.'" As they watched the television, the Secret Service agent received an urgent call from "the I.D...
...government was serious when it promised to send a liberating force, not an occupying one...
...That's crap," said Cheney...
...Within seconds, Libby received a call from Cheney asking him to return to the White House...
...The two men watched the fiery scene without saying a word...
...Moments later Cheney spoke to Bush for the third time...
...He started to speak and then, choking back tears, stopped again...
...Still, they were able to see a massive blast of smoke behind the north tower and debris from the explosion falling to the ground below...
...Did you see that...
...Other times it was figurative—the willingness of the Saudi regime to get serious about fighting Islamic radicals following a bombing in Riyadh in May 2003...
...I think a lot of people emotionally look at that and say, my gosh, you just shot down a planeload of Americans...
...With those small changes would come bigger ones...
...Cheney arrived shortly before the service began...
...I didn't get a sense that he was sort of working in a different direction...
...New York...
...Rice and Cheney were both filled with "intense emotion," she recalls, because they both made the same assumption...
...Lady Thatcher had been in town for another event and asked the White House to include her in the commemoration ceremonies...
...The ones who were lost," he said, had begun their day "busy with life...
...The weather was dismal, cold and rainy...
...Yes, I understand," Rumsfeld came back...
...governance in postwar Iraq was a failure...
...The president addressed the nation again at 12:36 p.m...
...His forceful two-minute speech early that afternoon gave the American public its first hint of the broader war to come...
...Libby's eyes shifted between his boss and the TV to Cheney's left...
...They were a disheveled bunch, with dirt visible on their olive green uniforms even from a distance...
...The famously unpunctual Clinton was finishing his term in signature style...
...President Bush made an initial mistake," presidential historian Robert Dallek told Susan Page of USA Today...
...Mary, who had been scuba diving in the Caribbean with her partner Heather Poe, was under the protection of her Secret Service detail...
...They had people who cared about them, people who depended on them, people who loved the sight of their face and the sound of their voice...
...soldiers and wounding several others...
...The insurgency, once understood as a small number of "dead-enders," was proving particularly stubborn in its efforts against U.S...
...Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke first...
...Gore joked about the last-minute presidential maneuvering that required Bush and Cheney to wait for their host...
...The ones who were lost" September 11, 2006, brought the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that had shaped the Bush administration...
...This is not Desert Storm...
...What a strange thing to say in the middle of this crisis.'" A "secure, undisclosed location" Shortly after 10:00 p.m., Cheney, along with his wife and top two aides—Libby and Addington—walked back upstairs from the bunker and out the diplomatic entrance of the White House to the South Lawn, where Marine Two, the vice president's helicopter, was waiting...
...Although the handover marked the official end of American rule in Iraq, it would not mean an end to the violence that had beleaguered the country for more than a year...
...His style is more Socratic...
...Several officials continued to monitor the TVs after Bush was finished...
...It was a—once you made the decision, once the plane became hijacked, even if it had a load of passengers on board who, obviously, weren't part of any hijacking attempt, once it was hijacked, and having seen what had happened in New York and the Pentagon, you really didn't have any choice...
...Cheney stopped briefly...
...Cheney felt a sense of familiarity as he arrived at the Capitol...
...Addington and Libby, sitting across from one another, exchanged a knowing look...
...The number of daily attacks had tripled from 12 to 36 since the spring...
...Clinton wasn't ready...
...Cheney had been aboard many such helicopter flights over the course of his long career, but this was the first time he had flown without a president aboard...
...The military aide seemed surprised that the answer came so quickly...
...The attempt to keep Bush away from Washington would be one of the few decisions that day to draw immediate criticism...
...Much had happened since—the attack on the Pentagon, the plane crash in Pennsylvania, the collapse of both World Trade Center towers...
...The tower on the left-hand side of the screen had a higher point of impact and there were flames licking skyward from the top of the building...
...Cheney picked up a phone with a direct line to Bush...
...The table is filled with photographs of Cheney's wife, his children and their partners, and his grandchildren...
...Joined by three Secret Service officials, a military aide, a communications expert, and Cheney's doctor, they took off under cover of darkness, an unusual precaution...
