Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barton Gellman’s newsbreaking investigative journalism documents how Vice President Dick Cheney redefined the role of the American vice presidency, assuming unprecedented responsibilities and making it a post of historic power.

Dick Cheney changed history, defining his times and shaping a White House as no vice president has before— yet concealing most of his work from public view. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman parts the curtains of secrecy to show how Cheney operated, why, and what he wrought.

Angler, Gellman’s embargoed and highly explosive book, is a work of careful, concrete, and original reporting backed by hundreds of interviews with close Cheney allies as well as rivals, many speaking candidly on the record for the first time. On the signature issues of war and peace, Angler takes readers behind the scenes as Cheney maneuvers for dominance on what he calls the iron issues from Iraq, Iran, and North Korea to executive supremacy, interrogation of Al Qaeda suspects, and domestic espionage. Gellman explores the behind-the- scenes story of Cheney’s tremendous influence on foreign policy, exposing how he misled the four ranking members of Congress with faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, how he derailed Bush from venturing into Israeli- Palestinian peace talks for nearly five years, and how his policy left North Korea and Iran free to make major advances in their nuclear programs.

Domestically, Gellman details Cheney’s role as “super Chief of Staff ”, enforcer of conservative orthodoxy; gatekeeper of Supreme Court nominees; referee of Cabinet turf; editor of tax and budget laws; and regulator in chief of the administration’s environment policy. We watch as Cheney, the ultimate Washington insider, leverages his influence within the Bush administration in order to implement his policy goals. Gellman’s discoveries will surprise even the most astute students of political science.

Above all, Angler is a study of the inner workings of the Bush administration and the vice president’s central role as the administration’s canniest power player. Gellman exposes the mechanics of Cheney’s largely successful post-September 11 campaign to win unchecked power for the commander in chief, and reflects upon, and perhaps changes, the legacy that Cheney—and the Bush administration as a whole—will leave as they exit office.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, Terrifying, Fascinating
Comment: This is brilliantly written, gripping, horrifying, impossible to put down. Gellman's got 70 pages of source notes, and talks to or quotes the major players, which makes his research credible, and he sticks to the facts. Jim Comey is now my personal hero. Read this book!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: You can't understand the Bush presidency unless you read this book!
Comment: The best book of 2008, none I've read thus far even compare. Angler is an incredibly illuminating book into the most unique vice presidency in American history. I would also argue, after having read about a dozen books on President Bush and his Administration; that you cannot truly understand the failures of the Bush Administration and the woeful performance of the GOP in the past eight years without having read this book.

My perspective is one that had me voting for Bush in 2000, primarily in hopes that a Republican president and Republican-majority Congress would lead to authentic tax reform as proposed by most economists of that time if one wanted to sincerely optimize economic growth (i.e., a national sales consumption tax that supplanted all other federal income and wealth taxes based on a 1997 study). While I was aware that Bush was not the most competent person to be running for the job, his nominating Dick Cheney as his running mate pulled me over to supporting and voting for Bush in 2000 (though certainly not in 2004). The Dick Cheney known by his friends and even his opponents was one of intelligence, competence, patriotism, analytic skills, institutional knowledge of the Executive Branch without peer, and judgment.

This perception, shared by many both inside and outside the party, including Democratic colleagues, begs the question in retrospect: How could such a competent VP who had the ear of the President lead to such incompetent results?

Gellman shows his mastery of many topics in providing the answers and he does provide the answers. Gellman's findings are stunning given the opaqueness of the Bush presidency. Gellman was provided access to enough of the players and coupled with his functional expertise in understanding constitutional law and the machinations of the Executive Branch, provides a thorough account of several initiatives that Cheney decides to engage. The book is not a complete biography of the Cheney vice presidency, but instead an analysis of his performance by studying several key areas, such as his transforming intelligence activities post-9/11, fighting to increase the power of the Executive Branch while avoiding the checks of Congress and the SCOTUS, getting Bush reelected in 2004 by pushing for unsound economic policy that is partly the reason this recession will be deeper and longer than need be, to becoming a culture warrior in the war against science to promote certain business interests, and more.

