Dick Cheney

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dick Cheney (2003)
Signature of Dick Cheney

Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney [ tʃeɪ.ni ] (* the thirtieth January 1941 in Lincoln , Nebraska ) is an American politician ( Republican Party ) and managers. He was the 46th Vice President of the United States under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009 and Secretary of Defense of the United States from 1989 to 1993 under his father George Bush . From 1975 to 1977 he was the youngest White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford .

Life

Family life

Cheney is the son of a US Department of Agriculture employee Richard Herbert Cheney. His mother was Marjorie Lorraine Cheney, b. Dickey. His father was a registered Democrat and worked for a program run by the Franklin D. Roosevelt government to help farmers keep their soil fertile and protect it from erosion.

Cheney has a brother, Bob, and a sister, Susan. He grew up in Casper in the US state of Wyoming , where he met his school friend and future wife Lynne Vincent at the age of 14 . Cheney has two grown daughters, Mary and Liz , and six grandchildren. Mary is openly gay and married her longtime partner on June 22, 2012. Liz was elected to the US House of Representatives for the state of Wyoming in 2016 .

School education and studies

In high school, Cheney made excellent academic and athletic performance. He became class president at Natrona County High School and played halfback on the football team. For the summer after graduating from high school and for each of the following six years, Cheney worked on power lines and was a member of the Stromer Union.

Cheney was able to study political science on an academic scholarship in 1959 at Yale University , but dropped out after three semesters due to poor performance. In 1962 he was arrested twice for driving under the influence of psychoactive substances and sentenced to small fines. In an interview with the New Yorker on May 7, 1991, he said that his brief stays in a prison cell had made him think about himself. Otherwise he would probably have been on the wrong track.

Then he began to study again; he enrolled at Casper Community College in 1963 and then moved to the University of Wyoming , where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1965 and a master's degree in political science in 1966. He then began at the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a doctorate. Despite very good grades, he broke off to devote himself to politics - an annual grant to work in the office of MP William A. Steiger made this possible.

Political career

Beginnings

Cheney (left) at the White House in September 1976

Cheney began his political career in 1969 as a member of the Richard Nixon government . a. as Donald Rumsfeld's personal assistant . Under President Gerald Ford Cheney was Assistant to the President and the youngest White House Chief of Staff ( White House Chief of Staff appointed) history. Cheney was also an election officer for Gerald Ford's candidacy for the 1976 election.

congress

In 1978 he was elected to the US House of Representatives as a Republican MP for Wyoming . Cheney was re-elected five times through 1989. During his time as a member of parliament, he took very conservative positions, which were discussed again in the 2000 election campaign. So he voted u. a. against a national holiday for Martin Luther King and against a US Department of Education , i.e. a nationwide education department .

He was also a staunch advocate of the state oil and coal trade during this period. A government building in Casper, responsible for oil and coal, was named after him the "Dick Cheney Federal Building".

In contrast to George W. Bush, Cheney is considered open-minded about same-sex marriage because his own daughter is openly lesbian. In the abortion debate , he has consistently positioned himself as an opponent of abortion .

cabinet

Dick Cheney as Secretary of Defense

In 1989, Cheney was appointed Secretary of Defense by George Bush to succeed Frank Carlucci . However, it was only Bush's second choice; the originally nominated John Tower , US Senator from Texas , was rejected by the Senate with 47:53 votes. Cheney's appointment was confirmed unanimously. He served as Secretary of Defense until the end of Bush's tenure in January 1993. The first Iraq war and the American interventions in Panama and Somalia took place during this period.

Cheney established a decisive change in the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), under which the US Army commissioned civil companies with - above all - infrastructure projects (construction of airports, prisons and catering for soldiers worldwide) since the mid-1980s. Previously, these contracts had been awarded to different contractors. Cheney commissioned Kellogg Brown & Root , a Halliburton subsidiary, with an expert opinion that was supposed to clarify whether only one company could receive all LOGCAP orders in the future. The expert opinion answered this question positively and a call for tenders for projects worth billions for the next five years was held. Of the 37 participating companies, Kellogg Brown & Root was chosen. In 1995, Cheney became CEO of Halliburton / Kellogg Brown & Root. This not entirely unproblematic constellation also led his critics to complain that he linked private interests with political interests, which Cheney always denied vigorously.

Professional career in the private sector

In 1995, Cheney became Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Halliburton , whose core business is energy supply, extraction and trading in petroleum. Together with Donald Rumsfeld , he founded the conservative think tank Project for the New American Century in 1997 .

In his 5 years with Halliburton, government projects went from $ 1.2 billion to $ 2.3 billion.

During this time the Balkan War fell with extensive government contracts for Halliburton / KBR, as well as lucrative contracts in connection with the "Oil-for-Food" program for Iraq.

After Cheney was run as a vice presidential candidate, he resigned as CEO of Halliburton on July 25, 2000, selling a large portion of his shares and placing the remainder in a trust fund. In July 2004, however, he received severance payments from Halliburton. Since Halliburton received high-value contracts from the US government for the reconstruction of Iraq, critics see a conflict of interest here. Since the group had done business with dictatorships such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Myanmar under Cheney's leadership, Cheney came under fire for it.

