Barton Gellman shared the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for a keen-edged reckoning with Dick Cheney's domestic agenda in The Washington Post. In Angler, Gellman goes far beyond that series to rake on the full scope of Cheney's work and its consequences, including his hidden tole in the Bush administration's most fateful choices in war: shifting focus from al Qaeda to Iraq, unleashing the National Security Agency to spy at home, and promoting "cruel and inhuman" methods of interrogation. Packed with fresh insights and untold stories, Angler describes a man of deep conviction and remorseless will who reshaped his office and his times. Dick Cheney played a paramount role in decisions that ranged from war and peace to the economy, the environment, and the meaning of the law. His hand was often unseen even by colleagues. Gellman parts the curtains of secrecy to show how the vice president operated and what he wrought.
Angler tracks Cheney's trajectory through two terms as a loyal and valued adviser who nonetheless posed dangers to the president he served. In one riveting narrative, Gellman describes a lengthy crisis over NSA surveillance in which Cheney's close hold on information left even George Bush out of the loop. BlackBerry messages, contemporary notes, and on-the-record interviews rake us inside urgent meetings in the vice president's office, the Situation Room, the White House counsel's living room, and the president's private study. In documentary detail, Gellman shows how Cheney's unyielding course brought Bush to the brink of ruin before the president veered away. Cheney redefined his job before he even joined the ticket in 2000. Angler offers vivid details of his selection as running mate, his command of the presidential transition, and his habit of "reaching down" to steer Bush's options. September 11 amplified Cheney's importance, and Gellman shows how he guided the "war on terror" to Iraq, domestic espionage, gloves-off interrogations, and a doctrine of preventive war. Above all, Cheney encouraged Bush to assert a supremacy as commander in chief that no president had claimed before. Bush was the decider when he chose to be, and Cheney gave few public hints of dissent. Yet the vice president sometimes managed, directly and through proxies, to reopen debates he had lost. On global warming, tax cuts, Supreme Court nominations, CIA secret prisons, and Guantanamo Bay, Cheney steered around Bush's political instincts.
Angler is a work of careful, concrete, and original reporting, backed by hundreds of interviews with Cheney allies and rivals. Above all, it is a study of the Bush administration through the lens of its canniest player, shedding light on the president's legacy and the dilemmas that await his successor.
BARTON GELLMAN is a special projecrs reporter at The Washington Post, following tours that covered diplomacy, the Middle East, the Pentagon and the D.C. superior court. His Cheney series, with partner Jo Beeker, won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize, a George Polk Award, and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. His work has been honored by the Overseas Press Club, the Sociery of Professional Journalists, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
