Cheney Busy Behind the Scenes

Vice President Dick Cheney recently referred to himself as “mystery man,” a wry reference to the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 policy of keeping him largely hidden from public view--and away from the White House.

Working out of various remote locations, Cheney has remained engaged, helping President Bush pursue the war on terrorism, White House officials say. “The vice president remains at a secure location, where he is fully and completely informed of all events and is participating,” said one top White House aide.

Yet Cheney’s behind-the-scenes role looms as a potential image problem for a president who brought to the Oval Office only six years of direct political experience--as governor of Texas--and little background in foreign affairs.

“The rap from the beginning has been that Cheney was the puppet master--Bush his puppet,” said Larry E. Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst. “While Bush has gone a long way toward disproving that, this new example of the ‘hidden hand’ vice presidency could re-stoke suspicions that Cheney is still pulling the strings.”

Cheney has been kept under wraps for security reasons. More precisely, it is to guarantee an orderly succession if something happened to Bush, given the widespread fear of more terrorist attacks.

Bush, at his news conference Thursday night, made a joking reference to Cheney’s changed routine. “I shook hands today with the vice president in the Oval Office,” Bush said. “I welcomed him from his secure location.”

Bush added that he and Cheney had been kept separate so often “for the sake of the continuity of government.”

As Cheney himself put it during a nationally televised interview five days after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: “My job, above all other things, is to be prepared to take over if something happens to the president.”

Thus, since the morning of the attacks, the vice president has all but redefined the concept of telecommuting--conducting business mostly by telephone or videoconference while keeping mostly to his daily routine.

That includes a series of early-morning briefings, starting with one on intelligence at 7 a.m., according to Mary Matalin, a senior Cheney advisor. These are conducted either in person or over a secure telephone line, depending on location.

“His basic day is still from 7 to 7. Sometimes it’s longer, sometimes a little shorter,” Matalin said.

What appears unchanged is Cheney’s key role.

It was at his behest that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Saudi Arabia, Central Asia and the Middle East on a journey that ended just before the bombing campaign began.

On Sunday morning, as the airstrikes were about to commence, Cheney was in the White House, helping Bush telephone world leaders to inform them of the imminent actions.

Afterward, Cheney ate lunch with Bush and some of their top aides in the Roosevelt Room and then watched the president deliver a nationwide address.

It also was Cheney who recommended to Bush the creation of the Homeland Security Office and suggested Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas J. Ridge as the one to head that office, aides said.

In May, Bush had asked Cheney to assess the nation’s preparedness against terrorism, and that process was well underway Sept. 11, according to Matalin.

The office now headed by Ridge, who resigned as governor, is a direct outgrowth of Cheney’s terrorism task force.

Since Sept. 11, Cheney also has put to good use his knowledge of the Middle East and familiarity with many of the region’s leaders, which date to the Persian Gulf War a decade ago, when he served as Defense secretary under Bush’s father, the senior President Bush.

When the emir of Qatar visited the White House, he and Cheney not only talked diplomacy and strategy but also exchanged family updates.

“It’s not an infrequent occasion for those conversations to begin with acquaintance-type pleasantries,” Matalin said.

To be sure, Cheney has not been entirely out of sight.

“There is not a specific, hourly, carved-in-stone policy,” Matalin said. “There’s assessment made every day. The policy is guided by prudent attention to government continuity.”

Indeed, Cheney on Thursday dropped by his West Wing office--just 18 steps down the hall from the Oval Office--while Bush was conducting a Cabinet meeting.

Cheney also appeared--unannounced--at the White House on Oct. 5, standing behind Bush in the Rose Garden as the president discussed a new tax cut proposal.

The vice president also visited Congress on Oct. 2, when he briefed members on the progress of the anti-terrorism war and met with various members on other business.

“The vice president remains very popular up there,” said veteran Washington lobbyist Tom Korologos. “He’s the court of last appeals--when guys get turned down by the bureaucracy, they go to him, he’s so accessible. He writes stuff down on backs of envelopes and then he goes downtown and gets an answer for them.”

Cheney is scheduled to appear tonight on PBS’ “Newshour.” His interview with Jim Lehrer, to be taped earlier in the day, will be his first major public appearance since he spoke on “Meet the Press” on Sept. 16.

In that interview, Cheney delivered a riveting account of the minutes and hours inside the White House after the attacks--an account that left many with the impression that he, and not Bush, had been in charge.

Cheney recalled how, from an underground bunker deep below the White House, he persuaded Bush to delay returning to Washington and directed the evacuation of the congressional leadership and members of the Bush Cabinet--even as the dimensions of the attacks were still unfolding.

“He seemed to be running the show and telling the president what to do on Sept. 11,” Sabato said. “This was from Cheney’s own mouth, and it could not have pleased the White House.”

The president’s closest aides, Karen Hughes and Karl Rove, have strongly denied being upset by Cheney’s “Meet the Press” performance.

In any case, since then Cheney’s absence at times has been conspicuous.

Four days later, as Bush addressed a joint session of Congress, the vice president was again at an undisclosed location. He also was nowhere to be seen Monday, when Ridge took the oath of office at the White House.

Cheney has tried mightily to maintain some semblance of a normal life, according to Matalin.

The vice president and his wife, Lynn, have managed to attend a few dinner gatherings--as well as their granddaughter’s birthday party.

And Thursday night, when Cheney got home, an 8-week-old black Labrador retriever was waiting for him. His name: Jackson--as in Jackson Hole, Wyo., where the Cheneys have a home.