Richard B Cheney

For the last four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has made the controversial claim that his office is not fully part of the Bush administration in order to exempt it from a presidential order regulating federal agencies' handling of classified national security information, officials said Thursday.

Vice President Dick Cheney was huddled with top U.S. officials in a bunker below the White House on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when a military aide told him that a hijacked aircraft was 80 miles from Washington and closing in fast. The aide needed to know: Did Cheney want to give warplanes scrambled over Washington orders to shoot it down? Cheney did not hesitate. He authorized fighter aircraft "to engage the inbound plane."

His resume was impressive: decorated U.S. Marine sergeant; aide to Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney; FBI intelligence analyst. He bragged that he had attended meetings of the National Security Agency for Cheney, then briefed the vice president on what was said. Leandro Aragoncillo, one of the highest-ranking Filipino Americans in the U.S. government, liked to say that what set Philippine employees apart was "our integrity and loyalty."

In the largest military contract termination ever, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on Monday canceled the $57-billion A-12 Navy attack plane, charging that the aircraft's builders had so badly mismanaged the program that they could never meet the government's contract terms. Cheney rejected pleas from the Navy and the two prime contractors--McDonnell Douglas Corp. and General Dynamics Corp.--to restructure the program and build fewer planes for unspecified billions of dollars in additional funds.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely. Cheney's remarks on Guantanamo appear to put him at odds with President Bush, who has expressed a desire to close the prison, although the decision is expected to be left to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Dick Cheney acknowledged Friday he failed to vote in 14 of the past 16 elections in Texas, hitting the Republican presidential ticket with a new controversy as nominee George W. Bush struggles to gain traction. Responding to a published report, Cheney defended his lapse--including a failure to vote in the March presidential primary--by saying he was busy traveling and had little interest in Texas issues.

Despite a Pentagon probe into alleged overcharging for fuel delivered to Iraq, the Army awarded Vice President Dick Cheney's former company a contract Friday to rebuild Iraq's oil industry. Halliburton won a competitive bid to rebuild the oil industry in southern Iraq, a contract worth up to $1.2 billion over two years, the Army Corps of Engineers said. Last March, shortly after the U.S.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney waded into another roiling public debate Monday, saying he supports same-sex marriage as long as the issue is decided by states rather than the federal government. Cheney, whose youngest daughter has a longtime lesbian partner, said at the National Press Club that "people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish."

Democrats now accuse him of ducking a war that defined his generation. But when 18-year-old Dick Cheney became eligible for the draft in 1959, compulsory military service did not loom large in the future vice president's life -- or for many other young men of his generation. True, Elvis Presley had just been drafted into the Army, but the pace of inductions was slow. The Cold War was on, and few Americans gave any thought to troubles in Southeast Asia.

Halliburton Co. agreed to pay a $7.5-million fine for alleged accounting irregularities in a case that pulled Vice President Dick Cheney off the campaign trail to provide sworn testimony to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government and the company said Tuesday. The commission accused Halliburton of improperly failing to disclose a change in its accounting practices in 1998 that boosted its bottom line. Cheney was chief executive at the time. The company acknowledged no wrongdoing.

Everybody knows how intellectually and physically demanding it is to be an elected official in modern times. You have to ask for people's money to ask for people's votes regularly. You have to spend other people's money all the time. You must thoroughly listen to long legislative debates and important discussions. You must get yelled at in town hall meetings. You must look like you're working and paying attention when, in fact, you aren't. Check out the computer screens of these Connecticut House members (photo right)

Everybody knows how intellectually and physically demanding it is to be an elected official in modern times. You have to ask for people's money to ask for people's votes regularly. You have to spend other people's money all the time. You must thoroughly listen to long legislative debates and important discussions. You must get yelled at in town hall meetings. You must look like you're working and paying attention when, in fact, you aren't. Check out the computer screens of these Connecticut House members (photo right)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney personally oversaw at least four briefings with senior members of Congress about controversial interrogation programs, part of a secretive and forceful defense he mounted throughout 2005 in an effort to maintain support for the harsh techniques used against detainees.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney waded into another roiling public debate Monday, saying he supports same-sex marriage as long as the issue is decided by states rather than the federal government. Cheney, whose youngest daughter has a longtime lesbian partner, said at the National Press Club that "people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish."

In the bitter debate over the nation's counter-terrorism policies, former Vice President Dick Cheney has introduced an assertion that substantially raises the stakes. Twice in the last two weeks -- including during his speaking duel with President Obama on Thursday -- Cheney has said that the Bush administration's approach may have saved "hundreds of thousands" of lives. It is a claim that goes beyond anything Cheney or former President George W.

It is being described as a full-court, all-out campaign, waged in the last days of the Bush administration by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, to get President Bush to grant a full pardon to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The effort failed, but the snub by the Texas Lone Ranger has left Cheney furious. The New York Daily News quoted a Cheney associate as saying that Cheney "tried to make it happen right up until the very end," pressing his case in many conversations, both in person and on the phone.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA, and that the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely. Cheney's remarks on Guantanamo appear to put him at odds with President Bush, who has expressed a desire to close the prison, although the decision is expected to be left to the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

As the clock runs down on the Bush administration, moderates within the government are mounting what may be one last drive to roll back many of the harsh detention and interrogation policies pushed through by Vice President Dick Cheney. The effort, led by officials at the State Department, represents the latest battle in a war between hard-liners and moderates that has raged though most of the Bush administration. In the early years of George W.

Vice President Dick Cheney, a conservative favorite but a divisive national figure, will join President Bush in addressing delegates on the opening night of the Republican National Convention, the White House said Friday. There had been doubts about whether Cheney would speak or even attend. When asked this week about the vice president's plans to go to the convention, spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said his September schedule had not been set.

Is it possible that Vice President Dick Cheney, whose approval ratings sank into single digits this spring, might not speak at the Republican convention? For now, the McCain campaign isn't saying. The controversy surfaced this week when the American Spectator, citing sources in Cheney's office, reported he would not attend the Minneapolis-St. Paul gala and was not being encouraged to do so.