There are no bad chapters, in fact each chapter is a masterpiece of reporting. Each is rife with explosive revelations:
from the process to win the nomination without being vetted,
to staffing allies in certain positions beyond the office of the Vice Presidency that allowed him to virtually control the content of their respective department's work in his areas of interest,
to how Cheney circumvented the law, the constitution, and its ideals,
to insuring an extremely lazy Bush was presented with only those arguments Cheney wanted him to hear,
to developing policy where his fingerprints were missing even to Bush,
to whether Cheney's efforts were in good faith or a result of cronyism or corruption;
Gellman's reporting is done within a proper context, with excellent sources, and in a writing style that reads like a thriller.

The only critique I have is a small one and mostly irrelevant for most readers of this sort of book. Gellman doesn't cover any ground on the ramifications of Cheney's policy execution. For example, while the story of Cheney implementing our torturing people we captured, some of whom were innocent, is excellently sourced, reported, and framed within the context of both American law and our founding ideals, it's an abstract rendering of results. Nowhere does Gellman report on how Cheney's policy affected real people, from those in the military that actually tortured people, to those people who are innocent of any wrongdoing that were tortured and some even tortured to death. This could cause the less-informed reader to not take Cheney's violations of our law as seriously as I believe they deserve (criminal investigations are warranted). For those readers who don't have that perspective, I also suggest the book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals and/or the DVD documentary, Taxi To the Dark Side, which chronicles the harm done to both torturer and the torturer while harming, not helping, American interests.

Does the book answer the questions I previously posed? Yes, without qualification I can now present a one paragraph response to how an Administration staffed with such a competent individual and delegated so much power ultimately failed so badly America will suffer its ramifications for generations.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: OK, not great
Comment: I have read these other reviews and they see this book as being far more scathing than I do. Perhaps my loathing of Cheney raised my expectations.

The book is a very long, somehwat dry argument for the idea that Cheney was the true "evil-doer" in the Bush administration, and that Bush himself was merely an inconvient fool. It's all vaguely reminiscent of any 70's sit com where the guy in charge is an idiot who has to be "managed" but who occasionally suspects he's being manipulated and must be appeased. McLean Stevenson's character on Mash, the governor in Benson, Ted Baxter in Mary Tyler Moore. Cheney is a silent man who nevertheless is characterized as having immoveable opinions and limitless conviction in his own righteousness.

Familiar stories are recounted: how he appointed himself as VP, how he behaved during the 9/11 travesty, the Justice department meltdown, torture,etc.

There is nothing new here.

It may be necessary for this administration to be removed from the White House before truth will eventually leak out. Until now, none of the books I have seen provide any new insights or any clearer understanding than I could get from simply reading newspapers.

Be patient. It'll all come out. But I'd suggest holding off on buying these books in the meantime. They are sadly unsatisfying.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: the Last 8 years revealed
Comment: We have read all the exposés of the Bush Years. This is the best and the most terrifying.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Can he really have been so powerful?
Comment: This book is one of the first of its kind to profile Richard Cheney, although not the only one (Rise Of The Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet). Certainly Cheney deserves a biography and the question about his role in the Bush White House, the perception that he had a great deal of power and how he may have used that power is important. Cheney has been potrayed by some voices as a sort of svengali, lurking behind the throne and whispering in the presidents ear, akin to something out of Lord of the Rings.

This book takes the view that although Cheney may not be a character from a movie, he is nevertheless a nefarious and overly powerful person who influenced every aspect of the Bush administration. This is an interesting view. It blames Cheney for failure in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and then accuses him of even orchestrating supreme court nominations, foreign policy, environmental policies and other things.

but can this truily be beleived. Did Cheney and his 'men' such as Libby, really run the U.S government for 8 years? What about the other men involved, such as Condi and Rumsfeld? Didn't they speak out? And what of Bush himself? The end result of this book is that it creates s scapegoat on which all things are thrown. But this doesn't seem entirely right. There were other people invovled. There is no doubt that Cheney was influential and authority was delegated to him, but to blame him for every in an out gives him too much credit and it seems would have required a 24 hour work day from a man whose heart was already in bad shape. How did he shoulder the workaday burden?

There are certainly unanswered questions and this book does not do justice to solving them all.

Seth J. Frantzman

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