...The small television on the other side of the desk was tuned to ABC News...
...The attackers used decoy vehicles ahead of trucks carrying 1,000 pounds of explosives, as was characteristic of al Qaeda attacks...
...Wolfowitz narrowly escaped injury, but others in the building were not as lucky...
...When the service ended, they climbed into limousines for the one-block trip across Lafayette Park to the White House, where, according to the schedule, they were to have coffee with the Clintons and Gores before the inaugural ceremony...
...invasion...
...Tarantino, who had been in his office at the Pentagon when the plane crashed into the massive building, rescued a civilian trapped under debris in the Navy Command Center...
...John's Episcopal Church...
...Was Iraq tougher than he had thought it would be...
...Back at the White House, Cheney watched the screen as thick, gray smoke poured from the hole in the north tower...
...Back in the White House, the national security team watched from the bunker as Bush spoke...
...Cheney doesn't remember the conversation with Bremer...
...Reporters traveling with the president calculated that the plane was flying in circles because the televisions on board received a strong enough signal that the passengers could watch the local Fox affiliate for almost an hour with good reception...
...Most often, this was Camp David, the heavily forested presidential retreat in the mountains of western Maryland...
...And our nation will forever look with reverence upon their place—this place where there lives ended...
...Cheney told her that it was...
...Finally, everyone was in place...
...The unthinkable was suddenly reality...
...We'd both had these important government jobs over our career, and part of the job was paying attention to doomsday scenarios," says Add-ington...
...Eastern Standard Time on the South Lawn, five years to the minute after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower of the World Trade Center...
...My God, we're evacuating the vice president from Washington, D.C., because we've been attacked...
...The helicopter flew over the Pentagon...
...I need to talk to the president," he said, and immediately hung up...
...On June 28, 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority handed power to an interim Iraqi government in a secret ceremony announced only after the transfer was completed...
...There wasn't any kind of alarm," says McConnell...
...No one knew what to make of it...
...Sewn into the carpeting directly in front of the fireplace is the seal of the vice president of the United States...
...Was it down because it had been shot down or had it crashed...
...From there, Cheney made his way back to the White House to participate in a moment of silence at 8:46:26 a.m...
...We were all dividing 80 by 500 miles an hour to see what the windows were," Scooter Libby would later say...
...The conversation on the way to the Capitol was more substantive than the one at the White House...
...The next day, insurgents conducted simultaneous bombings of four buildings in Baghdad, three police stations and the headquarters of the Red Cross...
...Then, silence...
...At 10:28, the north tower collapsed...
...None came...
...O'Keefe, a tall, slender man whose graying hair and push-broom mustache give him a striking resemblance to Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther, had worked closely with Cheney at the Pentagon as the military's chief financial officer and comptroller...
...Yes, that's true____The notion that somehow we've got to get across to people is they just cannot think of this as a conventional war...
...Although the two televisions on the wall could be tuned to different channels, only one of them was processing audio...
...Having spent all day in the bunker, watching the towers fall and so forth, the president comes back, NSC meeting, president speaks, getting on the helicopter and flying out, looking down on the Pentagon as we left, smoking, lights on it and so forth, and then flying up to Camp David and going to Aspen...
...O'Keefe nodded, they had been watching the reports inside...
...Bush had left Florida almost immediately after his first brief statement to the press at 9:30 a.m...
...As O'Keefe came out of Cheney's office, McConnell gestured to the television...
...The combat air patrol had been scrambled to patrol the area...
...A couple were confirmed hijack...
...They waited for news...
...Libby hurried back across West Executive Avenue— the alleyway between the White House and the Old Executive Office Building—to rejoin his boss...
...On November 6, Bremer called from Baghdad for Scooter Libby...
...Arriving shortly before his designated time, McConnell found Cheney and O'Keefe deep in discussion, so he waited just outside Cheney's office...
...Cheney took his place at the center of the table, just below the presidential seal...
...Vice President, in my view we do not have a military strategy for victory in Iraq," he said...
...A coffee mug was on the desk in front of Cheney, the television remote control just to his right...
