Dick Cheney

At 83 years old, Dick Cheney has this physical status:

Richard Bruce Cheney (born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the country's 46th vice president from 2001 to 2009.

He has been dubbed America's most influential vice president.

He was also one of the country's most popular politicians, with a support rating of just 13% at the time of his resignation.

He studied at Yale and then the University of Wyoming, the latter of which earned him a BA and a Masters degree in Political Science.

He began his political career as an intern for congressman William A. Steiger, eventually serving in the White House during the Nixon and Ford administrations.

From 1975 to 1977, he served as the White House chief of staff.

Cheney was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1978.

He served as the Wyoming majority whip for a brief period of 1989 and 1989, representing Wyoming's at-large congressional district from 1979 to 1989.

During George H.W.'s presidency, Cheney was chosen to be the defense minister of the United States. Bush was in charge of the majority of Bush's term from 1989 to 1993.

Cheney oversaw the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, among other things, during his time in the Department of Defense.

Cheney, the chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000, was out of office during the Clinton administration. Cheney was voted running mate by presumptive Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election in July.

They defeated their Democratic rivals, incumbent Vice President Al Gore, and Senator Joe Lieberman.

Cheney was reelected to his second term as Vice President with Bush as President in 2004, defeating Democratic Senators John Kerry and John Edwards.

During Cheney's tenure as Vice President, he was a leading behind-the-scenes contributor to the George W. Bush administration's response to the September 11 attacks and coordination of the Global War on Terrorism.

He was a pioneer of invasion Iraq and a promoter of the administration's anti-terrorism policies.

In 2004, he was at odds with President Bush's opposition to same-sex marriage.

Cheney has frequently chastised the Bush administration's handling of the war against terrorism, intelligence surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA), and torture.

Early life and education

Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the son of Marjorie Lorraine (née Dickey) and Richard Herbert Cheney. He is mainly English, as well as Welsh, Irish, and French Huguenot ancestry. His father was a soil conservation agent for the US Department of Agriculture and his mother, Cheney, was one of three children; he was a softball celebrity in the 1930s. He attended Calvert Elementary School before his family moved to Casper, Wyoming, where he attended Natrona County High School.

He attended Yale University but had trouble adapting to the university and dropped out on his own. Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, one of New Haven's most influential teachers, was credited with helping to shape his foreign policy policy. He later attended the University of Wyoming, where he earned both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in political science. He continued his studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but did not complete them.

Cheney was found guilty of driving inebriated in November 1962 at the age of 21. The following year, he was arrested for DWI again. The detentions made Cheney "think about where I was and where I was headed." If I stayed on that route, I'd be headed down a bad road."

Lynne Vincent, his high school sweetheart, whom he had never met at age 14, was married in 1964.

Cheney first applied for and received five draft deferments when he became eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War. Cheney was interviewed by Washington Post writer George C. Wilson in 1989; when asked about his deferrals, Cheney said, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." During his confirmation hearings in 1989, Cheney testified that he received deferments to finish a college career that lasted six years rather than four, rather than four, owing to poor academic results and the need to work to pay for his education. Cheney was eligible for the draft upon graduation, but there were no such things inducting married men at the time. The draft was extended to include married men without children on October 6, 1965; Cheney's first daughter, Elizabeth, was born nine months and two days later. Cheney's fifth and final deferment earned him "3-A" status, a "hardship" deferment available to men with dependents. Cheney turned 26 in January 1967 and was no longer eligible for the draft.

Cheney dropped out of the University of Wisconsin's doctoral program in 1966 to serve as a staff aide for Gov. Warren Knowles is a writer who writes about Warren Knowles.

Cheney received an American Political Science Association congressional fellowship in 1968 and moved to Washington, Washington.

Personal life

Cheney is a member of the United Methodist Church of the United Methodist Church and was the first Methodist vice president to serve under the presidency of a Methodist president.

Bob Cheney's brother, who worked at the Bureau of Land Management, is a former civil servant.

