Dick Cheney - Early White House Appointments

Early White House Appointments

Cheney's political career began in 1969, as an intern for Congressman William A. Steiger during the Richard Nixon Administration. He then joined the staff of Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity from 1969–70. He held several positions in the years that followed: White House Staff Assistant in 1971, Assistant Director of the Cost of Living Council from 1971–73, and Deputy Assistant to the president from 1974–1975. As deputy assistant, Cheney suggested several options in a memo to Rumsfeld, including use of the US Justice Department, that the Ford administration could use to limit damage from an article, published by The New York Times, in which investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reported that Navy submarines had tapped into Soviet undersea communications as part of a highly classified program, Operation Ivy Bells.

Cheney was Assistant to the President under Gerald Ford. When Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defense, Cheney became White House Chief of Staff, succeeding Rumsfeld. He later was campaign manager for Ford's 1976 presidential campaign.

Read more about this topic:  Dick Cheney

Famous quotes containing the words early, white, house and/or appointments:

    At the earliest ending of winter,
    In March, a scrawny cry from outside
    Seemed like a sound in his mind.
    He knew that he heard it,
    A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
    In the early March wind.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    Through throats where many rivers meet, the curlews cry,
    Under the conceiving moon, on the high chalk hill,
    And there this night I walk in the white giant’s thigh
    Where barrren as boulders women lie longing still
    To labour and love though they lay down long ago.
    Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)

    The ceaseless labor of your life is to build the house of death.
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

    All appointments hurt. Five friends are made cold or hostile for every appointment; no new friends are made. All patronage is perilous to men of real ability or merit. It aids only those who lack other claims to public support.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)