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| Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency | 
 enlarge | Author: Barton Gellman
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $14.73
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Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 827
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.7
ISBN: 1594201862
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.931092
EAN: 9781594201868
ASIN: 1594201862
Publication Date: September 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barton Gellmans 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, Gellmans 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 Cheneys 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 Cheneys 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 administrations environment policy. We watch as Cheney, the ultimate Washington insider, leverages his influence within the Bush administration in order to implement his policy goals. Gellmans 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 presidents central role as the administrations canniest power player. Gellman exposes the mechanics of Cheneys largely successful post-September 11 campaign to win unchecked power for the commander in chief, and reflects upon, and perhaps changes, the legacy that Cheneyand the Bush administration as a wholewill leave as they exit office.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Timely reading. November 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was a gift and so I can't comment on the book. Delivery, however, was typical Amazon speedy!
Second Draft of History November 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If journalism is the first draft of history, telling us generally what has happened, the second draft should be able to tell us more specifically what made it happen and why. Barton Gellman "Angler" is outstanding in this sense, describing in detail how and why the tumultuous last eight years were to such a large extent the product of something never before seen in America, a Presidency weakened by the President's choice to delegate his authority to his Vice President.
Many readers will find it odd that the matter is put this way. Gellman makes clear Cheney's deeply held belief in the primacy of Presidential power in the American system, and his determination to assert that primacy over competing claims from the Congress, the judiciary, and the Cabinet departments. Yet what Gellman illustrates for the first time is how Cheney's belief could not have been implemented had he served under any other President in our history. Bush ceded to Cheney authority to review every paper Bush saw while allowing Cheney to keep his own office's paperwork secret; it was Cheney's legal counsel, David Addington, not Bush's lawyers or his Justice Department, who directed the legal response to terrorism after 9/11; Cabinet departments who had gone directly to the President to resolve major differences over policy and budget in other administrations had to work these out with Cheney during Bush's. The strongest claims to expansive Presidential authority by any administration in our history were made on behalf of a President so weak that he allowed the one subordinate he could not fire to exercise Presidential powers without his knowledge.
It's an astonishing tail, testimony not only to George W. Bush's unfitness for high public office but to the badly degraded checks and balances that have long kept excessive concentrations of power in Washington at bay. You won't find names like Obama, Biden, Clinton or Kerry in "Angler"; John McCain only has a bit part. The media is easily manipulated, and only in Bush's second term -- particularly with the departure from the Defense Department of Cheney's former boss Donald Rumsfeld -- do several major foreign policy decisions get made in defiance of Cheney's wishes.
There will be other histories written of the Bush administration. None will be complete without reference to this book.
Darth Vader Made Real November 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
All I can say is that I'm glad I read this book post the November 4 election rather than before, because this story sent chills up my spine. We all knew that the last eight years was more of a Dick Cheney presidency than that of George Bush, but reading about Cheney's careful and methodical approach to taking us down the darkest of rat holes is truly horrifying. Now knowing how deep in the grip we've been in the hands of a madman surrounded by other madmen it's not surprising that America has lost its way so terribly. Several times I wanted to put this book down but couldn't, because like driving by a car wreck, you can't help but wonder what could have gone so wrong. Hopefully, everyone selected for the incoming Obama administration will read this since it accurately portrays a perfect morality tale of what happens when unchecked power is unleashed in the White House.
Clearly written, chilling, sadly instructive.
Brilliant, Terrifying, Fascinating November 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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!
You can't understand the Bush presidency unless you read this book! November 17, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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 authorizing the use of torture, including against people who were innocent, is excellently sourced, reported, and framed within the context of both American law and our founding ideals, it's a mere 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, or the online documentary found at TorturingDemocracyDOTorg, all of 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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