...So it was back to Basel...
...The previous day, McConnell had casually mentioned to Cheney's assistant Debbie Heiden that he wanted to see the vice president...
...The ceremony was over...
...Mary Matalin, Cheney's top communications adviser, joined the small group around the television...
...We knew then it was terrorism," Cheney recalls...
...The idea met stiff resistance at the State Department and the CIA, who worried that the Iraqi people would be skeptical of leaders handpicked by the United States, and consisted mainly of Iraqi exiles...
...That failure was eroding domestic support for the war and beginning to chip away at the credibility of the U.S...
...It's a terrorist act" Shortly before 7:00 a.m., September 11, 2001, Cheney sat for his regular CIA briefing in the small, first floor library of the vice president's residence...
...Screw pilot discretion," he would later recall saying, "Bring 'em all down...
...The vice president has offices in both the White House and the Eisenhower (Old) Executive Office Building, with most of his staff located in the latter—what President Bush calls "The Ike...
...I've been asking the same question," he said...
...The vice president will sometimes ask questions in his briefings with Bush to make sure the president is exposed to in-depth treatment of issues Cheney deems important...
...It's possible...
...So we've got a couple aircraft up there that have those instructions at this present time...
...He had served as secretary of commerce in the final months of the Clinton administration and Bush, who came to office on a promise to "change the tone" in Washington and eager to have a Democrat in his cabinet, asked Mineta to serve as secretary of transportation...
...Built into the wall closest to the entrance are two large television screens...
...I think there are many Shia who still, to this day, aren't convinced we're going to stay the course, that we're going to get the job done...
...At several places around the table, drawers contain a white telephone for secure communications...
...on Tuesday, September 11...
...Cheney asked Addington to make arrangements with the Pentagon to have Greenspan flown back to the United States the next day...
...Libby wanted desperately to come up with a policy guidance for the vice president by the end of the day...
...We must have waited about half an hour before we could go over there...
...It was mid-morning before Cheney finally spoke to Dennis Hastert, an old friend now serving as speaker of the House...
...Many Iraqis assumed that the United States refused to remove Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf war because the United States wanted him to remain in power...
...On this day, like that one, a cool rain fell...
...But the group in the bunker had little time to reflect on the tragedy...
...He spoke to Cheney several times on a secure line, reiterating his desire to return to Washington...
...John's Episcopal Church...
...Though he considered Cheney a friend, he knew better than to drop in for an idle chat...
...In an interview two months later, Cheney dismissed the criticism...
...And that's when you go, Geez...
...Journalists looking for a poignant moment on this solemn day had found one...
...Unless it's terrorism," Libby responded, "don't interrupt me again...
...This article is adapted from his new biography Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins...
...His large, mahogany desk sits opposite the entrance to the room, beneath a map depicting the Battle of Chicka-mauga, one of several Civil War battles that his great-great grandfather survived...
...It was "just bang, bang, bang," says Cheney, one life-or-death decision after another...
...Served in the House of Representatives, served as the secretary in various cabinets, and certainly knows that this town is not—not always paved with goodwill...
...Two minutes later came yet another warning: An unidentified aircraft was in flight less than 10 miles out...
...The service opened with readings by Attorney General Gonzales, the Reverend Kathleene Card, wife of White House chief of staff Andy Card, and Navy Commander David Tarantino...
...Cheney was rushed off to his waiting limousine and his entourage—Secret Service, staff, photographers, and reporters—scrambled to keep up...
...One of the signature landmarks of the New York City skyline was gone, and with it, hundreds or perhaps thousands of lives...
...The proceedings were marked by a solemnity befitting the occasion...
...As the Marine Corps Band played "Amazing Grace," the White House staff formed two lines arcing out from the doors to the South Lawn...
...Those comments and the subsequent failure of the United States to support the rebellion would have lasting consequences...
...Hastert had been moved some twelve miles to Andrews Air Force base despite citywide traffic gridlock...
...Cheney's style, at least insofar as I saw it in those meetings, was to ask questions and not—he didn't really reveal his hand," says L. Paul Bremer, who served as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq after the invasion...
