Former Vice President Dick Cheney says his book, which hits bookstores Tuesday, will make heads explode.
While early leaks of the manuscript have focused on revelations about rifts among officials in the Bush administration, The Daily Caller has combed through the 527 pages of his autobiography, “In My Time,” in search of nuggets you may not have known about Cheney.
Here’s what we’ve learned:
Cheney thought the military had taken down passenger planes on 9/11
Cheney gave the order on September 11, 2001, for the military to take out passenger planes thought to be hijacked.
In a conversation with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumfeld that day, when conflicting information was coming in, he was under the impression that the military had in fact done that. (RELATED: Powell fires back: ‘My head isn’t exploding, and I haven’t noticed any other heads exploding’)
In a transcript published in the book, Cheney tells Rumsfeld about his instructions and says “it’s my understanding they’ve already taken a couple aircraft out.” He later learned that wasn’t the case.
Cheney points out that the 9/11 Commission later reported that the shootdown order from Cheney had not been passed down to the fighter pilots in the air. The two planes Cheney was referencing were Flight 93, which crashed on its own in Pennsylvania, and American Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
Cheney laid out reasons why he shouldn’t be VP before being picked
When Bush made it clear he was considering Cheney for vice president, Cheney said he made the following arguments against it to Bush and his adviser Karl Rove:
“First, I told them, I had been arrested twice when I was in my early twenties for driving under the influence, and I’d been kicked out of Yale twice.”
He also told them about his health problems and pointed out that both he and Bush worked in the oil business, something that would be used against them.
Cheney also argued that he was “deeply conservative,” something that could hurt Bush’s brand as a “compassionate conservative.”
Donald Rumsfeld once rejected Cheney as an intern
Before he ever worked in government, Cheney in 1968 was completing a graduate degree and came to Washington on an American Political Science Association congressional fellowship. He decided quickly who he wanted to intern for.
“One of the most impressive orientation speakers was a young Republican congressman named Don Rumsfeld, from Illinois,” Cheney wrote.
“I had never heard of him before, but I learned he had a great reputation for allowing — in fact, demanding — his fellows’ participation in the work of the office. By the time he had finished speaking to us, I had decided that this was the man I wanted to intern for.”
But Rumsfeld, Cheney speculates in his book, wasn’t crazy about hiring a “fuzzy-headed academic.”
“This isn’t going to work,” Rumsfeld told Cheney after an interview, “but thanks for coming in.”
Cheney’s first heart attack dates back to his first campaign
Cheney’s heart problems were well known when he was on the GOP ticket for president in 2000.
But Cheney — who smoked “two or three packs” a day when he was White House chief of staff — wrote that his health has been a problem ever since he entered the political arena. He suffered his first attack in 1978, during his first campaign for Congress.
He worried the first heart attack — one of several to come — would end his political ambitions.
“[H]ere I was, thirty-seven years old and heart patient, wondering if I might have to give up my campaign and hoped-for-career in politics.”
A doctor later encouraged him to continue his campaign for the Wyoming seat, which he ultimately won.
Cheney wrote resignation letter in case he was unable to fulfill duties
Cheney came up with a solution after an aide, David Addington, informed the vice president that if he became incapacitated because of his health problems, no laws existed to remove him from office.
Thus, he decided to write a resignation letter that only Addington knew about. Addington, he wrote, hid the letter at home and was told to use it if that situation ever arose.
Cheney explains why he told Sen. Leahy to “fuck yourself.”
Cheney explains why he famously told Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy to go “fuck yourself” on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Cheney wrote that he was upset that Leahy, in a conference call during Bush’s re-election campaign, falsely suggested that Cheney was still profiting from his ties with Halliburton. So when Leahy later “came over and put his arm around me, acting as though we were old buddies … I used a colorful epithet to suggest what we could do to himself and stepped away.”
“It was probably not language I should have used on the Senate floor, but it was completely deserved,” Cheney wrote.
Cheney thought Newt was ‘fascinating to watch’
Both Cheney and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich — who is now running for president — were elected to Congress in 1978.
Cheney writes that he knew that the two Republicans had different styles, but is complimentary of Gingrich.
“I first met Newt at the orientation session for freshman Republicans in 1978, and he was fascinating to watch. He had tremendous energy, a head full of ideas, and an absolute, unwavering conviction that we Republicans could once again become the majority in the House.”
Cheney wrote that Gingrich argued Republicans “had to quit being polite to the Democrats and go after them — a tactic that drove some of our more senior members right up the wall.
“My style was more restrained, and I was reluctant to speak unless I had something I really wanted to say,” Cheney wrote.
Cheney decided against presidential run in 1996
Cheney says he thought he was done with elective politics after deciding not to run as a Republican to challenge then-President Clinton in 1996. He also explains his decision:
“After stacking up the pros and cons, I looked at it this way: I believed I’d had a great twenty-five-year career in public life, including service as White House chief of staff, secretary of defense, and Wyoming’s congressman for ten years.
“I felt that I was still young enough at fifty-three to have another career in the private sector, and that possibility was certainly more appealing than putting my family through the meat grinder of a national campaign for what would be the long-shot prospect of getting elected president.”
Cheney regrets not issuing a press statement earlier on shooting friend during hunting trip
He calls the day he accidentally shot his attorney friend, Harry Whittington, while on a hunting trip “one of the saddest of my life.”
Cheney says he regrets waiting as long as he did to issue a statement to the press about the incident, from which Whittington made a full recovery.
“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.”
Cheney considered Rumsfeld for VP in 2000
Before then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush chose Cheney as his running mate, Cheney led the vice presidential search.
Cheney said both former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Colin Powell, and Sen. John McCain — who lost the GOP primary to Bush — had indicated they weren’t interested. But an old friend didn’t rule it out.
“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,” Cheney recalled.
Bush, though, made it clear he wasn’t interested.
“His name didn’t stay on long, though, and we never went through the vetting with him, because it was pretty clear early in the next session I had with the governor that a Rumsfeld vice presidency just wasn’t in the cards.”
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