Richard B. Cheney

Cheney took a union job erecting electric-power lines in Wyoming. But after two drunk-driving arrests and with encouragement from his wife, he returned to school at the University of Wyoming, receiving bachelor's and master's degrees. He was working on a doctorate in political science when he quit to take a staff job on Capitol Hill with Rep. William Steiger (R-Wis.).

Vietnam War

During the Vietnam War, Cheney received five deferments to avoid the draft, four because he was a student and one as a new father. During his 1989 confirmation hearing to become Defense secretary, Cheney told a reporter he avoided Vietnam because "I had other priorities in the 60's than military service."

Political Career

Cheney and his wife are politically-active conservatives. He worked inside government. She carved out her own career as a novelist, conservative scholar and head of the National Endowment of the Arts between 1986 and 1993. After the 2000 election, Lynne Cheney became the first spouse of a president or vice president to resume an established, independent career.

Cheney was working on Capitol Hill in 1968 when President Nixon appointed another congressman, Donald Rumsfeld, director of his Office of Economic Opportunity. Cheney took it upon himself to write a long memo to Rumsfeld advising him on how to handle his confirmation hearing and organize the office and soon Cheney was working for Rumsfeld. And, as Rumsfeld rose in Washington, so did Cheney.

Rumsfeld became President Gerald Ford's chief of staff in 1974 and brought Cheney to the White House as his deputy. A year later, Rumsfeld was promoted to Defense secretary and Cheney, just 34-years-old, became White House chief of staff.

Congressional Career

In 1978, Cheney returned home and ran for Wyoming's sole congressional seat, winning easily despite suffering his first heart attack mid-campaign. Re-elected five more times to the House, Cheney won widespread admiration for his willingness to work with Democrats even as he built a staunchly-conservative voting record.

Cheney, rising to the No. 2 GOP House leadership spot, consistently opposed what he saw as anti-business environmental laws and joined Republican opposition to a resolution calling for Nelson Mandela's release in South Africa in the belief that Mandela's party, the African National Congress, was dominated by communists.

When Congress launched an investigation into possible abuses of power by the Reagan administration in the 1986 Iran- Contra affair, Cheney denounced it as a power grab by congressional Democrats trying to limit presidential authority.

Pentagon Career

In 1989, President George H.W. Bush tapped Cheney to become Defense secretary after the Senate blocked Bush's first choice, John Tower. Bush hoped Cheney's bipartisan reputation would lead to an easy confirmation and it did.

Cheney's mission was to slash the defense budget, which he did by reducing the 2.2 million troops to 1.6 million and cutting costly weapon systems.Cheney also reasserted civilian control at the Pentagon, publicly humiliating one general who lobbied Congress without Cheney's permission and firing another for talking publicly about possible Persian Gulf War strategies.

Persian Gulf War

Cheney oversaw the planning for the U.S. effort to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1990 and backed the first President Bush's decision to halt Operation Desert Storm before Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was toppled.

Cheney warned against toppling Saddam at the time, saying the U.S. "would would get bogged down in a long drawn out conflict..."

After stepping down from the Pentagon, Cheney spent more than a year exploring whether to run for president in 1996, but ultimately decided against it.

Halliburton CEO

In 1995, Cheney became chairman and CEO of Hallburton Co., tapping high-level Middle East contacts he made at the Pentagon and helping transform Halliburton into the world's largest oil-field services company, in large part by buying Halliburton's chief competitor, Dresser Industries.

He drew a $1.3 million annual salary and received a $20 million retirement package when he left the company to run for vice president. In 2003, Cheney faced accusations that he helped Halliburton win a no-bid defense contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry, which Cheney denied.

George W. Bush's Running Mate

In 2000, Bush asked Cheney, a family friend, to help him find a running-mate, but ended up asking Cheney himself to join his presidential ticket. The Bush team's chief concern wasn't Cheney's politics, but his health. He'd already had three heart attacks and quadruple bypass surgery, though the last attack was in 1988.

While Bush and Democrat Al Gore were still recounting ballots in Florida to determine who won the historically-close race, Cheney began placing his own loyalists in deputy and assistant secretary positions in a would-be Bush administration, ensuring that his influence would extend well into the federal government once he and Bush took office.

Vice Presidential Career

As Ford's chief of staff, Cheney ensured all of the president's advisers be heard in policy debate, but in the Bush White House he took steps to eliminate many of Bush's most senior advisers from that process on a broad range of issues.

Cheney consolidated enormous power in his West Wing. Unlike his predecessors, he had his own national security and legislative affairs staff that often usurped power from Bush's own aides. He refused, for instance, to allow administration officials overseeing Bush's domestic wiretapping program to see the legal papers used to create the program.

Worried that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice would oppose his antiterrorism proposals, Cheney ordered that all legal advice sent to Rice be routed through his office. It took three years for Rice's office to figure out what Cheney was doing. Before top intelligence officials delivered Bush's highly-classified morning briefing, they had to brief Cheney first,then Cheney sat beside Bush during the president's briefing to call attention to issues Cheney thought most important.

Cheney's office operated in nearly absolute secrecy. He refused to disclose the size or names of his staff, seldom released a public schedule and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs.

Cheney's office documents were stamped "Treated As:Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information," essentially creating a new classification of secrets and ensuring that even his routine paperwork would be as tightly guarded as the nation's closest-held secrets.Cheney invoked executive privilege to thwart demands for information from Congressand an independent prosecutor investigating the leaking of a CIA operative's name. But when the National Archives, acting on an order from Bush, asked to see Cheney's official papers, Cheney denied his office was part of the executive branch.

Terrorist Attacks

When terrorists rammed jetliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush was in Florida so Cheney took control at the White House and, in consultation with Bush, began supervising the government's response.Cheney told Bush to avoid Washington, ordered the evacuation of congressional leaders, sent cabinet members to emergency shelters urged Bush to order fighter jets to shoot down any additional rouge airliners.

Cheney and his staff also began contemplating what extraordinary powers Bush would need in the wake of the attack. From those talks came the legal groundwork for some of the administration's most controversial policies, including the surveillance of American citizens and the treatment of suspected terrorists, parts of which the courts eventually pared back.

Cheney dismissed public outcry over the programs he advocated as "phony moralizing," insisting the draconian measures prevented a second attack on America.

Iraq War

Despite qualms he expressed about toppling Saddam Hussein in 1991, Cheney was the driving force behind Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to remove Hussein.

In the controversial runup to the war in which the administration made a variety of accusations that later proved false, some of the most misleading claims came from Cheney,who, among other things, said "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," and suggested publicly that Hussein was connected to the 9/11 attacks - a claim Bush publicly refuted after the war began.

Hunting Accident

While hunting quail in Texas in 2006, Cheney accidentally shot 78-year-old Harry Whittington, a Bush supporter, in the face and chest. Whittington survived the shotgun blast but was hospitalized for his wounds and a mild heart-attack the shooting induced.

But even Republicans were alarmed at the response from Cheney and the White House. Administration officials at first blamed Whittington for stepping in front of Cheney.And it took four days for Cheney to publicly accept responsibility for the incident.

Post-Veep Career

Unlike Bush, who pledged not to publicly criticize his successor, President Barack Obama, Cheney has emerged as the chief defender of the Bush administration's legacy and has assailed Obama for "dithering" about the war in Afghanistan and for distancing himself from Bush's policies on detainees.

Cheney, who criticized Washington insiders for writing tell-all books, is at work on a memoir of his own, due out in 2011.

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