Dick Cheney, the conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarising vice presidents in US history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at the age of 84.
The quietly forceful Cheney served father and son presidents, leading the armed forces as defence chief during the Persian Gulf War under President George H W Bush before returning to public life as vice president under Bush’s son, George W Bush.
Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency.
He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself, all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant.
Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.
A survivor of five heart attacks, Cheney long thought he was living on borrowed time and declared in 2013 he now awoke each morning “with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day,” an odd image for a figure who always seemed to be manning the ramparts.
Having had his vice presidency defined by the war on terror, Cheney once disclosed that he had had the wireless function of his defibrillator turned off years earlier out of fear that terrorists would remotely send his heart a fatal shock.
In his time in office, the vice presidency was no longer merely a ceremonial afterthought. Instead, Cheney made it a network of back channels from which to influence policy on Iraq, terrorism, presidential powers, energy and other cornerstones of a conservative agenda.
Fixed with a seemingly permanent half-smile, detractors called it a smirk. Cheney joked about his outsized reputation as a stealthy manipulator.
“Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” he asked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.”
For admirers, he kept the faith in a shaky time, resolute even as the nation turned against the war and the leaders waging it.
Cheney retired to Jackson Hole, not far from where his daughter Liz Cheney a few years later bought a home, establishing Wyoming residency before she won his old House seat in 2016.
The fates of father and daughter grew closer, too, as the Cheney family became one of Trump’s favourite targets.
Dick Cheney rallied to his daughter’s defence in 2022 as she juggled her lead role on the committee investigating 6 January Capitol events with trying to get re-elected in deeply conservative Wyoming.
Liz Cheney’s vote for Trump’s impeachment after the insurrection earned her praise from many Democrats and political observers outside Congress. But that praise and her father’s support did not keep her from losing badly in the Republican primary, a dramatic fall after her quick rise to the third-most rated job in the House GOP leadership.
From Rumsfeld’s protege to Washington’s top decision maker
Politics first lured Dick Cheney to Washington in 1968, when he was a congressional fellow. He became a protégé of Donald Rumsfeld, serving under him in two agencies and in Gerald Ford’s White House before he was elevated to chief of staff, the youngest ever, at age 34.
Cheney held the post for 14 months, then returned to Casper, where he had been raised, and ran for the state’s single congressional seat.
In that first race for the House, Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, prompting him to crack he was forming a group called “Cardiacs for Cheney.” He still managed a decisive victory and went on to win five more terms.
In 1989, Cheney became defence secretary under the first President Bush and led the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq’s troops from Kuwait.
Between the two Bush administrations, Cheney led Dallas-based Halliburton, a large oil industry engineering and construction company.
Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of a longtime Agriculture Department worker. Senior class president and football co-captain in Casper, he went to Yale on a full scholarship for a year but left with failing grades.
He moved back to Wyoming, eventually enrolled at the University of Wyoming and renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent, marrying her in 1964.
He is survived by his wife, Liz, and a second daughter, Mary.