Lynne, Lynne's wife, was chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1996. She is now a public speaker, author, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Elizabeth ("Liz") and Mary Cheney's two children, as well as seven grandchildren, were born on the couple's two daughters. Liz, a congresswoman from Wyoming who has been active in Wyoming since 2017, has married Philip J. Perry, a former General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security. Mary, a former member of the Colorado Rockies baseball team and the Coors Brewing Company, was a campaign aide to President Bush's re-election bid; she and her wife Heather Poe live in Great Falls, Virginia. Since being out of office, Cheney has publicly supported gay rights.

Nelson, Cheney's Golden Retriever, as of 2015, had a golden retriever named Nelson.

Cheney's long history of cardiovascular disease and occasional need for urgent health care raised concerns about whether he was physically fit to serve in public office. Cheney had his first five heart attacks on June 18, 1978, at the age of 37, despite smoking about 3 packs of cigarettes per day for nearly 20 years. Subsequent heart attacks occurred in 1984, 1988, and 2010 resulted in moderate ventricular dysfunction in his left ventricle. He underwent four-vessel coronary artery bypass grafting in 1988, coronary artery stenting in November 2000, emergency coronary balloon angioplasty in March 2001, and the fitting of a cardioverter-defibrillator in June 2001.

Cheney underwent a six-hour endovascular surgery to restore popliteal aneurysms bilaterally, a catheterization procedure used in the artery behind each knee. The illness was not life threatening at a regular physical in July. After being hospitalized for tests, Cheney was hospitalized for testing. Five months later, she was admitted to the hospital for testing. An ultrasound revealed that the clot was smaller in late April 2006.

After experiencing pain in his left leg, Cheney was treated for deep-vein thrombosis in his left leg at George Washington University Hospital on March 5, 2007. Doctors were given blood-thinning drugs and allowed him to return to work. During the morning of November 26, 2007, Cheney was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and underwent surgery that afternoon, according to CBS News.

Cheney underwent cardiac examination on July 12, 2008; doctors reported that his heartbeat was normal for a 67-year-old man with a history of heart disease. He underwent an electrocardiogram and radiological evaluation of the stents implanted in the arteries behind his knees in 2005 as part of his annual examination. Cheney had no recurrence of atrial fibrillation, and his special pacemaker had no trace nor treated any arrhythmia, according to doctors. Cheney returned to the hospital for a brief period of sexual inconstitution on October 15, 2008.

Cheney strained his back "while moving boxes into his new house" on January 19, 2009. As a result, he was in a wheelchair for two days, including his presence at the 2009 United States presidential inauguration.

After suffering chest pains, Cheney was admitted to George Washington University Hospital on February 22, 2010. After doctors' lab findings, a spokesperson later reported that Cheney had a mild heart attack. After reporting pain, Cheney was admitted to George Washington University Hospital on June 25, 2010.

Cheney was fitted at Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute in early-July 2010 with a left-ventricular assist unit (LVAD) to help with increasing congestive heart disease. The unit pumped blood throughout his body in a continuous fashion. He was released from Inova on August 9, 2010, and he had to decide whether or not to request a complete heart transplant. This pump was centrifugal, and as a result, he was still alive without a pulse for nearly fifteen months.

Cheney underwent a seven-hour heart transplant at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Woodburn, Virginia, on March 24, 2012. He had been on a waiting list for more than 20 months before being welcomed by an anonymous donor. Dr. Jonathan Reiner, Cheney's chief cardiologist, told his patient that "it would not be unreasonable for an otherwise healthy 71-year-old man to live another ten years" after a transplant, despite an agreement with a family-approved interview that Cheney considered Cheney to be otherwise healthy.

Cheney mistakenly shot Harry Whittington, a then-78-year-old Texas attorney, while participating in a quail hunt at Armstrong Ranch in Kenedy County, Texas, on February 11, 2006. Secret Service agents and medical aides, who were traveling with Cheney, came to Whittington's assistance and treated his birdshot wounds to the right cheek, neck, and chest. Whittington was rushed by ambulance to Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital before being taken by helicopter. Whittington suffered a non-fatal heart attack and atrial fibrillation as a result of at least one lead-shot pellet lodged in or near his heart on February 14, 2006. Doctors decided to leave up to 30 pieces of the pellets embedded in his body rather than trying to remove them.

