One Thousand and Sixty-Five Days To Go

(6 of 7)

The internal divide over how hard to push on an issue as contentious as torture reflects how even six years in office together has not integrated the Bush and Cheney teams; in fact, in some ways they have grown further apart. It was Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, now indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, who designed Cheneyland, which is largely housed in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, across from the White House. Determined to maintain tight control, Libby created a bottleneck beneath Cheney by trying to keep "all sensitive or politically interesting information to himself," a former Bush aide says. That sometimes cut Cheney off from hearing additional points of view even from his own aides. Libby's successor, David Addington, was viewed as so unyielding and difficult when he was the Vice President's counsel that he has poor relations with many West Wing aides, who are referred to collectively in Cheneyland as "across the street." Some members of the President's staff have never met their counterparts in Cheneyland. Many on Cheney's staff see Bush's aides as too liberal, while some Bush aides view the vice-presidential staff as wing nuts.

Bush and Cheney have evolved. "Over time, the President has grown more confident," a presidential adviser says. "His other advisers have become more experienced and more confident about issues that they might have deferred to Cheney on. It's a natural thing." Some Republican officials said the flap over the shooting might accelerate the normal process whereby Presidents push their Vice Presidents away toward the end, often because the Veeps are running on their own but sometimes just so it is clear who owns the legacy. "No one remembers F.D.R.'s Vice Presidents," says a Bush aide, suggesting the scale of the legacy to which Bush aspires.

The Libby trial may make Bush want to ensure some distance. Libby told Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury investigating the CIA leak that his "superiors" had authorized him to reveal classified information from a secret report about Iraq's weapons capability. Could Cheney have been one of those superiors? In his Fox interview, Cheney declared that "there is an Executive Order that specifies who has classification authority and obviously focuses first and foremost on the President but also includes the Vice President." In fact, a 2003 update of a 1995 Executive Order gives the Vice President additional authority over classification of documents, but there is debate about whether the authority also applies to declassification. When Hume asked Cheney what he knew about Libby's assertion, the Vice President said, "It's nothing I can talk about," since he could be called as a witness in the investigation.

Libby's motions could go on through this year; jury selection won't begin in the case until 2007. That guarantees the story will continue to crop up in the headlines, risking embarrassment for the Vice President. "The President doesn't like people screwing up," says a former Administration official. "Libby, even if he's found innocent, screwed up, and that's Cheney's problem because he's Cheney's guy."