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Cheney, big and strong A Little Something Extra?By Rick Horowitz "Dick Cheney
I don't know anymore." Brent Scowcroft
Washington, Sooner Than You Think -- The responses ranged from a shrug of the shoulders to a roll of the eyes. Sadness, yes, and a sense of disappointment -- but little if any surprise. All across this city, it now appears, it was merely a question of when, not whether, the evidence would emerge to show that Vice President Dick Cheney had used steroids. But few expected that the evidence would be set out in such painful detail. This week's issue of Politics Illustrated, with its extensive excerpts from a forthcoming book by two Washington Post reporters, seemed to eliminate whatever uncertainty there might have been about what Mr. Cheney did to so dramatically change his performance as vice president, and whether he was an unwitting victim, as he has sometimes claimed, or a willing participant. "It's a bad day for government," said one senior official, who, like everyone else, requested anonymity to permit him to talk candidly. "Even if you knew, or thought you knew, to have it all laid out there in black and white..." According to the article, Mr. Cheney started using a variety of banned substances late in 2001, taking some by injection, others orally, and rubbing still others -- including two "designer" steroids known as "The Fear" and "The Scheme" -- on specific parts of his body. The principal motivation for Mr. Cheney's bulk-up campaign, the authors allege, was his rage at the sudden attention being showered on Osama bin Laden, the star center fielder for the al-Qaeda Jihadis. The article describes a scene in which a furious Mr. Cheney swats down reporters' repeated questions about Mr. bin Laden, shouting, "Not in my house!" If a bigger, buffer Dick Cheney was what it took to keep the media's attention where it "deserved" to be, the authors say, the vice president was willing to do whatever was necessary. The results were immediate, they report, and didn't go unnoticed in the West Wing locker room. "You saw him after the 2001 season," said one former teammate, "and you went, 'Whoa!' He was just a totally different person, muscles everywhere. Plus the guys he was hanging out with -- you knew something was up." The vice president's office had no immediate comment on the magazine's revelations, nor was Mr. Cheney himself expected to respond. But friends and associates of the vice president struggled to come to terms with the news. They spoke of a proud and talented man at the very top of his profession, but one who was driven -- perhaps too driven -- to stay on top. Few politicians in any era, they noted, had had the kind of late-career power surge Mr. Cheney enjoyed in recent years, and pumping iron couldn't explain all of it. "Just look at the numbers he was putting up," said a close family friend, "and you had to figure something funny was going on. I don't care how much time he spent in the weight room." Indeed, at an age when many political careers are in decline, Mr. Cheney's star somehow stayed on the rise. He became the most powerful vice president in history, experts agreed, with tape-measure rhetorical blasts that left old-timers shaking their heads. There were moments when he seemed to be carrying an entire administration on his sharply sculpted back. But even as allegations swirled around him, Mr. Cheney denied any wrongdoing. His secret was simply hard work, he claimed. And the substances he was sometimes seen rubbing on his arms and legs? "They told me it was sweet crude oil," Mr. Cheney maintained. "Whatever." Meanwhile, his associates kept their suspicions to themselves. "He wasn't going to admit it anyway," one longtime colleague explained. "And asking would've just made him angry." Staying clear of the vice president's increasingly explosive temper, the authors suggest, had become a high priority for everyone who had to deal with him. Still, the question lingers: Could a Hall of Fame career, now largely in ruins, have been salvaged if a friend or teammate or family member had ever confronted him? This colleague slowly shakes his head. "I guess we really didn't want to know." Posted 3/9/06. Rick
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Rick Horowitz