In December 2010, the Nigerian Corruption Service announced that it was bringing corruption charges against Dick Cheney . The allegations concern bribe payments in connection with the construction of a liquefied gas plant by the US energy company Halliburton in southern Nigeria. In total, bribes of $ 182 million are said to have flowed between 1995 and 2005.

Vice Presidency

George W. Bush's State of the Union Address in 2003. Cheney to his left, Dennis Hastert to his right

Dick Cheney became Vice President under George W. Bush in January 2001. He had previously resigned from the advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs . He quickly gained a reputation for being very vigorous in this position. He is said to have exercised great influence in internal meetings and personnel decisions of the Bush administration. He also maintained an office in the House of Representatives .

While Bush had announced measures against climate change during the election campaign, Cheney implemented very industry-friendly policies that included a reduction in environmental protection regulations and extensive subsidies (15 billion dollars) and tax breaks for the oil, gas and coal industries. He described the scientific consensus on man-made climate change as ambiguous; further investigations are necessary.

Cheney headed the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) during his vice-presidency, which also employed several senior Enron employees despite the ongoing Enron scandal. In July 2003, the highest US court, the Supreme Court, forced the NEPDG to publish all of its documents. It contains maps of oil fields in Saudi Arabia , Iraq and the United Arab Emirates as well as some chapters on topics such as energy efficiency, energy security and environmental protection . It was also revealed that the NEPDG had made concessions to Saddam Hussein to extract his oil.

Under Cheney's vice-presidency, Halliburton / Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc. was commissioned by the government without tendering as part of the RIO program (RIO = Restore Iraqi Oil) with work worth around 2 billion US dollars (see Briody).

During the second term, Bush and Cheney became increasingly estranged from each other. One sign was that Cheney wanted Bush to pardon his former chief of staff, Scooter Libby , but Bush no longer did him the favor. Peter Baker of the New York Times noted that the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, opened in the spring of 2013, probably exhibits exhibits of the first lady, Bush's children, Condoleezza Rice , John R. Bolton , Andy Card , and even statues of the The President's dogs are standing, but there is hardly any sign of Cheney to be found.

Next life

Cheney (2011)

Dick Cheney underwent a heart transplant on March 24, 2012 , in which he received a donor heart that he had been waiting for for 20 months. Cheney, who was a heavy smoker as a young man , had suffered several heart attacks, the first at the age of 37. After another heart attack in 2010, he was recommended to have a transplant.

Awards

Others

  • On a hunting trip on February 11, 2006 in Texas, he injured a lawyer friend with a shot from a shotgun.
  • In an attack on the Vice President in February 2007, an assassin blew himself up in front of the US air force base in Bagram .
  • Richard Cheney is called Darth Vader by many of his critics .
  • Cheney is the namesake of the sponge ball beetle Agathidium cheneyi .
  • On December 14, 2018, a biopic titled Vice was released in the United States , which explores Dick Cheney's work as Vice President. British-American actor Christian Bale took on his portrayal .

Fonts

  • With Liz Cheney: In My Time: a personal and political memoir. Threshold Ed., New York (et al.) 2011, ISBN 978-1-4391-7619-1
  • With Liz Cheney: Exceptional. Why the world needs a powerful America. Threshold Ed., New York, NY (et al.) 2015, ISBN 978-1-5011-1541-7

literature

  • Dan Briody: The Halliburton Agenda. The Politics of Oil and Money. Wiley, Hoboken NJ 2004, ISBN 0-471-63860-9 .
  • Jules Witcover: The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D. C. 2014, ISBN 978-1-5883-4471-7 , pp. 479-494 (= 46. ​​Richard B. Cheney of Wyoming ).

Web links

Commons : Dick Cheney  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikiquote: Dick Cheney  Quotes
Wikisource: Dick Cheney  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Staff Writer: Dick Cheney's Youthful Indiscretions ; The Smoking Gun , accessed October 10, 2008.
  2. ↑ FAZ: Bush makes an exception for Cheney's lesbian daughter
  3. ↑ 20min.ch: Bush's daughter is committed to gay marriage
  4. ↑ a b c cf. Briody
  5. ↑ NZZ: http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/politik/international/nigeria_vs_dick_cheney_1.8542017.html
  6. ↑ Jane Mayer: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday, New York 2016, ISBN 978-0-3855-3559-5 . P. 212.
  7. ^ The Final Insult in the Bush-Cheney Marriage. In: New York Times , October 13, 2013 (English).
  8. ↑ Spiegel: [1]
  9. ^ Spiegel: Ex-Vice Dick Cheney has a new heart
  10. ↑ Cheney undergoes heart transplant surgery . Retrieved March 24, 2012. 
  11. ↑ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57403969-503544/dick-cheney-receives-heart-transplant/
  12. ↑ CNN: Cheney accidentally shoots fellow hunter
  13. ↑ "Darth Vader" takes on the Bush warriors
  14. ↑ Markus Becker: A questionable honor: a beetle named Bush. In: Spiegel Online. April 15, 2005, accessed August 4, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Cheney, Dick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cheney, Richard Bruce (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician, Vice President of the United States
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Lincoln , Nebraska