American Vice-President Dick Cheney has walked the corridors of world power for three decades.

Cheney's remarkable life story involves the relentless accumulation of power in every form.
Elected for a second term, he continues to be one of the most powerful and well-connected men in the world.
The fifth estate will show how he accomplished this, what it involved in terms of costs for others and what history's judgement could be.

 

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that Cheney was insistent on invading Iraq from the beginning. "Saddam is ousted. You get a moderate Baathist regime and a democracy flows out - like water out of a fountain. And not only will democracy flow in Iraq. It will flow into Syria. The Iranians will also see the light. They (Cheney and others) believed this. Utopian, idealist, crazy."

2000
OCTOBER 24: Halliburton announces layoffs and assets sales because of weakness in its construction and engineering businesses. Analysts reduce Halliburton’s earning forecast.

OCTOBER 25: Halliburton announces it is under a grand jury investigation for over-billing the government of California.

NOVEMBER: Cheney suffers his fourth heart-attack.

NOVEMBER 13: It is reported that Halliburton stock has lost between $3 and $4 billion of its total market value.

Dressers Industries asbestos problem and weak engineering portfolio is blamed. Democrats question if Cheney had insider information when he sold his stock two months earlier for $30 million.

During the election campaign Cheney tells ABC News. “I had a firm policy that we wouldn’t do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal.”

However, during his time as CEO, Halliburton was selling millions of dollars to Iraq in supplies for its oil industry. The deals were done through old subsidiaries of Dresser Industries. It was done under the auspices of the corrupt UN Oil for Food Program.

Halliburton worked with Iran and Libya as well, using its own subsidiaries.

2001
JANUARY 19: Dick Cheney is sworn in as Vice President of the United States.

JANUARY 29: President Bush announces the formation of the National Energy Policy Development Group in Cheney’s office. He announces that Cheney will chair the group.

FEBRUARY 2: Wall Street Journal publishes expose on Halliburton’s Tehran office. (read the article )

Abdulamir Mahdi writes a letter to Cheney complaining that he is in jail for violating the Iranian embargo while the Vice President, who did the same thing, is free.

MARCH 5: Cheney has balloon angioplasty performed at George Washington University Hospital after suffering chest pains.

APRIL 19: Representatives John Dingell and Henry Waxman, Ranking Members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, send a letter to the General Accounting Office, seeking to obtain information about National Energy Policy Development Group. They wanted to find out who had participated in the report.

MAY 16: Cheney presents to President Bush a report entitled National Energy Policy, which recommended the adoption of the national energy policy that had been developed by the NEPDG. (read the National Energy Policy )

Intelligence specialist Greg Thielman says his State Department Office was receiving information that was different from what the White House was saying. "Their starting point was not 'let's try to figure out what is going on' but 'let's see what kind of information we can come up with to justify the policy line we want to pursue'. Cheney was the driving force behind an orchestrated presentation to the American public of a different version of reality than the reality we saw."

JUNE 21: Cheney’s office sends 77 pages of miscellaneous documents supposedly as a responsive reply to GAO’s request for documents. The package of documents contain pages with dollar amounts but no indication of the nature of purpose of the expenditure. Also included was the executive director’s credit card receipt for a pizza. Requests by the GAO for additional information was denied.

AUGUST 2: Cheney sends a letter to the Senate and House of Representatives, stating “actions undertaken by an agent of the Congress, the Comptroller General, which exceeded his lawful authority and which, if given effect, would unconstitutionally interfere with the functioning of the executive branch.”

Cheney says the GAO’s demand for documents compromise “the confidentiality of communications among a President, a Vice-President, the President’s other senior advisors and others.”

Cheney also states that he had provided "documents responsive to the Comptroller General's inquiry concerning the costs associated with the (Energy task force's work.)" Cheney was apparently writing about the 77 pages.

SEPTEMBER 11: Al Qaeda attacks in New York and Washington. In the wake of the attacks, Dick Cheney reportedly is taken to Raven Rock, a top-secret military base. He orders U.S. military fighters to shoot down any civilian planes that may have been hijacked.

Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski worked at the Pentagon along side the 'Office of Special Plans' a group that worked with Cheney on intelligence matters. "When I heard those (President Bush's) speeches I recognized many of the anecdotes. Having seen the intelligence I knew this was a manipulation of the information. It was cherry picked information, out of context information. It bothered me a great deal because I saw it to be conscious manipulation. Not an oversight but consciously done. If you don't tell Dick Cheney what he wants to hear, you're out of a job."

2002
JANUARY: Sierra Club sues Cheney, et al, to get documents related to the National Energy Development Group. (read a report from the Sierra Club )

FEBRUARY: Ambassador Joe Wilson is told by the CIA that Cheney is interested in an allegation that Iraq had tried to purchase Yellow Cake uranium from Niger. Wilson goes to Niger to investigate and concludes the rumour is false.

FEBRUARY 22: David Walker, the Comptroller of the General Accounting Office, files a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to get access to records relating to the activities of the National Energy Development Group. (see the document .pdf file)

JUNE 22: A memo written by INC (Iraqi National Council) lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney's staff, as one of two "U.S. governmental recipients" for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC and which was then being funded by the State Department. The letter shows Cheney's office was getting intelligence from a highly suspect source.

AUGUST 26: Cheney tells an audience of veterans "There’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction [and that he will use them] against our friends, against our allies and against us.”

Selling the nuclear threat became key to convincing Americans to support the war.

DECEMBER 9: U.S. District Court Judge John Bates dismisses the high profile lawsuit filed by David Walker, the Comptroller of the General Accounting Office, against Vice President Dick Cheney.

Imad Khadduri, formerly a top Iraqi nuclear scientist, says the bombing during the first Gulf War destroyed Iraq's nuclear program - and it was never re-built. "On the night I heard President Bush enunciating his clear intention of invading Iraq on the pretext of a nuclear weapon program, I was struck by the incredulity of that charge."

2003
JANUARY 28, 2003: President Bush gives his State of the Union Address where he presents a case against Saddam Hussein and states that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa". (see the address )

FEBRUARY 7: The General Accounting Office abandons its efforts to obtain records about the operation of the Vice President's Task Force on Energy Policy.

The Comptroller says while he believes the decision of the Judge Bates was incorrect, to pursue it would take too much time and resources. He also points out that private litigants were still pursuing the Cheney documents.

MARCH: Cheney declares "we believe that he [Saddam Hussein] has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Cheney publicly states mid-March that U.S. troops would be "greeted as liberators” in Iraq.

MARCH 5: Army Corps of Engineers writes in an e-mail that a contract for restoring Iraqi oil fields is being coordinated with Cheney’s office. Three days later a Halliburton subsidiary was awarded the $7 billion contract.

MARCH 19: U.S. begins Operation Iraqi Freedom. Baghdad is bombed.

APRIL 7: Newsweek reveals that Cheney is still receiving annual compensation from Halliburton for his tenure as the company CEO. This while the U.S. military was giving contracts worth potentially billions of dollars to Halliburton.

In The State of the Union Address President Bush repeated a rumour that Iraq had recently purchased uranium from Africa. Joe Wilson, a former ambassador to Africa knew that it wasn't true. "It become clear to me that there's been a deliberate attempt on the part of some of the members of government to deceive the U.S. Congress and deceive the American people ... deceive the world as to the nature of the threat posed by Saddam's nuclear program."

APRIL 8: California Democratic representative Henry Waxman, joined by Democratic representative John Dingell, request a General Accounting Office investigation, writing that 'ties' between Cheney and Halliburton 'have raised concerns about whether the company has received favorable treatment from the administration. This is their second request concerning Cheney.

JULY 6: Ambassador Joe Wilson writes an article for the New York Times criticizing the Bush’s state of the the Union address for including the allegation that Iraq had tried to obtain yellow cake uranium from Niger. (read the article )

JULY 14: Syndicated columnist Robert Novak reveals that Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife is a CIA operative. That information, he writes, came from two senior administration officials. This leak violates U.S. law. (read the article )

AUGUST 25: The GAO releases a report called Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy.” (read the report .pdf file)

SEPTEMBER 14: Cheney repeats widely discredited report that 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001.

Bush publicly admits there is no evidence linking Iraq to September 11 terrorist attacks.

DECEMBER 15: U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Cheney appeal a lower court order that Cheney turn over documents related to the Bush administration’s Energy Task Force. Cheney had been fighting efforts to disclose the documents for three years.

