[inaudible conversations] james rosen examines the political career of dick cheny. Interviewed by dana per reena. Perino. James, ive been waiting for this moment where i could interrogate you. Its a pleasure, ive known you for a long time. When i was at the white house and then being at fox and were colleagues and also reareds and authors. This is a joy for me because ive loved your writing, and what you put together in cheny oneonone. What you helped provide is peeling bat the kurt curtain of what you call americas most controversial statesman. Do you think that dick cheney, hi role of Vice President and even after the administration, do you think he is the most controversial statesman. Guest its great to be with a you. Thank you for doing this. I think that certainly a fair case could be made for that. At as i write in the book no one on the right has attracted more vitriol from the left, more intense visit treeol from the lift, beside george w. Bush rifled nixon. Theres logical reasons this. Man stood at or near the pinnacle of power for four decades, from watergate up to 9 11 and iraq and beyond, and you dont stick around at those levels unless youre really good and really effective, and i think thats why the left has had such an obsession with dick cheney, you see this even in Barack Obamas comments today. Called him the worst president of his lifetime and theres a joke there but it speaks to, a. , dick cheneys extraordinary influence on our time, and, b. , the central role that he occupies in the intellectual universal of barack obama. Host dick cheney is in the left head. Guest and under their skin for sure. Host tell me about getting the interview, because having been the press secretary in the bush administration, at the end there, dick cheney was a reluctant interviewer. So, how did this come about, you had a chance to spend several hours with him, longer than even he had agreed forks he opens up about everything. Guest well, theres a back story here, as you know. From our dealings way back when. I covered the bushcheney white house for fox news in realtime. I traveled the world with dick cheney, on air force one. We went to europe together, the middle east. These are situations where youre hitting ten countries in eight days, and we also went to iraq, afghanistan, and pakistan. On the last of those trips i did with him in 2005, in pakistan, as is the custom, fox news, meaning me, was supposed to get an interview with the principle, the Vice President on the grind, where on the track. Dana bash of cnn got her interview. Took place on the side of a Snowy Mountain in pakistan. She was very upset because she felt the setting wasnt right. And then steve smidt, Running Press for Vice President dick cheney, announced they were cutting the trip short because it was believed the Vice President in his role as president of the senate needed to cast a tiebreaking vote in what was then a 5050 senate. And they assured me when we get back to washington, youll get this interview with the Vice President. We wont forget. Wont let anyone bigfoot you youre going to do this. As soon as the wheels of airs for two touched down, everybody not named james rosen forth about about james rosens interview with dick cheney. Host i with would not have forgotten. Guest the next time the vicepresident sad down with fox news was in february of 06, with britt hume, for the purpose of explaining how and why the Vice President had come to shoot his friend in face in a hunting trip in texas, and is a watched the interview i thought it would be a long time before you get to sit down with this man, if ever. Fast forward to nine years, and i ran into the cheneys in to washington and every ribbing from the Vice President over the fbi investigation. I said i have a bone to pick with you. The interview 2005. Ail city waiting. Remembered. I said if i he said talk to lou, lets do michigan. That was lunch, just the two of us for two hours hours and we stretched out what an extended oral history would look like. We agreed to do six hours two hours day for three straight days. No subject as offlimits, suit no reward for the enterprise and we went close to ten hours. Host let go back to the beginning. One thing i always admired about dick cheney people think because i was borne in wyoming i knew the chenys growing up. But i didnt meet him until i worked at the white house. But ive always appreciated what i consider his western sensibility. He talks about growing up out west, and i wonder if you could talk about of all the people you have interviewed there have been many do you see a difference in somebody that grew up in the settling he did, compared toes who may have grown up with on the coast . Guest this is a really important point you brought up, which is that to the extent that dick cheney has been depicted as withholding elusive, enigmatic, menacing, a lot of that has to do with who does the writing about deck cheney, which tend to be easterners, and to eastern ear, the way that westerns like dick cheney talk and come off alien or come up short somehow, as if theyre being withholing. In fact what has been my experience is that dick cheney tells you what he think but he hides in plain sight. But as a congressman he aplaced one of the most conservative voting records in the house and proudly notes that today in the book and says that even today it would be thusly regarded. But he had a lowkey style. Not a bomb thrower. This enabled dick cheney to talk not only to the opposite side of the aisle and also to various factions within his own party. And part of that has to do with the western style of his, which is low key, not attentionseeking, not bombthrowing, but direct and clear. Host one of my favorite things about being in meetings with the Vice President , how he would be very quiet, and he that can be a little intimidating when somebody is quiet you think, well, dont know what he is