As the nation’s 17th secretary of defense, Cheney became known across the country as the cool and commanding man at the Pentagon during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, articulate and unflappable in televised briefings, congressional hearings, and network interview programs.
He was born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, but his family moved to Casper, Wyoming when he was 13. Wyoming has been home ever since. At Natrona County High School, he fell in love with a young Casper woman, Lynne Vincent. She was the homecoming queen, and he was the senior class president and captain of the football team. They were married six years later.
Dick Cheney – 1993 Citizen of the West
He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from the University of Wyoming. It was during his college years that he began his public service career, as an intern at the Wyoming state legislature, in Cheyenne. In 1968, he went to Washington on a Congressional fellowship while working on his PhD, but he quickly discovered that public service, not teaching, would be his life’s work.
The fellowship opened the door to several years of federal service under Presidents Nixon and Ford, at the Office of Economic Opportunity, working for White House Counsellor Donald Rumsfeld, and serving at the Cost of Living Council.
Shortly after Gerald Ford assumed the presidency, Dick Cheney became Assistant to the President and White House Chief of Staff. At just 34 years old, he was the youngest person ever to hold that position.
After the end of the Ford Administration, Dick Cheney and his family returned to Wyoming. And by December of 1977, he announced his campaign to run for Wyoming’s only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The people of Wyoming elected him to Congress six times. During his second term, his colleagues chose him to be chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee. He became one of the few members ever elected to a leadership position after just one term in office. It was during his time in Congress that he and Lynne wrote Kings of the Hill, the story of the changes made in the House of Representatives by its most powerful speakers.
Congressman Cheney rose through the leadership ranks to become the House Republican Whip in December of 1988 – the second ranking minority leader in the House. By the spring of 1989 he was just settling into that job, when the White House called with something else in mind. He was nominated by President Bush to be Secretary of Defense on March 10th, and confirmed by the Senate just one week Iater.
His first big challenge came with the U.S. military operation in Panama in December of 1989, resulting in the restoration of democratic government there and the arrest of Manuel Noriega on drug charges.
In response to the profound changes that shook the old world order, Secretary Cheney formulated a new national security strategy and developed far reaching plans to draw down the size of the American military.
After the failure of the hard-line coup in the Soviet Union, he issued orders standing down nearly half of America’s inter-continental nuclear missiles. And he took the nation’s nuclear bombers off alert for the first time since the beginning of the Cold War.
But the crisis which brought him worldwide recognition came in August of 1990, when Saddam Hussein sent the Iraqi military into Kuwait. Cheney became America’s top political emissary, flying to the Persian Gulf and persuading King Fahd to let U.S. forces use his kingdom as their base of operations.
Under Dick Cheney’s leadership, the U.S. military successfully undertook its largest overseas deployment since Vietnam – half a million uniformed men and women and everything it took to support them.
Operation Desert Storm was a victory for American technology and leadership. But most of all, it was a triumph for the men and women of the U.S. armed forces. The victory in the Gulf War restored public confidence in the military, manifested all across America as the troops were welcomed home and honored.
For Secretary Cheney’s service to the nation during the Gulf War, George Bush presented him with America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
