In Review

09 January 2009 12:07 BST

Angler: The Shadow Presidency Of Dick Cheney by Barton Gellman

Published by Allen Lane/Penguin, out now, 483pp, £25.00.

In a nutshell...

Incisive journalism meets conspiracy thriller

What's it all about?

This book reveals the machinations and throws open the cloak of secrecy that has obscured American Vice President Dick Cheney over the last eight years of the most controversial and despised US administration since Nixon and his cohorts in the early 70s.

Author Barton Gellman employs crisp and concise journalism to detail Cheney, both the man and the Washington kingmaker, but infuses the book with the taut aspects of a top-notch political thriller.

Who's it by?

Barton Gellman is a special projects reporter on the Washington Post. He was educated at Oxford and Princeton and has worked as diplomatic correspondent and Pentagon correspondent.

He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and has been honoured by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Along with Jo Becker he won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the Angler articles in the Washington Post, which form the basis of this book.

Gellman has also written Contending With Kennan: Toward A Philosophy Of American Power.

As an example...

"Cheney's script was compressed and forward-leaning, letters longer than they were tall, as if his hand raced to keep up with his thoughts. He would ask a visitor to speak for ten full minutes, uninterrupted, before he began to probe."

Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster

I hope so. If Oliver Stone can present the odious Bush in a soft focus, primetime soap-styled debacle of a film with W then it falls to far braver, and honest, souls to bring the story of Cheney to the big screen.

What the others say

"Jaw-dropping.... It reads like a thriller." - Nicholas D Kristof, columnist for the New York Times.

"Gellman had access to a surprising number of Cheney's close aides and others in the Bush White House. He records previously unknown anecdotes about the inner workings of the administration... This book is simply one of the scariest stories ever written about contemporary America... Cheney, Addington, and others operated with great success in the shadows of government. They despised media and public attention. In the last seven years, they have been the toughest circle of power players in Washington to penetrate, to report on, and to comprehend. Gellman went where Woodward was unable or uninterested in going—and thanks to that, we have an indispensable volume without which the Bush presidency can't be understood." – The American Conservative.

So is it any good?

Gellman's book is both engrossing and utterly terrifying, unveiling the cunning and determined mind of Dick Cheney, the outwardly calm yet inwardly seething elder statesman of the current US administration.

Cheney rose through the ranks of various Republican governments including Gerald Ford's and George Bush Snr, honing his talent for gathering information and relishing in minute detail.

He also used his experience of serving in previous administrations to carve himself a role as kingmaker, an ability that enabled him to slot Dubya, and later himself, into running for election in 2000.

Once in power, Cheney revelled in having such a pliable figure in the form of President Bush to 'advise'.

It's these cynical power-plays that Barton Gellman illustrates exposing Cheney as a callous old man, reeking of desperation with this last throw of the Washington dice.

It was Cheney who shifted the War On Terror's focus from al-Qaeda to invading Iraq.

Yet Cheney's attitude and approach has been imitated, usurped and finally discarded by Republican rising star, Bush's forthright secretary of state Condeleeza Rice.

And it's this adaptability by the next generation of Republicans in the administration that, as Gellman deftly portrays, have diminished and finally relegated Cheney from kingmaker and shadow-king to yesterday's man.

Angler charts the increasing bravado and complacency of the Bush/Cheney years that have been underscored, and finally brought down, by seemingly unwinnable overseas wars and a crumbling economy, superheated by greed and fiscal ineptitude.

The book's closing chapters paint Cheney as a reflection of America's current frame of mind – battered, hurt and pitiable. However, empathy for Cheney soon fades when you consider what a cynical and underhanded regime he has served in and developed, to America's detriment and dishonour, presented by Gellman in a very accessible manner.

9/10

Lee Davis