Former CIA director James Woolsey doesn't believe that the intelligence gathering was biased - nor does he think the war was unwarranted. "I wasn't present in any of those conversations, but whether the Vice-President said something with a frown on his face or a smile doesn't matter. The CIA directors job is to encourage people to call it straight and it's their job to call it straight. I think the President's made a good case that in a world of people like Saddam, Khameinin, Kim Jong II - that waiting for the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program to mature is a bad idea."

2004
JANUARY: Dick Cheney goes duck hunting with US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Halliburton states in an SEC filing "Since [Cheney's] nomination as vice president, Halliburton has been and continues to be the focus of allegations, some of which appear to be made for political reasons by political adversaries of the vice president and the current Bush administration.

We expect that this focus and these allegations will continue and possibly intensify as the 2004 elections draw nearer.”

U.S. Treasury department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control begins investigation into allegations that Halliburton may have violated the U.S. embargo against Iran through a subsidiary based in Dubai.

FEBRUARY 3: Halliburton is accused of overcharging the U.S. military $36 million for meals at a U.S. base in Kuwait.

FEBRUARY: Justice Department investigation into allegations that Halliburton paid $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials to get contract to build a natural gas plant in the late 1990s, when Cheney was still CEO.

Halliburton, in its annual report, says U.S. government contracts accounted for 26 percent of its revenues in 2003. That is up from 10 percent the year before.

MARCH: The Pentagon asks the justice department to help investigate allegations that Halliburton overcharged for fuel in Iraq by more than $80 million.

MARCH 18: Scalia releases a 21 page memo refusing to recuse himself from the Cheney appeal on the Energy Task Force lawsuit. Scalia had been asked to recuse himself because of a duck-hunting trip he took with Cheney in January. (read the memo)

Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg says Halliburton has profited from the war with Iraq. "They've overcharged for food and lodging, they've overcharged for gasoline, trucking - all kinds of things. Their behaviour has been awful. There's no doubt that he (Dick Cheney) is a very influential person in the White House, that he still has some contact with Halliburton."

APRIL 8: Two congressmen, Henry Waxman and John Dingell, ask the General Accounting Office to investigate ties between Cheney and Halliburton and whether the company has received favourable treatment from the Administration.

JUNE: U.S. media reports that Dick Cheney had been questioned about the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, the CIA-officer married to Joe Wilson.

JULY: A federal grand jury in Houston subpoenas documents for Halliburton as it investigates allegations that the company may have violated the US embargo against dealing with Iran.

AUGUST: Halliburton settles with the Security and Exchange Commission, agreeing to pay $7.5 million for not disclosing a change in its accounting practices that allowed it to report higher earnings in 1998 and 1999. The SEC accused Halliburton of hindering its investigation.

OCTOBER 5: Cheney meets Democratic Vice-Presidential challenger John Edwards in a televised debate.

The U.S. Attorney investigating the Valerie Plame leak says his investigation is completed, except for the testimony of two reporters who refused to reveal their sources of information.

OCTOBER 13: Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry causes an uproar when he refers to Cheney's daughter Mary as a lesbian. Lynn Cheney tells reporters, "the only thing I can conclude is that (Kerry) is not a good man."

NOVEMBER 2: Cheney is re-elected Vice President.

2005
MARCH 23: Halliburton tells New York City Comptroller that none of its subsidiaries will bid for work in Iran, however, the company will complete work already started in that country.

MARCH 31: The Presidential Commission looking into intelligence capabilities in Iraq regarding weapons of mass destruction writes that the documents purporting to show Iraq had purchased uranium for Niger had been forged.

APRIL 14: Nine Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee send a letter to U.S. Attorney General expressing grave concerns that no one has been arrested for leaking the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the press.

APRIL 5: Army announces it will withhold $55 million out of $200 million in payments it made to Halliburton in 2003 for providing dining services for troops in Iraq. Despite the allegations of overcharging by Halliburton, the army also announced it will pay the company $1.18 billion to feed troops in Iraq and Kuwait.

APRIL 12: A report released by Pentagon auditors reveals that Halliburton, may have overcharged the US government by $212 million for work in Iraq.

APRIL 15: Cheney releases his tax returns. His filings show that he earned $194,852 in deferred compensation from Halliburton in 2004.