How Cheney took control of Bush's foreign policy

The new veep installed crony Don Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, and would've won Paul Wolfowitz the top post at CIA -- if not for Wolfowitz's zipper problem.

Editor's note: This is Part 3 of an excerpt from "The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future." Part 1 ran on Nov. 7; Part 2 ran on Nov. 8. For more information on the book, visit craigunger.com

By Craig Unger

Read more: George W. Bush, Books, Colin Powell, Books Features, Dick Cheney, Craig Unger

Nov. 9, 2007 | Much as he loathed Colin Powell, Vice President-elect Dick Cheney realized that the immensely popular general -- the most trusted man in America -- was essential to the political perception of the incoming Bush administration's foreign policy decisions. As former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich put it, "If you're George Bush, and the biggest weakness you have is foreign policy, and you can have Cheney on one flank and Powell on the other, it virtually eliminated the competence issue."

As a result, on December 16, 2000, three days after Al Gore conceded defeat, Colin Powell was flown to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where the president-elect announced his first cabinet appointment: Colin Powell as secretary of state. "He is a tower of strength and common sense," said Bush. "You find somebody like that, you have to hang on to them. I have found such a man."

Tears filled Bush's eyes. "I so admire Colin Powell," he later explained. "I love his story."

Unlike other designated cabinet appointees, Powell had not been vetted by Cheney or other campaign officials. Nor, according to "Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell," Karen DeYoung's comprehensive biography of him, was Powell even asked any serious foreign policy questions. Such discussions were not necessary. According to a former Pentagon official who had worked with Cheney during the first Gulf War, "Cheney's distrust and dislike for Mr. Powell were unbounded." In other words, Powell was only there for show. Cheney immediately took measures to undermine him. The chess game began.

At the Crawford press conference on December 16, Powell was dazzling -- too dazzling for his own good. As he proceeded with his lengthy discourse about the state of the world, Bush's admiring expression gradually turned to one of sour irritation. Afterward, Richard Armitage, Powell's close friend and longtime colleague, told the secretary of state-designate that he had been so comfortable in front of the cameras compared to the president-elect, that it was somewhat disturbing. "It's about domination," Armitage advised Powell. "Be careful in appearances with the president."

Armitage wasn't the only one to notice. "Powell seemed to dominate the President-elect ... both physically and in the confidence he projected," reported the Washington Post. New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman concluded that Powell "so towered over the president-elect, who let him answer every question on foreign policy, that it was impossible to imagine Mr. Bush ever challenging or overruling Mr. Powell on any issue."

None of this was lost on Cheney. Initially, Bush and he had decided that the new secretary of defense would be former Indiana senator Dan Coats, a Christian fundamentalist on the Senate Armed Services Committee who had won over the Christian Right thanks to his undiluted antipathy toward gays in the military. But now it was abundantly clear to Cheney that Coats would be no match for Powell. When Coats added that he did not consider missile defense an urgent priority, Bush and Cheney dumped him immediately.

Meanwhile, Bush proceeded to pick other key cabinet officials. On December 22, he announced that his attorney general would be John Ashcroft, who had just been defeated in a bid for reelection as senator from Missouri. Ashcroft, who had preached at Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church, was a member of the Assemblies of God church, the denomination of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and Elvis Presley, which was known for charismatic practices such as faith healing and speaking in tongues.

As secretary of commerce, Bush picked Don Evans, an evangelical oil man friend from Texas who had introduced Bush to the Community Bible Studies program in Midland. As chief White House speechwriter, Bush picked Michael Gerson, a graduate of Wheaton College, the so-called Harvard of evangelical colleges. These were the very people whom Neil Bush had scorned as "cockroaches" issuing "from the baseboards of the Bible-belt," and whom Bush 41 had derided as the "extra-chromosome set."

As the cabinet began to take shape in late December, Colin Powell still presented the biggest potential obstacle to the ambitions of Cheney and the neocons. There was less than a month before the inauguration. Time was running out. They had to find a way to neutralize him.

According to the former Pentagon official, Cheney was convinced that even though Powell's presence was essential to the Bush administration, he "would have to be cornered bureaucratically and repeatedly reminded (even in ways involving public humiliation) that foreign policy was not something over which he presided." To accomplish that task, the official continued, Cheney "recruited Donald Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives to hammer Secretary of State Powell bureaucratically while Mr. Cheney took upon himself the task of managing the President of the United States."

On December 28, Donald Rumsfeld met Bush in his temporary headquarters in the Madison Hotel in Washington. To Washington cognoscenti, to Bush insiders, the idea that Rumsfeld might be invited to join a Bush administration was stunning. Rumsfeld's enmity with Bush 41 included attempts to keep Bush off the Republican ticket in 1976 and 1980 and the Team B battle with Bush's CIA. Rumsfeld openly made fun of Bush at Chicago dinner parties. And when Bob Dole challenged Bush 41 for the presidential nomination in 1988, Rumsfeld had been on Dole's team. At the time, George W. Bush was the enforcer on his father's campaign. "Without question, [George W.] would have known about his father's problems with Rumsfeld," said Pete Teeley, former press secretary to Bush 41. "Everybody knew."

"Real bitterness there," said another friend of Bush 41. "Makes you wonder what was going through Bush 43's mind when he made him secretary of defense."

James Baker even interceded. According to Robert Draper's "Dead Certain," he told the president-elect, "All I'm going to say is, you know what he did to your daddy." But Bush didn't listen. After all, Rumsfeld's success came from being a great courtier. Fourteen years older than his patron, vastly more experienced, Rumsfeld reportedly played to Bush's insecurity about his lack of experience, and reassured him that he was fit for command. That reassurance became crucial to their relationship over the next six years.

Rumsfeld's relationship with Cheney had cooled somewhat since he and his protégé had been in the Ford White House. In 1986, Rumsfeld had made a futile stab at getting the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, and had pleaded with Cheney, unsuccessfully, for his support. When George H.W. Bush won the presidency, Cheney ultimately became secretary of defense but Rumsfeld was left out in the cold.

Next page: Wolfowitz's critics who knew about the affair delighted in referring to Shaha Riza as "his neoconcubine"