In My Time

by Dick Cheney

  A few days later Tom called to say they wanted to offer me the job. I accepted, knowing we would have to work out the details, but in principle I was on board. I think part of the reason they wanted me was my international experience. As much as half the company’s income was coming from overseas. I had successfully run the Department of Defense, a significant management challenge, and the personal recommendations of board members such as Anne Armstrong helped.

  I flew back to Dallas for the public announcement that I was the new CEO and would be reporting for work October 1, 1995. Tom and I would share responsibilities for the first ninety days and then he’d step down and I’d take over January 1, 1996.

  During those ninety days, Tom and I traveled the country visiting Halliburton operations. We visited Duncan, Oklahoma, the home of Halliburton—and, as I was to discover, the home of my friend Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who’d grown up living next door to Erle Halliburton. We also spent time in the field, where I learned about the sophisticated technology that is part of a modern drilling operation. I began to meet Halliburton customers and employees and to learn about the full scope of the business.

  AFTER LYNNE AND I moved to Dallas, an old friend from there asked me, “Now that you’re in the oil business, what’s it going to be—golf, gin rummy, or shooting?” It wasn’t a tough call. “Shooting,” I said. Texas has some of the greatest quail country in the world, and when Halliburton took over Dresser Industries we acquired a forty-thousand-acre hunting lease on the King Ranch. We got a lot of business done on hunting trips, and it was a heck of a lot of fun.

  My favorite place to hunt was the Armstrong Ranch, down in South Texas, about fifty miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

  Hunting in Falfurrias, Texas, with Jim Baker and President George H. W. Bush. (Official White House Photo/David Bohrer)

  Like any Texas ranch worth its salt, the Armstrong is huge, some fifty thousand acres. The quail coveys were as plentiful as any place I know, but the Armstrongs themselves were the real reason to look forward to spending a weekend at the ranch. Anne and Tobin were lovely people, with a sense of hospitality as big as Texas. Their ranch house, as unpretentious as could be, was full of hunting trophies, English antiques (many acquired by Tobin while Anne was ambassador to the Court of Saint James), and hundreds of pictures. They were testimony to many a celebrity having been to the Armstrong, including Prince Charles.

  After a hearty ranch breakfast (jalapeño jelly was always on the table), we would load into big Chevy Suburbans and follow caballeros across the prairie until they spotted a covey. Then we’d get out and shoot. We’d have lunch under a huge old oak tree, stop for a siesta, then hunt again, coming back to the ranch in time for drinks and conversation—though the conversation usually depended on getting Tobin to turn the mariachi music down.

  I had some wonderful times hunting at the Armstrong, and both Lynne and I really miss Tobin and Anne. He died in 2005 and she in 2008. But the Armstrong was also a place where I knew great sadness. On a hunting trip there while I was vice president, I accidentally shot one of my hunting partners, Harry Whittington.

  It was late in the day on February 11, 2006. There were three of us shooting—Harry, Pam Willeford, then U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, and me. The first covey flushed and Harry shot two birds. While he went with his guide and the hunting dogs to find the quail, Pam and I moved on to a second covey. I was on the right and Pam was on my left. I thought Harry had quit shooting and was still looking for his birds from the first covey.

  A single bird flushed on my right and I turned to fire. The sun was just starting to set on the horizon, and I did not know that Harry had come up on my right. He was standing in a dip in the ground and the sun was behind him. I didn’t see him until it was too late. I will never, as long as I live, forget the sight of Harry falling to the ground after I fired.

  We rushed over to him. His face was bloody, and he was stunned. My Secret Service agents and the military doctors who always traveled with me as vice president were there and treated him immediately. We called for the ambulance that was on the ranch as part of my motorcade. Members of the White House medical unit traveling with me administered first aid to Harry and then got in the ambulance with him. They stopped at ranch headquarters to pick up Harry’s wife, Mercedes, and then headed for the hospital in Corpus Christi. I received reports throughout the evening on Harry’s condition, and I was able to visit Harry in the hospital the next day.

  It was a terrible accident. We had been lucky it wasn’t worse. I was using a 28-gauge shotgun that day, which is less powerful than the 20-gauge or the 12-gauge I sometimes used. Harry was wearing shatterproof safety hunting glasses, so his eyes were not hit by any of the pellets. Still, I had shot my friend and he was now lying in a hospital. The last thing on my mind was a press statement, and we didn’t issue one that night. In retrospect, we should have.

  The following day we issued a statement to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, a local paper that routinely covered that part of Texas, knowing that once they had put out the story it would be reported everywhere. Our choice incensed the White House press pool and the rest of the mainstream media and probably increased the frenzy of their reaction. But, again, the last thing on my mind was whether I was irritating the New York Times.

  I continued to monitor Harry’s condition over the following weeks and months and appreciated the grace with which he handled the situation. He was a true gentleman. As the days passed, the whole incident became great fodder for late-night comedians—and for the president himself. Later in the year, at the annual Gridiron Dinner, where politicians roast themselves, Bush said, “Here I am at thirty-eight percent in the polls, and Dick has to go and shoot the only trial lawyer in Texas who supports us.”

