Companions Say Pastime Gives Cheney a Timeout
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 19, 2006
As they flew toward South Carolina for a campaign event in 2002, Lindsey O. Graham had a quiet moment to talk with Vice President Cheney aboard Air Force Two. As Graham recalls the encounter, he quizzed the vice president about the stresses of his high office.
"How do you keep your sanity in this job?" Graham asked.
Simple, Cheney answered. "Hunting."
Long before the shot heard 'round the world, Cheney took refuge from the burdens of leadership with an intricately crafted, Italian-made shotgun, Texas snake boots, a blaze-orange vest and the camaraderie of his fellow hunters. Stalking game birds through marshlands on horseback or from a truck, he has escaped the Washington political wars for days at a time.
The vice president's accidental shooting of a 78-year-old lawyer in Texas has thrown a spotlight on Cheney's hunting forays as never before. Hardly a casual outdoorsman posing for election brochure pictures, Cheney proves to be a serious practitioner of the sport who in five years in office has traveled to lodges throughout the country -- Texas, South Dakota, Georgia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Arkansas and Louisiana. Some of those "undisclosed locations" he has been at since Sept. 11, 2001, turn out to have plenty of quail, ducks, pheasant or even, yes, doves.
"The whole point of it is to get away," said Graham, now a Republican senator from South Carolina and a regular Cheney hunting partner. "It is a tremendous release for this man. Getting out and getting away, that keeps him balanced."
Cheney, an intense, seemingly dour man, spoke of the satisfaction almost wistfully in his interview with Fox News Channel last week, perhaps recognizing that it may be more problematic to continue pursuing his avocation after the shooting accident Feb. 11. "It's brought me great pleasure over the years," he said. "I love the people that I've hunted with and do hunt with. Love the outdoors. It's part of my heritage, growing up in Wyoming. It's part of who I am."
It hasn't always been. Although Cheney has fished avidly most of his life and hunted occasionally as a boy, friends say he only picked up hunting seriously about a decade ago while he was chief executive of Halliburton Co. in Texas. "He had to have a way to relieve himself but also to take advantage of some business opportunities," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), another frequent hunting partner.
Since becoming vice president in January 2001, Cheney has continued to mix work and pleasure in these trips, at least in his choice of companions. Besides Graham and Chambliss, Cheney has gone hunting with a variety of other politicians, including Republican Sens. John Thune (S.D.), Trent Lott (Miss.) and Jim DeMint (S.C.), South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), former treasury secretary Nicholas F. Brady and former senators Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and Zell Miller (D-Ga.).
Although associates say Cheney does not use hunting trips as an explicit fundraising vehicle, he has brought along prominent business figures, including Ohio billionaire Leslie H. Wexner, whose retail empire includes such chains as Limited Stores, Express, Bath & Body Works and Victoria's Secret. Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the Texas ranch where the shooting accident occurred, is a registered lobbyist. And of course, Cheney's most famous hunting partner before Harry Whittington was Justice Antonin Scalia, a fact that sparked controversy because the Supreme Court was ruling in a case involving Cheney and Scalia declined to recuse himself.
Yet several hunting companions say the trips include more political gossiping and storytelling than horse-trading. While women sometimes come along, such as Armstrong and Pamela Pitzer Willeford, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland who was also at the Texas ranch a weekend ago, Lynne Cheney does not seem to be a regular on these trips. But the famously taciturn vice president reportedly opens up after a day in the open.
"It's a completely different person," Graham said. "When he's in a meeting, he's the ultimate sit-back-and-listen guy. I've been in meetings with him when he seldom uttered a word. . . . But when he gets out into the field, he relaxes and it shows."
Added Chambliss, "He's a pretty loose guy when he has the chance to kick back. It's not that he's bubbling over by any means, but he's willing to share his experiences."
While Cheney pays any hunting fees or lodging expenses if charged, taxpayers invariably pick up much of the cost of Cheney's hunting hobby. As with his predecessors, the government pays for Secret Service agents, military aides and the rest of the entourage that travels with vice presidents wherever they go, as well as the expense of Air Force Two. But it is not clear how much that costs. The budget lists $1 million for the vice president's annual travel, including his official duties, but the figure is rounded to the nearest million, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
On a typical two-day hunting trip, as described by companions, Cheney rises as early as 4:30 a.m. and receives his morning national security briefing before heading to breakfast or sometimes a pre-breakfast hunt. While he and his partners often ride horses, a dog master supervises the pointers or other hunting dogs that track down the quail or other birds. Once a dog smells one, he stops flat in his tracks. Watching the dogs, some Cheney associates say, is as much fun as the shooting.
"You get quite a thrill," said former senator Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), a Cheney friend and hunting partner. "Sometimes you don't even shoot. It's just amazing. There's a lot to it. It's not romantic for me, but it's very satisfying. Not the killing. Sometimes I don't get a thing. Just the joshing, the talking, the outrageous babble you have out there."
Cheney naturally favors some of the country's most exclusive and remote hunting ranges, such as the Armstrong Ranch, the 50,000-acre private spread in south Texas where he wounded Whittington, or places such as the Paul Nelson Farm in South Dakota, where the owners boast of a separate gun cleaning room with four cleaning stations furnished with compressed air and individual boot dryers.
At a lodge in Georgia, Cheney would shoot as many as a dozen birds a day, the state limit. While Cheney sometimes hunts pen-raised birds, Chambliss said he has only hunted wild bird with the vice president. Sometimes they cook the birds for dinner, other times not. Chambliss said he likes to serve Cheney fried chicken, rice and gravy and collard greens. "At night," Graham said, "you sit there and relive the hunt and talk about everything under the sun." Or most everything; Graham, who last year fought Cheney on legislation banning torture, said they leave disagreements behind.
Although many hunters drink as part of the ritual, Cheney's partners insist that he does not. The vice president said he drank a single beer for lunch the day of the accident, hours before he shot Whittington by mistake. Regular partners said even that is rare and that any alcohol is usually reserved for the end of the day after hunting is over.
Despite the blast of birdshot at Whittington, Cheney's friends described him as a careful, accurate gunman. He's "an excellent shot," Lott told reporters last week, adding mischievously, "He never shot me." Lott also noted that Cheney "looks the part," a virtual Field & Stream model in his hunting garb.
Chambliss called Cheney an "over and under" shooter, meaning he fires his shotgun twice when a covey of quail flushes. "If you kill two birds in a covey rise, you are an excellent shot," Chambliss said. "I saw him kill three birds on a covey rise" -- two with one shot and a third with the other.
Chambliss, who spoke with Cheney after a meeting with senators last week, said the vice president seemed distressed over the Whittington accident. "He said, 'You know, I've never felt so bad about anything in my life,' " Chambliss recalled. "He was really emotional about it."
Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
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