About an hour after the shooting, the Secret Service said they had alerted the sheriff about one hour before. Ramone Salinas III, the sheriff of Kenedy County, said he first heard of the shooting about 5:30 p.m. The ranch owner, Katharine Armstrong, alerted Corpus Christi Caller-Times of the shooting the next day. On February 15, Cheney appeared in a televised interview with MSNBC News about the shooting. Both Cheney and Whittington have described the incident as an accident. Cheney and Whittington were close friends, according to early reports, and that the injuries were minor. Whittington has since told The Washington Post that he and Cheney were not close friends but acquaintances. Whittington declined to answer when asked if Cheney had apologised.

The sheriff's office released a report on the shooting on February 16, 2006, as well as witness statements on February 22, indicating that the shooting occurred on a sunny day and Whittington was shot from 30 or 40 yards (40 m) away looking for a downed bird. All in the hunting party were wearing blaze-orange safety gear, and no one was consuming, according to Armstrong, the ranch owner. However, Cheney has admitted to having one beer four or five hours before the shooting. Despite the fact that the Kenedy County Sheriff's Office documents back up Cheney and his family's official tale, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times' report confirmed that the actual shooting distance was closer than the 30 yards claimed.

Cheney's reputation was harmed by the incident, which was evidently detrimental to his standing in the polls. Dick Cheney's approval rating had declined by 5 percentage points to 18% in two weeks following the accident. Several quiplines and satire have come out of the incident.

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Early career

Cheney's political career began in 1969 as an intern for Congressman William A. Steiger during the Richard Nixon Administration. He then joined Donald Rumsfeld, who served as Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity from 1969 to 1970. In the years that followed, he served in various capacities, from 1971 to 1973, as White House Staff Assistant, 1973-1974, and Deputy Assistant to the president from 1974 to 1975. Cheney, a deputy assistant, suggested several alternatives in a memo to Rumsfeld, including the use of the US Justice Department, that the Ford administration might use to minimize harm from an article that was published by The New York Times in which investigative reporter Seymour Hersh announced that Navy submarines had penetrated into Soviet undersea communications as part of a tightly classified initiative called Operation Ivy Bells.

Private sector career

Cheney served on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations foreign policy group between 1987 and 1989, during his time in Congress.

Cheney joined the American Enterprise Institute shortly after the inauguration of the new Democratic government under President Bill Clinton in January 1993. He served in second term as a Council on Foreign Relations director from 1993 to 1995.

He served as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Halliburton, a Fortune 500 company, from 1995 to July 25, 2000. Cheney resigned as CEO on the same day he was revealed as George Bush's vice presidential nominee in the 2000 race.

Analysts on Wall Street disagreed with Cheney's tenure as CEO. Some Dresser executives had chastised Halliburton's inability of accounting transparency after a 1998 merger between Halliburton and Dresser Industries. A class-action complaint alleging that the corporation inaccurately raised its stock price during this time, was brought by Halliburton shareholders, but Cheney was not named as a person in the lawsuit. In June 2011, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision and allowed the case to proceed in litigation. Cheney was listed in a corruption lawsuit lodged by the Nigerian government against Halliburton in December 2010, which was settled for $250 million.

Halliburton changed its accounting procedures regarding the estimation of controversial costs on major construction projects during Cheney's tenure. On July 25, 2000, Cheney resigned as Halliburton's CEO. As vice president, he argued that this step, as well as establishing a trust and other items, eliminated any conflict of interest. Cheney's net worth, which is expected to be between $19 million and $86 million, is largely derived from his time at Halliburton. His wife's 2006 gross joint income together was almost $8.82 million.

He served as vice president while also serving on the board of advisors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

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