thinking or doing, and i saw an interview with him where he said he learned when he worked for forked. He learned its better for the principle not to weigh in in the middle of a discussion when you have a policy meeting where different staffers are offering their penguin because as soon as the principle says something, then that will shut down conversation and people wont offer their opinions. That gave me a different viewpoint why he kept violent. It wasnt that he was being secretive. I think he was listening. Guest he is a good listener but he also understands that the actions sometimes doesnt take place in the big interagency debate session but, rather in at the oval office afterwards, and he is also, as we noted, an avid hunter and i think dick cheney knows would e when to save his gun powered. Host i talked to somebody in preparation for the interview, and saying how much i enjoyed the book. He was saying back in the day on capitol hill when the wyoming delegation of cheney, wallop and simpson was there they were the most powerful delegation in the congress at the time, and i dont think that a small state like wyoming has had Something Like that ever since. Guest they were probably pretty well knitted up, better than most delegations. For ten years, dick cheney was the sole congressman, member of congress, from wyoming. Host can you talk to me about his career is remarkable before the age of 40, when in his late 30s he has his first heart attack. From the age of 19, where he was kind of a screwup, admitted screwup, not really knuckled down like his wife was where she was advancing. How does the get from the age of 19 to 34. That trajectory is amazing. Guest very few american stories like that. Youre reference to lynne cheney brings up a fung thing. I interviewed in the year 2000 for an oral history project i did for the talk magazine, then jetted by tina brown where they asked me to appropriate an oral history of dick cheneys life, culp minimum nateing with this reaching the vicepresidency. So lin cheney, gerald ford, and i asked mrs. Cheney and i said, its been suggested, maam, that of the two of you, youre the brains of the operation. Is that true . She said, well, i am the more aside reduce academic, which was a linking reference to the Vice President s undistinguished beginnings in terms of his schooling. He actually secured a full scholarship to Yale University host remarkable. Guest for a kid from wyoming. Host right, well, nbc nebraska originally. Guest he had never been further east than chicago. He had a brief sort of stay at northwestern in high school, and one of the things that disappointed yale was there was no big sky over his head. He felt ill at ease with the physical surround examination fell in with a highspirited group of people as the dean said. He tells in the cheny win ounce one how he and his College Roommates has situation where all four of the bedroom doors opened up on a common area but a the used one bedroom as a bar, and the drank too much beer and his studied collapsed and he racked up two duis by the time he was 19. The second of which found the future Vice President over the United States waking up in jail in wyoming, and he tells in in the book this was the wakeup call. Didnt have to completely give up drinking but had to set his path right. Plunked out of yale, went balance to wyoming, builds power lines for the county and paying his own way through the university ofom. Host my dads alma mater. Guest 96 bucks a semester at the time and founds, guess when, when im paying my own way orange im good student and got straight as, succession of internships and other visits to the capital. The found himself working for a congressman who later went to work in the Nixon Administration named don rumsfeld and they the beginning of his path. By the time he is 34, this guy who at at 19 was waning up in a james in wyoming was the chief of staff to the president of the United Statesful it is a remarkable story. Host did he form his political ideology before yale or after when comes back . Guest as of his time at yale he hadnt really devoted too much thought to politics at all. I think he probably shared some of the engrained conservatism of westerners, and his father as a matter of fact worked for the Soil Conservation service, which is a federal agency, so he didnt start out with hostility to the state or the government. Host his sister spent a career working for the federal government. Guest thats right. But i think his interest in politics started to accelerate once he met lynne cheney, and he majored in Political Science and only even quasiregret i heard him iter in ten hours had nothing to do with 9 11 or iraq or afghanistan or interrogation or detention or campaigns and elections. He said that he wished instead of Political Science when he was in college, he had studied history because he is a deep lover of history, and to spend time in his studies to observe this great communion and the discipline of hoyt, all the books he has read. Military history, diplomatic history. Host trying to catch up to lynn . Guest he will not assuredly. He said he wished he had studied history because in his experience this is someone who has been at or near the center of power for 40 years he said, government really is its not a science, its art, and it is the application of lessons from history, from past case studies to contemporary problems. So the only real regret i herd him expression he hadnt study history iworked with Charles Krauthammer when he did his books and when he was asked if i wanted to by a political pundit or columnist, what should i study, he said, dont to go journalism school. Study history. In the book the Vice President even to this day, its sounds like, is reading hoyt history books and seeing the parallel. Talks about marshal. Guest george children marshal. The interesting thing is i sensed a touch of despair in dick cheney