Cheney-A Shadow Behind The Curtain

AS VICE PRESIDENT, Cheney, you could say, has acted like a great power seeking to maximize influence and quash any rivals, forging an alliance only with Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon. He thus treated the State Department and the National Security Council as foreign enemies, spying on them and humiliating Condoleezza Rice (when she was the national security adviser) and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. When­ever possible, he has acted unilaterally, even working behind President Bush's back to alter his tax and environmental policies. But just as critics warned back in 1992 that American overreaching would ultimately create a coalition of enemies determined to check it, so Cheney's relentless amassing of power and influence has finally rebounded on him in Bush's second term. With the rise of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Cheney faces true rivals who command the president's ear, "The Shadow President", by Jacob Heilbrunn, New York Times, Click Here, click here