The former vice-president's expansion of executive power and manipulation of intelligence agencies created a blueprint that critics say enabled future authoritarian tendencies
The death of Dick Cheney at 84 marks the end of an era for one of America's most influential and controversial political figures. While his final years saw him positioned as a voice of Republican moderation through his fierce opposition to Donald Trump, historians and legal experts argue that Cheney's own actions during the War on Terror may have inadvertently constructed the framework that made Trumpism possible.
The Most Powerful Vice President in American History
Serving under George W. Bush following the September 11 attacks, Cheney transformed the traditionally ceremonial role of vice president into a position of unprecedented influence. He became the driving force behind the Iraq invasion and championed the use of what the administration euphemistically called "enhanced interrogation techniques" against suspected al-Qaida detainees held without charge in secret CIA facilities overseas.
Central to Cheney's approach was a radical interpretation of presidential authority. He believed the executive branch had been excessively weakened by Congressional oversight implemented after Watergate and the Nixon era. His solution was to reassert what he saw as the proper balance—tilting power decisively toward the White House.
Twisting Intelligence to Justify War
Perhaps nowhere was Cheney's influence more consequential than in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Paul Pillar, who served as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia during this period, describes Cheney as "a key figure in corrupting the intelligence-policy relationship on behalf of selling the Iraq war."
In a striking breach of protocol, Cheney made multiple personal visits to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia—an unprecedented move that appeared designed to pressure intelligence analysts into supporting the administration's predetermined conclusions about Iraq's weapons capabilities.
"Cheney declared in a speech in August 2002 that 'there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction'—weeks before the intelligence community had even begun work on what would become a notorious estimate on that subject," Pillar noted. The vice president also persistently pushed intelligence agencies to uncover any evidence, however thin, linking Saddam Hussein's regime to al-Qaida.
The weapons of mass destruction that served as the primary justification for war turned out not to exist. Iraq had actually dismantled its WMD programs years earlier.
A Legacy of Expanded Executive Power
Cheney's influence extended beyond the Iraq invasion. He was instrumental in rapidly pushing through the USA PATRIOT Act just six weeks after 9/11, dramatically expanding executive surveillance and investigation powers despite warnings from civil liberties advocates about potential abuse against ordinary citizens.
That expansion of executive authority has proven durable. Subsequent administrations, regardless of party, have built upon and extended the precedents Cheney established—from drone strike programs to mass surveillance initiatives.
The Guantánamo Problem
The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay stands as another enduring symbol of the Cheney era. Created to hold suspected terrorists in legal limbo outside the traditional justice system, the camp has outlasted two Democratic administrations that promised but failed to close it. The Trump administration repurposed it as a detention center for deported migrants.
The use of torture at Guantánamo and other facilities has had lasting consequences. Despite Cheney's 2008 claim that enhanced interrogation was "directly responsible for the fact that we've been able to avoid or defeat further attacks," no evidence supports this assertion. Instead, the torture has compromised testimony in several 9/11-related cases, making legitimate trials on U.S. soil impossible.
Paving the Road to Trumpism
Legal experts and human rights advocates see a direct line from Cheney's actions to today's political landscape.
"When Dick Cheney was twisting international and domestic law into knots to expand executive power, build up the camps at Guantánamo, and empower the US torture program, we human rights lawyers predicted that we'd end up where we are now," said Alka Pradhan, a defense lawyer at the Guantánamo military tribunals and adjunct law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Trump administration has weaponized the counter-terrorism framework Cheney helped create, using it to justify suppressing dissent and deploying force domestically through dramatically empowered Immigration and Customs Enforcement units.
"Every subsequent president, via the drone or extraordinary surveillance programmes, has built on Cheney's legacy to get to the present moment in US history," Pradhan added.
An Unapologetic Defender
Until his death, Cheney remained unrepentant about his record. He continued to insist the Iraq invasion was justified and that American leadership represented "the greatest force for good the world has ever known." His 2015 book, co-authored with his daughter Liz, bore the title Exceptional—a declarative statement of his worldview.
He maintained that an American president deserved a free hand in wielding the nation's power globally, a position that ironically echoed the very executive overreach he spent his final years condemning when exercised by Donald Trump.
The contradiction captures Cheney's complex legacy: a man who opposed Trump's authoritarianism while having helped construct the very mechanisms of unchecked executive power that made such governance possible. The Iraq War alone unleashed sectarian violence that claimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives—a humanitarian catastrophe whose ripples continue to shape Middle Eastern geopolitics today.
As America grapples with questions about executive authority, institutional independence, and the rule of law, Dick Cheney's legacy serves as both a cautionary tale and an ongoing challenge to democratic governance.
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