  When Harry was released from the hospital on February 17, 2006, he spoke to the press and took note of the media frenzy generated by the accident, “My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week,” he said. “We send our love and respect to them as they deal with situations that are much more serious than what we have had this week.”

  I, of course, was deeply sorry for what Harry and his family had gone through. The day of the hunting accident was one of the saddest of my life. And I will never forget Harry Whittington’s kindness.

  GEORGE W. BUSH BECAME governor of Texas the year before I took over at Halliburton. I had met him briefly when his father was president, but didn’t come to know him until we were both working in Texas and I agreed to serve on one of his business advisory councils. I started to see more of him as he began to think about running for president and invited me down to the Governor’s Mansion in Austin for one-on-one meetings and sessions with his foreign policy advisory team. The team consisted primarily of Condi Rice, Steve Hadley, Rich Armitage, and Paul Wolfowitz. Scooter Libby also attended some of the sessions. Condi managed the group, helping select topics for discussion and distributing briefing materials ahead of some of the meetings. It was a group of smart, experienced people, all of whom seemed pretty compatible. Had I been running for president myself that year and needed advisors on foreign and defense policy, I probably would have picked the same team.

  A meeting of the team was scheduled for February 24, 1999, and I flew down to Austin the night before for dinner with the governor. The next morning I was in my guest room at the mansion getting ready for breakfast when there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find the governor of Texas with a cup of coffee he’d made for me. It was a kind gesture and certainly the highest-ranking room service I’d ever had.

  About a month later, Joe Allbaugh, who was helping Bush put together the beginnings of his presidential campaign, visited me in Dallas. We had a good discussion about the mechanics of a run for the presidency and the ins and outs of managing a campaign. We talked about priorities, hiring, scheduling, and how you put the whole thing together. They were just beginning to plot a course to the electio
n of 2000, and I was glad to be as helpful as I could, but my main focus and priority remained my day job running Halliburton.

  IN 1998 MY DAD had started to talk about “having his sale,” which is an old Nebraska expression for putting your affairs in order before you die. He was eighty-three, and he’d been doing pretty well in the five years since Mom’s death in 1993. He’d moved himself into an assisted living facility a year earlier, saying he wanted to do it while he was healthy enough to make the move himself. He still had the house at 505 Texas Place in Casper, and he had been driving out there regularly to check on things. But now he told my sister, Sue, my brother, Bob, and me that he was ready to sell his belongings and the house. We kept telling him not to worry about it, that we’d take care of it. But he wouldn’t hear of it. He told us to go through and take whatever we wanted, and then he found an auctioneer to come out and tag everything else for a big sale. He also put the house on the market and found a buyer.

  Dad was handling the end the way he had handled so much in his life—with quiet courage and dignity. But there is no denying the pain of closing out a home and life full of memories. One morning after all the furniture and belongings had been moved into the garage and tagged for sale, Sue arrived at the house to find Dad sitting in the garage alone, among the belongings of a lifetime, with tears running down his face.

  By the spring of 1999, he had been in the hospital a number of times with the symptoms of congestive heart failure. He had seemed to be on the rebound at the end of May, when he lay down for an afternoon nap and never woke up. Just before he fell asleep, Bob, Sue, and I had all placed calls to him at nearly the same moment. Bob and I both got busy signals, but Susie got through and spoke to him one last time.

  Before Dad died, word came that Congress had decided to name the federal building in Casper after me, making it the Dick Cheney Federal Building. He got a big kick out of that. It was a building he’d worked in for a number of years, and now it would have his son’s name on it. I thought of my dad and his pride in his long years of service for the federal government as I stood in front of the building for the rededication ceremony in the summer of 1999. I also thought how proud I was to be his son and namesake.

  IN THE FALL OF 1999, Lynne and I hosted a party at our home in Dallas for the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and its Celebration of Reading programs. Governor Bush and Laura came, and the governor asked if there was a place we could talk for a few minutes. We went into the library, a quiet, paneled room at the back of the house, where he said that he would like me to manage his campaign for the presidency. I told him that I was honored by the request, but that I had to say no. I had a fulltime job, and there was no way I could also manage the day-to-day operations of a presidential campaign. I told the governor he had my support and that I’d help in any way I could. But a fulltime campaign position just wasn’t in the cards for me.

  Several months later, in the early spring of 2000, Joe Allbaugh came to see me again. The primary race wasn’t completely over, but it was clear George Bush was going to be the Republican nominee. This time Joe wanted to know if I would be willing to be considered as Governor Bush’s running mate. Again, I said no. I was very honest with him about it. “Look, Joe,” I told him, “that just doesn’t make sense for you guys or for me.” I went through all the drawbacks, including my three heart attacks and the fact that the governor and I were both oilmen, which our opponents would use against us. In addition, both of us were then living in Texas—which would preclude Texas electors from voting for both of us.

