Dick Cheney, America's most powerful modern vice president and the chief architect of the “war on terror,” has died at the age of 84, according to a statement from his family, CNN reports.
“His beloved wife Lynne, to whom he was married for 61 years, his daughters Liz and Mary and other family members were with him at the time of his death,” the family said, adding that he died of complications from pneumonia and heart and vascular disease.
“Dick Cheney was a wonderful and kind man who taught his children and grandchildren to love their country and live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness and fishing. We are extremely grateful for all that Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed to have loved and been loved by this noble man and giant.”
The 46th US vice president, who served alongside Republican President George W. Bush for two terms from 2001 to 2009, is an influential player in Washington. In his later years, however, Cheney, a hardline conservative, was ostracized by his own party for his virulent criticism of President Donald Trump, whom he called a “coward” and the greatest threat to the republic.
Cheney was plagued by cardiovascular disease most of his adult life, surviving several heart attacks. He underwent a heart transplant in 2012, which he hailed in a 2014 interview as “the gift of life”.
Cheney, a former Wyoming congressman, White House chief of staff and defense secretary, was enjoying a productive business career when he was tasked by George W. Bush with vetting potential vice presidential candidates. The search ended with Cheney being sworn in to the second most important office, joining a new, novice president who arrived in the Oval Office after a contested election.
On September 11, 2001, Cheney was at the White House while the president was out of town. In the terrifying moments when a second hijacked plane struck the World Trade Center in New York, he said he became a different man, one determined to avenge the attacks orchestrated by al-Qaeda and to impose US power throughout the Middle East with a neoconservative doctrine based on regime change and preemptive war.
“At that point, you sensed that this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act,” he recalled of that day in a 2002 interview with CNN's John King.
In the years that followed, Cheney reflected on how he was animated by an overwhelming sense of responsibility. However, perceptions that he was the sole driving force behind the war on terror and US initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan are misleading.
From a bunker deep beneath the White House, Cheney went into crisis mode, directing the response of a grieving nation suddenly at war. He gave the extraordinary order authorizing the downing of any other hijacked planes if they were headed for the White House or the US Capitol building. For many, his frequent departures to “undisclosed” locations outside Washington to preserve the presidential chain of succession reinforced his image as an omnipotent figure waging a covert war from the shadows. His aggressive attitude and alarmist view of a nation facing serious threats was not unusual at the time—especially during a traumatic period that included anthrax letters and snipers around Washington, DC, which exacerbated the public sense of fear.
