Cheney's Influence Lessens in Second Term

But many who know Cheney believe he is out of step with the current tenor of the administration, noting that he has offered none of the concessions of error that Bush has tried out recently to regain lost credibility on Iraq.

"Dick was always very realistic," said Kenneth L. Adelman, the Reagan administration arms-control official who has known Cheney for more than three decades. "I don't really understand how month after month he gets briefings showing Iraq's getting worse and worse, and he engages in all this happy talk. Bush has become more realistic. Certainly [Defense Secretary Robert M.] Gates is more realistic, so the happy talk from the Pentagon is over. Yet Cheney is still stuck in the mold."

The negotiations for the North Korea deal showed how much things have changed in Bush's second term. Three years ago, when Cheney's influence was at its peak, U.S. negotiators had rigid instructions to demand that Pyongyang dismantle its programs before receiving benefits, and had almost no authority to speak directly to North Korean officials.

This time, in meetings with Chinese and South Korean officials in Vietnam in November, Rice raised the idea of obtaining an "early harvest" -- a freeze on North Korea's main nuclear facility -- to start the process, administration officials said. She empowered her chief negotiator, Christopher R. Hill, to work out the details during a one-on-one meeting with the North Koreans in Berlin last month.

Under the deal, North Korea would receive an initial supply of fuel oil for the freeze. Pyongyang also promised to disable the facility and take further steps toward denuclearization in return for additional economic, energy and humanitarian assistance. The accord left for future negotiations the question of what to do with North Korea's existing nuclear weapons; Pyongyang declared itself a nuclear power in October after exploding a nuclear device. Many conservatives worry that the new arrangement could relieve North Korea of pressure from the United States without any guarantee it will eventually get rid of the weapons.

Lea Anne McBride, Cheney's spokeswoman, said he supports the plan and agrees with Bush that the North Koreans "have to prove themselves by following through on the deal."

Sources who have spoken with administration officials said Cheney's staff is not happy with the agreement, and former administration officials said they have a hard time believing that Cheney does not share those sentiments. They pointed, for instance, to the agreement's language calling for new "working groups" to settle outstanding issues, something they said he has long opposed.

But some Cheney associates said they doubt he will work against the plan. "The one thing about Cheney is he has never done anything the boss didn't want him to do," said a longtime friend from previous administrations, who suggested that Cheney's acquiescence in the nuclear deal may have been a tactical concession, given the United States' eroding position in the world.

"I think he's someone who is very strategic in his thinking," said Aaron L. Friedberg, a Princeton University professor who served as an adviser to Cheney on national security from 2003 to 2005. "He's prepared to make adjustments and trade-offs as the situation warrants. . . . I suspect in a number of situations he would have preferred to push harder and take a tougher stand, but he has always been a pragmatist."

Staff writers Glenn Kessler and Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.