Executive Power Was Personal

Sixth of 25 excerpts from The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer:

Conventional wisdom held that September 11 changed everything, including the thinking of [Dick] Cheney and [David] Addington. But a close look at the twenty-year collaboration between the two men suggests that they had long imagined many aspects of the program they put in place after the terrorist attacks. Cheney's writings and speeches suggest he had been laying the political groundwork for years. "This preceded 9/11," said [Bruce] Fein, who has known both men professionally for decades. "I'm not saying that warrantless surveillance did. But the idea of reducing Congress to a cipher was already in play. It was Cheney and Addington's political agenda."

. . . For Addington and Cheney, therefore, executive power was personal. Both had experienced the loss of power firsthand during the Watergate period and were still chafing over the constraints they were forced to accept by self-styled Democratic reformers. Unable to win the fight in the court of public opinion, conservatives instead cast it as a matter of legal principle.

Copyright 2008 by Jane Mayer. All Rights Reserved