...As Cheney spoke these words, he looked out at the families of the ones who were lost...
...So he gave me the facts and what I needed to know and he gave me a review of what planes they thought might be still in the air that they thought might be dangerous...
...It's not Korea...
...He had been concerned that a long-term U.S...
...McConnell walked in through the door with a stack of papers under his arm and took a seat along the left side of Cheney's desk...
...It's a terrorist attack, I've got to go...
...A burly Army Ranger stood alone next to the holding area for the press, crying silently as he listened...
...Before the war, Pentagon planners had discussed bringing a government-in-waiting to Iraq to run the country after Saddam Hussein had been removed from power...
...Bush is the big picture guy, Cheney wants details...
...Streets were closed for blocks...
...Congress and later, as secretary of defense—and he had been on the platform for the inaugural ceremonies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W...
...Four flags sit on either side of a thin table behind Cheney's chair: the American flag and the Wyoming state flag on the left...
...The president's place is back in Washington...
...Sometimes it would be the way he phrased a question or framed an issue...
...But there were other reasons for those political problems, Cheney thought, including some that he traced back to decisions he had supported more than a decade earlier...
...They had been encouraged, in '91, to rise up, and did, and were slaughtered for their troubles...
...According to Bremer's notes from the call, Cheney agreed...
...I said yes," Cheney said, not angrily but with authority...
...Earning their trust would be critical to American success in Iraq...
...The white walls are spare, with only two gold-framed oil paintings—portraits of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams—and a map of the world as decorations...
...Many in the audience looked skyward as an airplane roared overhead on its departure from Reagan National Airport, just two miles away, a powerful if unintentional reminder of the attacks...
...In all of his interviews after 9/11, Cheney had refused to talk about how those attacks had affected him personally...
...We couldn't get an answer from the Pentagon," says Rice...
...One by one, cabinet secretaries strode by the small pool of reporters and photographers, most wearing somber expressions for the remembrance: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Rob Portman...
...It was the right call...
...I think Osama bin Laden was...
...Liz and her parents gathered in the living room of the Aspen Lodge...
...The chairman of the Federal Reserve had been on his way home from a meeting of central bankers in Basel when all aircraft bound for the United States were rerouted...
...Terrorism will not stand," he had said, before promising an investigation to find "those folks who committed this act...
...A military aide asked Cheney for authorization to take out the aircraft...
...Cheney asked his speechwriter...
...In some cases, he deflected queries about his own emotions by providing a policy response...
...On this day, with Bush on the road, there was no intelligence briefing at the White House...
...We were laughing," Cheney recalls, "because Gore was explaining the reason we'd been delayed and they hadn't been ready to receive us on time was Clinton had been upstairs pardoning people...
...The NSC and principals committee (the top members of the war cabinet) conducted regular video teleconferences with Baghdad to assess the progress and the difficulties...
...The current occupant, Andy Card, was traveling with President Bush in Florida...
...In retrospect, he says, the mechanism for U.S...
...Nonetheless, O'Keefe spent more than twenty minutes in Cheney's office, discussing a matter that seemed urgent at 8:30 a.m...
...Mineta spent much of the morning at Cheney's side, scrawling notes on a white legal pad with a blue, felt-tip pen...
...And you know, that's a pretty heady moment, a pretty heavy burden...
...The military aide seemed to think that because Cheney had answered so quickly, he must have misunderstood the question...
...His first thought, my first thought—we had exactly the same reaction—was it must have been shot down by the fighters...
...Cheney's office is quite spacious—longer than it is wide, with high ceilings—particularly for the cramped West Wing...
...According to one official in the room, Cheney was "cranked up" about the technical problems and repeatedly demanded that they be fixed...
...Jenny Mayfield raced back into Libby's office and told him: "It's terrorism...
...The departure itself was a violation of longstanding protocol: No one takes off from the South Lawn other than the president...
...A long line of black vehicles snaked its way from the White House along the Mall, past the Washington Monument and over the Potomac River, zipping past traffic left over from the morning rush hour that had been blocked to allow the vice president to pass...
