Cheney Looms Large Behind the Scenes
As Bush Turns to More Experienced VP
By JIM VANDEHEI and GREG HITT
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Moments after an airliner crashed into the Pentagon
Tuesday morning, Vice President Dick Cheney telephoned President Bush
from the secure Emergency Operations Center deep beneath the White
House.
Mr. Cheney urged Mr. Bush -- at the time
airborne in Air Force One -- not to return to
the White House, based on information
pouring into the Situation Room that officials say suggested the presidential
plane was being targeted. Mr. Bush reluctantly acquiesced.
That brief conversation between the two men captures why Mr. Bush
selected Mr. Cheney as his vice president nearly 14 months ago, and why
officials in Washington -- and many ordinary Americans -- feel comforted
by his presence alongside an untested commander in chief. A former
defense secretary and White House chief of staff, Mr. Cheney has
firsthand experience in dealing with terrorist regimes and the demeanor to
make difficult decisions during a crisis. He also has the president's full
confidence, which assumes added importance now, as Mr. Bush sorts
through advice from other members of his national-security team about
how to respond militarily.
"He's very judicious on things like this," says Brent Scowcroft, the
national-security adviser in the administration of Mr. Bush's father. "He
understands the political need for the president to look strong and
assertive. He also recognizes the hazards of a hastily or improperly
organized strike."
So far, Mr. Cheney has exerted his influence behind closed doors,
carefully avoiding any appearance of upstaging a president with far less
experience in military matters and national crises. Some lawmakers in both
parties, in fact, worry that Mr. Cheney carried discretion so far that it
suggested a void in leadership, as Mr. Bush delivered a somewhat shaky
public statement and then zigzagged across the country to elude potential
attack.
Thursday, White House officials continued extraordinary attempts to justify
Mr. Bush's actions, releasing more information about an Air Force One
threat, without saying who it came from. Both the president's father and
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani offered public testimonials to Mr.
Bush's leadership.
The president and vice president were separated again when Mr. Cheney's
security detail escorted him to Camp David, after it was decided for
security reasons that the president and vice president shouldn't be in the
same location for now.
Still, Mr. Cheney has had input into practically every major decision Mr.
Bush has made in the defining test of his eight-month-old presidency. Since
his Oval Office address Tuesday night, Mr. Bush has been consulting
advisers and foreign leaders while handling the public task of attempting to
comfort the country, including visits to the Pentagon Wednesday, to a
Washington hospital Thursday and a scheduled trip to New York Friday.
In his absence, Mr. Cheney takes a large role in internal policy discussions.
In the hours of Mr. Bush's absence, the vice president continued "sitting at
the switchboard" coordinating the government's response to the crisis, a
White House official said.
Shortly after boarding Air Force One in the moments following the World
Trade Center attacks, the president stationed himself at the command
center on the aircraft and "ordered" an "open line" to Mr. Cheney, a senior
White House official says. While others, including Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, would join in on some of the conversations, the
president and vice president talked frequently.
First, Mr. Cheney prevailed on Mr. Bush to steer clear of Washington for
several hours, bolstered by Secret Service reports that a terrorist
telephone threat contained coded language suggesting a knowledge of
classified procedures. A few minutes later, the president reached out to
Mr. Cheney again, this time conferring about the situation and whether to
put the military on "highest alert"; he did. He would talk to the vice
president several more times before returning to Washington. Meanwhile,
Mr. Cheney set out to rally support among congressional leaders and bring
together military experts inside the administration.
Mr. Cheney also was the primary point of contact for the congressional
leadership when senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers flew by
helicopter at midday Tuesday to what one congressional aide described as
a joint Federal Emergency Management Agency/military installation in rural
Virginia. It was Mr. Cheney -- not the president -- who led four or five
conference calls to the secure facility to discuss the evolving crisis and the
U.S. response.
"He was like he always is: matter-of-fact," said House Majority Leader
Richard Armey, a Texas Republican. "You're talking about a calming
influence."
After meeting with senior members of Congress and telephoning world
leaders Wednesday, the president asked Mr. Cheney to have lunch alone
with him in a room near the Oval Office. The vice president later turned his
attention to helping Mr. Bush win from Congress the funding he needed to
help victims and pursue new security measures, and the authority to carry
out military action.
Mr. Cheney, a former GOP House member, called his old congressional
colleague Robert Byrd, the influential West Virginia Democrat who holds
great sway over purse-string decisions in the Senate, to urge his support
for an emergency-spending bill to pay for the immediate federal
government's response to the crisis; by late Thursday, lawmakers and the
administration were discussing providing $40 billion. He helped lead the
administration's effort to push for a sweeping resolution authorizing military
action that put the White House out in front of Congress on the issue.
Mr. Cheney has a track record as a skeptic of the War Powers Act, which
was designed to put controls on a president's authority to wage war and
provides for extensive consultation with Congress. In the run-up to the
Persian Gulf War, Mr. Cheney -- then at the helm of the Pentagon -- was
among those officials initially resisting the war-powers debate sought by
Democratic leaders in Congress.
The House and Senate eventually approved the use of military force
against Iraq. But even before the votes, officials in that Bush administration
made it clear they would go forward regardless of what the
Democratic-controlled Congress did.
In the current crisis, Mr. Cheney called Speaker Dennis Hastert
Wednesday to push for giving the president maximum flexibility. "He's our
go-to guy," says John Feehery, spokesman for the Illinois Republican.
An early draft of the resolution -- first circulated on Capitol Hill late
Wednesday -- would have given the president broad latitude to unleash
U.S. military forces against those responsible for multiple air attacks
against the U.S. without the consent of Congress. Some Democratic and
Republican leaders privately worried about the wide scope of the
proposed authorization; Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, for one,
said it should provide "a clear statement of authority" for the president
while recognizing Congress "as a co-equal branch of government."
Mr. Cheney pushed ahead with the effort to work with Congress on a
mutually acceptable resolution, all the while consulting frequently with Mr.
Bush about a military response. "In times like this you can not have too
much experience," Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, a GOP leader, says of
Mr. Cheney. "He's about as qualified as anyone could possibly be to
handle a crisis like this."
Write to Jim VandeHei at jim.vandehei@wsj.com and Greg Hitt at
greg.hitt@wsj.com |