  Besides, I was very happy running Halliburton. I’d been there for about four years, and we were involved in energy projects all around the world. Through Brown & Root, we did construction as well, everything from a railroad across the outback of Australia to a baseball stadium for the Houston Astros. We also had a large contract to provide logistical services to the U.S. Army. One of the lessons we’d learned in Desert Storm was that it is both more effective and cheaper to have a private contractor with the right gear and equipment set up and maintain camps and provide food service and other basics of support than it is to have fulltime active-duty military personnel do these jobs. Brown & Root was good at what they did and apparently remains so, because under the Obama administration the army has continued to award the company significant contracts.

  I was accomplishing things I was proud of, including the acquisition of Dresser Industries, which made Halliburton the largest energy services company in the world. After being sideswiped by a recession in Asia, our stock was on the way up, and I was a happy man where I was. Moreover, I didn’t want to be vice president. I’d known too many unhappy ones to think it was a job worth having. My message to Joe that day was basically thanks, but no thanks.

  A few weeks later, Governor Bush came to me with a different request. He wanted to know if I would head his search for a vice presidential running mate. At last it was easy to say yes. I wanted to do whatever I could to help his campaign, and this would be a part-time commitment, something I could do—and accomplish—in a matter of months. When I thought about it, I realized I’d been observing or participating in the vice presidential selection process for nearly a quarter century, so I felt that I had a good sense of how an effective search should work.

  In Washington a few days later, I began putting together a small team to run the vice president selection process for me. Liz was home on maternity leave from her law firm, and I asked if she would assist. When she said yes, I’m not sure that she realized her home office would become the nerve center of the operation. I also asked Dave Addington to help out by reviewing the material submitted by each prospective candidate and preparing summaries that I shared with Governor Bush. My son-in-law, Phil Perry, and some other lawyers from his firm worked with Dave to produce the questionnaire we asked each candidate to complete. Dave Gribbin also assisted, particularly with reviewing voting records and public speeches of the candidates. And Jan Baran, a terrific election lawyer, helped us review tax returns and answer questions about election laws in individual states.

  It’s harder to find a good vice presidential candidate than you might think. You might start off with the idea that it is a very prominent job that thousands of politicians would be dying to have and that a lot would be well qualified for. But when you start looking, you find that everyone has negatives. Everyone has some kind of baggage—whether it’s a voting record, a financial problem, or something in his or her personal life.

  We started with a list of everyone who should be considered and then began narrowing it down to the truly viable candidates. Sometimes the media refers to the “long” list and the “short” list, but it’s really more like the list for public consumption and the real list of possible choices. There are lots of reasons why someone might be put on the list for public consumption. Perhaps you’re trying to placate a certain wing of the party, or maybe you want to attract those who supported your opponent in the primaries. And so you mention certain people, although there’s not a chance they will be chosen.

  I began placing calls to each of the people on the real list and asking if they would agree to be considered. Some, like Senator Connie Mack of Florida, said no way. Connie actually said he’d never speak to me again if I put him on the list. For those who agreed, I explained that we would be sending a questionnaire similar to the paperwork federal employees fill out for employment or for security clearances and warned that it had some intrusive questions on it. I said that I would also be setting up one-on-one interviews. These would be low-profile—with no media attention—and I would have to ask some personal questions. Most candidates who end up on the short list are seasoned enough to know that if they are picked as the nominee, nothing about them will be off-limits and nothing can be counted on to stay secret. The press will start digging, and the other side will unleash opposition researchers. Your whole life will be an open book. Most people understood this and realized how important it was to give us a head
s-up about anything that could possibly cause trouble or embarrassment or worse.

  We also asked each potential candidate to submit ten years of tax returns; copies of speeches, books, and articles; and videotape of recent TV appearances. We thought long and hard about the best place to receive and store this very sensitive information. We couldn’t use campaign headquarters in Austin, where so many curious people came and went every day. Somewhere in the Washington area would be better anyway, because that’s where the search team was. Lynne had an office at the American Enterprise Institute, but that was off-limits because you can’t conduct political activities on nonprofit premises. In the end, the governor and I figured that no one would guess that all the supersensitive vice presidential selection materials were being kept in locked cabinets in the basement of Liz’s house in the D.C. suburbs, so that’s where we had everything sent and stored.

  On May 10 I had dinner with the governor in Austin to go over the information we had gathered on the first set of prospective candidates. I brought two copies of the binder that contained background information on each. I handed one copy to the governor and kept the other for myself, so I could walk him through it. We had not written down the most sensitive material, so I briefed the governor on it orally. Before we began this first session, I told Governor Bush that what we were about to discuss was highly sensitive, and we had to ensure complete confidentiality. Of course, he agreed, and at the end of each of our meetings to discuss the candidates, he would hand his copy of the briefing book back to me.

  Two people not on our list were Colin Powell and John McCain. Both had made it clear that they weren’t interested. One candidate who spent a short time on the real list was Don Rumsfeld. Not long after I took on the assignment of managing the selection process, I placed a call to Don and said, “I’m pulling together a list of potential VP candidates, and I’d like to put your name on it. You don’t have to say yes, but if you don’t say anything, I’m going to put your name on the list.” There was silence on the other end of the phone line, so I added Don’s name and left him in a position where he could truthfully say he had not asked to be on the list.