...Watching the uninterrupted coverage not only provided new and timely information, it also allowed officials in the bunker to understand what exactly the American people were seeing as they designed their public response...
...We have to know whether we actually engaged and shot down a civilian aircraft, he said, incredulously...
...The impression may well be growing among the insurgents that we won't stay the course," he warned...
...He clearly had been through crises before and did not appear to be in shock like many of us...
...Hello...
...It wasn't a close call...
...The vice presidential limousine was led by a policeman in full rain gear riding a Harley-Davidson and followed by three oversized black SUVs...
...Bush not to go "wobbly" in his response...
...We have a decision to make, Cheney told the president: Should we give the pilots an order authorizing them to shoot down civilian aircraft that could be used to conduct further attacks in Washington...
...They weren't...
...He, too, noticed that it was a clear day in New York...
...In the far left corner of the room is a small television perched on a walnut-stained stand that matches the desk...
...Occasionally, however, other meeting participants or members of his staff got a window into his thinking on an issue...
...The president agreed...
...It had to be done...
...A second row of chairs along the wall provides room for support staff...
...Cheney's solo briefing is more detailed than Bush's because the vice president asks for more material...
...For Cheney, the handover did not come soon enough...
...An airplane had struck the World Trade Center...
...Cheney talked to Hastert about presidential succession...
...In one line stood well-groomed cabinet secretaries and their spouses, most of them wearing expensive-looking black suits and coats...
...On the television, one floor after another gave way, a bit of order amidst the catastrophe...
...Bush and Clinton rode to the ceremony together, while Cheney joined Gore and several members of the congressional leadership for the short drive down Pennsylvania Avenue...
...Shortly after Cheney hung up, the officials in the bunker were advised that a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania...
...And then Cheney paused, his words and his emotions tangled in his throat...
...He was preparing for a series of upcoming speeches and needed to discuss the broad themes with his boss...
...On October 26, 2003, terrorists fired 40 French and Russian antitank missiles at the al Rashid Hotel, temporary home to many senior CPA officials and, on that night, to Paul Wol-fowitz, deputy secretary of defense...
...For much of the day, the team in the bunker experienced 9/11 as much of America did: through TV...
...Cheney, seated at the conference table, stared at the screen...
...They stood tall and seemed to be proud of their contributions...
...economy, and Greenspan was widely considered a calming influence on the markets...
...From day to day, only a handful of senior White House officials knew where Cheney would be hidden...
...As the afternoon wore on, Condoleezza Rice noticed that Cheney hadn't eaten anything...
...This is a struggle that's going to go on in that part of the world for decades...
...His first statement, some three hours earlier, had come off as limp and inadequate...
...And so it was a matter that required a decision, that required action...
...Cheney escorted his wife and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher down the aisle created by the two lines...
...Americans, in that view, were the willful enablers of the man who brutalized them for decades...
...You know, Dick never talks for very long about anything...
...Many of them, holding and comforting one another, looked back at him, their faces streaked with tears...
...For several hours, into the early morning of Wednesday, they sat quietly around the television and watched again the images from the day...
...You can't turn back the clock____There's always a possibility that maybe the next president you elect decides they don't want to continue the policy and so they adopt the other approach, the one that failed before 9/11...
...It would be the first of many nights Cheney would spend in a series of "secure, undisclosed locations...
...We talked, but it wasn't a long conversation," says Hastert...
...That phrase was used so frequently in media reports on the vice president's whereabouts that it became a staple of late-night television humor...
...As McConnell waited for Cheney to finish his conversation with O'Keefe, he chatted with the Secret Service agent posted at the door and with Heiden, whose desk sits just outside the office...
...We will always understand the pain of their families...
...All of the female staffers coming down 16th Street were running in high heels," he remembered...
...Within minutes, Cheney was told that an unidentified aircraft was 80 miles outside of Washington...
...How in the hell," he asked himself, "could a plane hit the World Trade Center...
...All wore virtually the same stunned expressions...
...In reality, "secure undisclosed location" was the generic description for anywhere Cheney stayed...
...Cheney consulted with Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, a California Democrat who had worked alongside Cheney in Congress...
