Cheney, By Proxy - his shadow government

Cheney, By Proxy
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, June 4, 2007; 2:16 PM

Is Vice President Cheney trying to undermine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, in favor of a more aggressive and militaristic approach?

Well, maybe not directly. Cheney does his best work by proxy. Anyone looking for public evidence of a major rift between Cheney and Rice will be sorely disappointed. In fact, Rice denied any such thing at a press conference in Madrid on Friday.

But that doesn't mean there isn't a rift. Cheney's aides and other loyalists he has installed in the government wield enormous power on his behalf, even as they provide him with plausible deniability. (See, for instance, the Scooter Libby case, discussed below.)

Glenn Kessler writes in The Washington Post: "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted Friday that Vice President Cheney fully supports a diplomatic course in the dispute with Iran over its nuclear program, denying claims of divisions among President Bush's foreign policy advisers."

From the transcript of her remarks:

"QUESTION: If I may, Madame Secretary, you've been pushing diplomatic efforts and making that heard loud and clear your message, and you're making extraordinary efforts -- or an extraordinary offer, rather -- to talk. But can you assure us that Vice President Cheney does not want to use military action on Iran to deal with its nuclear policy? Because there's a perception of a divide within the Administration.

"SECRETARY RICE: First, let me be very clear. The President of the United States has made very clear what our policy is. That policy is supported by all of the members of his cabinet and by the Vice President of the United States. The President has made clear that we are on a course that is a diplomatic course, but it is a diplomatic course that is backed up by disincentives for Iran to continue its activities."

But as Helene Cooper writes in the New York Times: "Ms. Rice's assurance came as senior officials at the State Department were expressing fury over reports that members of Vice President Dick Cheney's staff have told others that Mr. Cheney believes the diplomatic track with Iran is pointless, and is looking for ways to persuade Mr. Bush to confront Iran militarily.

"In a news conference on Friday, Ms. Rice maintained that Mr. Cheney supported her strategy of trying to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions through diplomacy. A senior Bush administration official separately denied that there was a deep divide between Ms. Rice and Mr. Cheney on Iran.

"But, the official said, 'The vice president is not necessarily responsible for every single thing that comes out of the mouth of every single member of his staff.' The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about any divide within the administration.

"The reports about hawkish statements by members of Mr. Cheney's staff first surfaced last week in The Washington Note, an influential blog put out by Steve Clemons of the left-leaning New America Foundation. The reports have alarmed European diplomats, some of whom fear that the struggle over Iran's nuclear program may evolve into a decision by the Bush administration to resort to force against Iran."

I quoted the Clemons report when it came out, but it's worth reviewing. "On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes -- who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy," Clemons writes.

"Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been . . . explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

"This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an 'end run strategy' around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

"The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles). . . .

"The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice [and others] have sculpted.

"According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the 'right decision' when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands."

Cooper, in the New York Times, writes: "In interviews, people who have spoken with Mr. Cheney's staff have confirmed the broad outlines of the reports, and said that some of the hawkish statements to outsiders had been made by David Wurmser, a former Pentagon official who is now the principal deputy assistant to Mr. Cheney for national security affairs. The accounts were provided by people who expressed alarm about the statements, but refused to be quoted by name."

And Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball write in Newsweek: "A Newsweek investigation shows that Cheney's national-security team has been actively challenging Rice's Iran strategy in recent months. 'We hear a completely different story coming out of Cheney's office, even now, than what we hear from Rice on Iran,' says a Western diplomat whose embassy has close dealings with the White House. Officials from the veep's office have been openly dismissive of the nuclear negotiations in think-tank meetings with Middle East analysts in Washington, according to a high-level administration official who asked for anonymity because of his position. Since Tehran has defied two U.N. resolutions calling for a suspension of its uranium-enrichment program, 'there's a certain amount of schadenfreude among the hard-liners,' says a European diplomat who's involved in the talks but would not comment for the record. And Newsweek has learned that the veep's team seems eager to build a case that Iran is targeting Americans not just in Iraq but along the border of its other neighbor, Afghanistan.

"In the last few weeks, Cheney's staff have unexpectedly become more active participants in an interagency group that steers policy on Afghanistan, according to an official familiar with the internal deliberations. During weekly meetings of the committee, known as the Afghanistan Interagency Operating Group, Cheney staffers have been intensely interested in a single issue: recent intelligence reports alleging that Iran is supplying weapons to Afghanistan's resurgent Islamist militia, the Taliban, according to two administration officials who asked for anonymity when discussing internal meetings. . . .

"Rice has more directly clashed with Cheney's office on issues like Mideast peace, where according to administration sources who declined to be named discussing internal deliberations, she's found herself stymied in efforts to push for more engagement with Syria and the Palestinian radical group Hamas. A senior White House official concedes that even on what should be the simplest-to-achieve deal -- a new relationship with Syria that would help stabilize Iraq -- Cheney's office is blocking Rice's efforts to bring Bush around. The secretary has also fought with the veep's office in seeking to soften detention policies at Guantanamo. In the interview, however, Rice insisted her relationship with Cheney himself is good. 'The vice president has never been somebody who tries to [undermine others] on the sidelines, behind the scenes. He really doesn't,' she said. 'In fact we have a kind of friendly banter about it, in which I'll tease him about the image that he doesn't like diplomacy.'"

Reviewing Cheney's M.O.

Laura Rozen wrote earlier this year for the Washington Monthly that Cheney "is no novice in the art of bureaucratic warfare. He has long surrounded himself with impeccably loyal aides who both share his worldview of a powerful presidency unchecked by the legislative branch, and who have also installed like-minded allies throughout the government. Such allies provide crucial intelligence of inter-departmental debates, enabling Cheney to make end-runs around the bureaucracy and head off opposing views at key meetings. Call it Cheney's state within the state."

In my Feb. 7 column, Cheney Doesn't Share, I noted a memorable scene of the inner workings of the Bush White House that unfolded in the federal courthouse where Libby was on trial -- a scene that gave credence to the widespread view that Cheney oversees his own secretive, defensive and sometimes ruthless operation within the White House, and that he does so with Bush's approval but often outside the view of Bush's top aides.

And Peter S. Canellos wrote in his Boston Globe column last April that "while it may be logical that the second-most clout in the country should go to the elected vice president rather than a Cabinet secretary or staff mountebank, the disadvantages of such a power structure are becoming apparent. For while statements and policies crafted by staff members or Cabinet secretaries can be disavowed and the official sent packing, the vice president can't be dismissed.

"Even if Bush wanted to marginalize Cheney, and there's no evidence that he does, he would have to remove all the Cheney loyalists from the defense secretary on down and still wake up to Cheney sitting in the West Wing every morning. Only Congress can remove a vice president, and only then for 'high crimes and misdemeanors.'

"Cheney seems happy to swim along with an approval rating lower than Bush. He isn't running for office. He's running the country."

About Those Loyalists

Jeff Stein writes for Congressional Quarterly: "The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington's foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations -- creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

"Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell's chief of staff through two administrations, said in little-noted remarks early last month that 'neocons' in the top rungs of the administration quietly encouraged Taiwanese politicians to move toward a declaration of independence from mainland China -- an act that the communist regime has repeatedly warned would provoke a military strike."