The Great Rift: Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and the Broken Friendship That Defined an Era by James Mann

Author:James Mann [Mann, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, United States, 21st Century, political science, Security (National & International), Biography & Autobiography, Political
ISBN: 9781627797566
Google: OSiZDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Published: 2020-01-14T23:38:23.335520+00:00

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The Rumsfeld appointment served as the cornerstone in Cheney’s edifice of power and influence within the new administration. It meant that the Department of Defense, the largest Cabinet agency and a central institution in American foreign policy, would be run by a person whom Cheney had known for more than three decades and with whom he had worked extremely closely in two previous administrations. The long-standing bonds between the two men were also social and personal: The two families had vacationed together in the Caribbean. Cheney had taught Rumsfeld’s daughter Valerie the skill of parallel parking. On Election Night 2000, the Rumsfelds had been among the few guests invited to the Cheneys’ hotel suite in Austin to watch the returns come in.

Once Rumsfeld was appointed, the rest of the administration’s top foreign policy jobs began to fall into place. Richard Armitage did not become deputy secretary of defense. He talked about the job with Rumsfeld, who made clear his lack of enthusiasm. Instead, Armitage accepted the job as deputy secretary of state, working directly for Powell, despite his stated desire not to serve under his friend. The conservatives in the administration could now rest easy that the influence of Powell and Armitage would be confined to the State Department, not spread across the government as a whole.

It also became clear that Rumsfeld was merely the most prominent and most important in a series of appointments of Cheney’s friends, allies, and former aides throughout the new Bush administration. The job of deputy secretary of defense went to Wolfowitz, who had been Cheney’s top civilian advisor when he ran the Pentagon. Earlier, Powell had offered Wolfowitz the job of ambassador to the United Nations, but he had turned it down, explaining to others that Cheney wanted him to be closer to the action in Washington. Stephen Hadley, who had also worked under Cheney in the Pentagon, became deputy national security advisor. Zalmay Khalilzad, yet another of Cheney’s Pentagon civilian advisors, became the National Security Council official responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq.

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