...The frenzy in the bunker came to a halt and, but for an occasional whisper, the room went silent...
...Two windows on the left side of the room provide light, and the royal blue sofa in front of Cheney's desk matches the carpet exactly...
...And it's my understanding they've already taken a couple aircraft out...
...I thought, 'Where did that come from...
...In the middle of the room is a rectangular wood table, long enough to seat 16 people comfortably...
...At 10:39 a.m., Cheney spoke to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for the first time...
...When Libby returned to his office in the Old Executive Office Building, Sean O'Keefe, the number two official at the Office of Management and Budget, stopped by Cheney's office for an unscheduled visit...
...We got in the cars and we had to wait," says Cheney...
...On several occasions, the officials could see notices of "breaking news" without being able to hear the details...
...Cheney sat behind his desk, leaning back in his large black chair...
...From two miles away, an Army chief warrant officer, whose wife worked in this building, saw the fire and ran to the scene...
...They did not...
...McConnell, who likes to keep a low profile, figured he would just try to catch Cheney in his office for a brief chat as the vice president read the morning papers...
...In reality, Bush flew west to Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana...
...policy...
...Both Rice and Cheney worked the phones in a desperate search for more information...
...There was quiet on the other end of the line...
...The vexing details of the coming announcement had been in discussion for weeks without resolution...
...President Bush had decided to support the creation of a Palestinian state, a major change in U.S...
...But there would be other locations over the next several months...
...There would be nearly as many casualties in October and November as there had been in the preceding four months combined...
...We just have to have people understand that, and understand that the alternative is not peace...
...In the ABC News picture, the north tower largely blocked their view of the plane hitting the south tower...
...We got over there and made nice-nice and so forth," he says, "waiting to go up to the Hill...
...In an odd moment of incongruity, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings smiled for the cameras and waved as if she were arriving at the Academy Awards...
...One man nervously combed his tousled hair with his hands after he removed his cap out of respect for the flag...
...Now, at 80, Thatcher seemed unsure of her footing as she walked slowly down the grass pathway, clinging tightly to Cheney's arm...
...instead, he was surprised to find he had been given a one-on-one appointment for 8:30 that morning...
...Bremer said he was particularly concerned about the talk of lowering troop levels and replacing American soldiers with poorly trained Iraqis...
...Their destination was kept from all but a handful of the most senior White House officials...
...He was generally supportive of my view on how we had to go forward...
...I don't have any firsthand knowledge of that...
...Also waiting to speak to Cheney that morning was John McConnell, the vice president's chief speechwriter...
...You had the president on the ground in Florida and then in the air in Florida," recalls Hastert, "so the Constitutional line had to be kept in order...
...He had taken many oaths of office before— as White House chief of staff, six times as a member of Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard...
...But if Cheney was skeptical of the CPA while it was operating, Bremer never saw it...
...Less than a week later, insurgents brought down a Chinook helicopter near Falluja, killing 17 U.S...
...Cheney again gave the order to shoot it down...
...Cheney briefed his friend...
...I never saw it from Cheney...
...A provisional Iraqi government, even an imperfect one, could help convince Iraqis that the U.S...
...From the days immediately following the 9/11 attacks Cheney had spoken of the importance of "getting the locals into the fight...
...After the small congregation sang "Be Thou My Vision," the Reverend Luis Leon offered his personal recollections of the day, five years earlier...
...I don't know that you're going to be involved for Iraq for decades...
...We can't confirm that," Rumsfeld told his former aide...
...White House staffers aboard Air Force One were not told where they were going...
...Each one of them had hopes and plans for the future...
...Shortly afterwards there had been an abortive uprising of Iraq's Shi-ites, brutally wiped out by Saddam...
...As soon as she said it she realized that it probably sounded odd...
...the secretary of defense's flag and the vice president's flag on the right...
...The television reporting throughout the day proved invaluable...
...In the chaos of the previous hour, it had never crossed Cheney's mind that the towers would crumble...
...Reporters exchanged quick glances as if to confirm that they were seeing what they thought they were seeing...
...Bush...
Vol. 12 • July 2007 • No. 42