by virtue of the fact its getting a bit harder, given the peculiar circumstances of the 21st century, to find useful lessons from the passive to be applied today because oof the unique consolation of problems, the nuclear age and stateless actors, asymmetric warfare and so on. Host that caught me because we are talking a lot about how to deal with lone wolf terroris who might be radicalized by the internet and using encryption devices in order to communicate, and so if youre looking to history to try to guide you, theres very little except for being sure to act and being stalwart all of those things. I thought that was very astute thinking. Guest and the fact is that even with when we set aside domestic atooks like in San Bernardino, when we become embroiled in overseas conflicts likes, for example, the iraq war, again, were have eight symmetric warfare practiced against our forces, and i think the Vice President would agree but i shouldnt speak for him the United States has yet to demonstrat we can decisively win an asymmetric war. Perhaps they didnt be decisively won. I dont know. Host one reason he is controversial is because, after 9 11, the country asked our Intelligence Community to do some very difficult things in order to help protect us. I i know he doesnt have regrets. Does he know how controversial he is and does it bother him . Guest yes and no. He knows. And the very last question i asked him at the end of the ten hours we had spent three days together in his study i finally allowed the words, darth avoider to escape my lips, and i asked him if he believes that kerrick to cure of them will prevail snail historical memory so that he is widely misunderstood. He said in essence he feels very grateful and privileged to have taken part in so many Historic Events and that he doesnt feel sorry for himself about the way people view him but that in general he doesnt spent e spend a lot of time dwelling on how people view hill. Host there was part in the book where he talks about on page 2349 your introduction the question you ask is, is it fair to say that your influence on bushs decisionmaking, wayneed in the second time . I really appreciate evidence his answer because i thought appreciatedded his answer because it showed such humility. By the time theres a second term a president i more surefooted and his experience he brought to the table was maybe even more necessary in the first term than the second term. Is that how you took that. Yes, but raises a subsequent question which i posed to him. If we accept your version of thing wes have a president who in his second term has greater confidence in Foreign Policy and National Security decisionmaking, why should that greater confidence on the part of the president led him to reject your counsel more frequently rather than accept it more frequently. He said in essence, nobody ever gave me any guarantees he would do what i wanted him to do but the string between them can be overstated. That is most distinctly evidenced in their dispute over scooter liby. As very president points out in the book, he and the president were on the same payment through the serge in iraq was concerned, even though quite strikingly, dick checkey and don rumsfeld and dick cheney and the joint teach chiefs of staff were not on the same book. Host the white house was a lonely place and the president had to convince many people. He is open about his differences of opinion with secretary Condoleezza Rice, i dont see it as personal, and thats what i took away from oneonone. Guest yes. In all administrations, as you know, there will be conflicts of personality, conflicts of ideology, interagency disputes and is a healthy part of the process. Theres no question but that dick cheney crashed with Condoleezza Rice and also with colin powell. The difference is that with Condoleezza Rice he never felt it became personal and i think they still have a cordial relationship today. With powell it did become personal and there is no relationship today, and i sense some regret on chenys part it turned another that way. This irony is a decade earlier when cheney was defense secretary and paul was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff they served well together. In the runup to the iraq war that relationship did not survive. Host does he express any regret about the first gulf war and how that ended . Guest no. Absolutely not. I think he rightly regards it as a perhaps one of the last very clearcut victories for the United States military and wasnt foreordained it would be so. One thing he talks about in the book is that there was a culture within the top echelon of the pentagon in the 1990s where so many of the officers cut their teeth during vietnam when the civilian leadership didnt quite back up the military the way it should have, and so there was great hesitation to act on the part of the military amongst the senior ranks of officers in the early 90s. One thing that dick cheney and george h. W. Bush worked on doing was assuring the military officers, their men in need, would have the support they needed from the civilian leadership. Host what about on the personal side of things with his family . Because some politics go some politicians go through their entire career and keep their families a little bit at a distance. I think that is true for somebody like a speaker paul ryan. People dont know that his wife is their kids well, lynn liz and mary were very active and not only the campaign but also liz in the administration. Ive always admired how close he is to his daughters, and does he talk about that in the book . Guest someone while i was writing this book said to me, theres only three people that dick cheney is tight with and theyre auld name cheney. But that may be a function of their western roots, liz cheney surfed in the Bushcheney Administration in the state department in an important rome in the Near East Bureau<