Loyalty is everything in Washington, a town in which it's most elusive. The White House survives and thrives on it; staffers both high level and low tend to fall in line directly behind the president during an administration. But after it ends, do the rules change? They do if you're Dick Cheney, who's made it very clear in recent weeks that his loyalty, and even friendship, with his former boss were far less than cuddly in the latter years of the Bush administration. An account last month in Time detailed an 11th-hour spat between Bush and Cheney over the lack of pardon for the vice president's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, in the Plamegate scandal. But there was apparently more to their eroding relationship than just that episode. Now Cheney says he plans to open the floodgates, offering a full and largely uncensored account of what actually happened in the Bush White House. "The statute of limitations has expired," Cheney has told his biographer, referring to all the secrets that he felt, until now, he had to protect.
The best clue for what will be in the book comes in where he'll be working on it. Since Cheney left Washington, he hasn't moved far. He and wife Lynn still live inside the Beltway in McLean, Va., where Cheney spends most of his time in an office he built above the garage. According to an account in The Washington Post, the walls of the attic office (which sounds more like a bunker, but is above ground) are filled with history books and all of the unclassified notes Cheney was allowed to take with him from the White House. For the rest, he makes frequent visits to the National Archives.
From the sound of it, the account will be an interesting read, especially when compared with the revealing one that Bush himself plans to write. The ex-president has floated publicly the premise of the book he's working on, which will detail the hardest decisions he had to make in office. But Cheney's will be decidedly less personal. He doesn't do feelings, according to his daughter Liz, and he won't be diving into personal details about his White House time. He also won't be divulging state secrets, which would be highly uncharacteristic of a man who lives by secrecy in the name of national security. What he will do, though, is vindicate himself. Cheney's no stranger to unflattering stories, but the constant comparison of the veep to dark arts and characterizations as Darth Vader have surely taken a toll. His biographer says that Cheney wants to explain his role in White House debates and the bigger moments of the administration, undoubtedly offering himself the benevolent portrayal that history has yet to—and may never.
