Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney and a former State Department official overseeing Mideast policy, has followed closely in her father's ideological footsteps. While at the State Department, Cheney oversaw efforts to develop regime-change strategies in places like Syria and Iran in support of the broader neoconservative-inspired Mideast agenda vigorously pursued by her father and his aides in the Office of the Vice President. After leaving the administration in early 2006, she continued to lend her voice in support of these efforts in a series of op-eds published in major news outlets.
Shortly after her father publicly accused House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) of "bad behavior" for visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Elizabeth Cheney published an op-ed in the April 12, 2007 Washington Post in which she argued that "conducting diplomacy with the regime in Damascus while they kill Lebanese democrats is not only irresponsible, it is shameful." She added: "Talking to the Syrians emboldens and rewards them at the expense of America and our allies in the Middle East. It hasn't and won't change their behavior. They are an outlaw regime and should be isolated."
According to the Inter Press Service (IPS) (April 12, 2007), Cheney's op-ed "evoked considerable speculation [in Washington] ... [about] the balance between hawks led by the vice president and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, on the one hand, and 'realists' led by the State Department, on the other, within the administration of President George W. Bush." Wayne White, a former top State Department Middle East analyst and adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, told IPS: "This could be a desperate attempt to reverse a trend that is going against [the hardliners]." Another observer, ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff under former Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Jim Lobe: "She's doing Daddy's business. It's what Powell used to say about Bush: he's got these rough edges, and Cheney knows how to rub them."
Earlier, in January 2007, Cheney wrote a sharply worded op-ed in the Post titled "Retreat Isn't an Option." The piece, which came on the heels of President George W. Bush's controversial decision to boost troop levels in Iraq and threaten military action against Iraq's neighbors, implicitly attacked the U.S. public for weakness on the war on terror. "American troops will win if we show even one-tenth the courage here at home that they show every day on the battlefield," wrote Cheney. "And by the way, you cannot wish failure on our soldiers' mission and claim, at the same time, to be supporting the troops. It just doesn't compute" (Washington Post, January 23, 2007).
Cheney reserved much of her invective for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), who she argued was proving as weak-willed on Iraq as her male counterparts in Congress: "In 2007, a woman can run for president and show the same level of courage and conviction about this war many of her male colleagues have. Steel in the spine? Not so much."
The op-ed also revealed Cheney's mastery of what one commentator calls the neoconservatives' trademark "combination of overstatement and ancestor-worship" (Financial Times, January 15, 2007). Citing the World War II-era victory rhetoric of adopted neocon deity Winston Churchill, Cheney argued that "America faces an existential threat ... We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can't negotiate with them or 'solve' their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later." She then concluded: "America deserves better. It's time for everyone—Republicans and Democrats—to stop trying to find ways for America to quit. Victory is the only option. We must have the fortitude and the courage to do what it takes. In the words of Winston Churchill, we must deserve victory. We must be in it to win."
From 2005 to early 2006, Cheney served as principal deputy assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, making her the No. 2 official in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. The post, which she left in spring 2006 to have her fifth child, reportedly entailed actively working to develop regime-change strategies for Middle Eastern countries, mainly Syria and Iran. According to unnamed colleagues interviewed by the newspaper the Australian, she was referred to in the department as the "freedom agenda coordinator" and the "democracy tsar" (March 6, 2006).
The job was Elizabeth Cheney's second in George W. Bush's State Department. From 2002 to 2003, she served as a deputy assistant secretary of State, a post she left to aid her father's vice presidential reelection campaign. Her earlier tenure, although the subject of much hand-wringing among critics who regarded her as a spy within Colin Powell's independent-minded State Department, ended with little fanfare. According to Todd Pudrum of the New York Times, "After two years of working on projects to promote women's rights and democracy in the Arab world, she won praise from skeptical foreign service officers, the European press, Arab leaders, and prominent Democrats" (May 31, 2005).
Not everyone, however, was pleased with Cheney's work. Larry Wilkerson, who served as Powell's assistant at State, told the American Prospect's Robert Dreyfuss (June 2006) that she clashed with ambassadors while visiting the Middle East. Recounted Wilkerson: "Liz Cheney comes out to this country, and she tells the ambassador—and she doesn't outrank him—she tells the ambassador, 'You're not going in the meeting with me.' And he says, 'I'm sorry, I'm going in the meeting with you. You're not going into a meeting with the head of State without me.' And she says, 'Nope—would you like a telephone call?'"
Her work after returning to the State Department fueled speculation that she had become a key figure behind administration plans to intervene in Iran and possibly in Syria. Dreyfuss reported: "During the past 15 months, Elizabeth Cheney has met with and bolstered a gaggle of Syrian exiles, often in tandem with John Hannah and David Wurmser, top officials in the Office of the Vice President; has pressed hard for money to accelerate the administration's ever-more overt campaign for forced regime change in both Damascus and Tehran; and has overseen an increasingly discredited push for American-inspired democratic reform from Morocco to Iran. With the unspoken support of her father, Cheney has kept a hawk's eye on Iraq policy within the department, intimidating opponents of the neoconservative axis within the administration. And, less visibly, according to former officials who've worked with her, she has made her influence felt in choosing officials, selecting (or blocking) the appointment of ambassadors and other foreign service officers, and weighing in on other bureaucratic battles at the department."
Cheney was also connected with the work of two newly created offices in the State Department that revived concerns in early 2006 about the Bush administration's plans for the Middle East. On April 22, 2006, the Financial Times reported on the creation of an "Iran-Syria Operations Group" (ISOG) that purportedly reported to Cheney. Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, denied the group existed. However, other unnamed sources, including U.S. government officials and a European diplomat, assured the Financial Times that the group had in fact been established. These sources said that the group is an interagency effort that "is supposed to coordinate with the Pentagon and other departments," and that it is headed by "David Denehy, a special adviser who served in the coalition government in Iraq, and Alberto Fernandez, a public diplomacy official."
Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor at the New Republic and coauthor with William Kristol of the 2003 book The War over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission, also confirmed the creation of the ISOG. In his New Republic blog "The Plank," Kaplan said that various "State Department and Pentagon officials" told him that, contrary to speculation among commentators, the ISOG would not serve the same purposes as the controversial Pentagon outfit the Office of Special Plans, which was accused of intending to distort intelligence to bolster the president's arguments for going to war in Iraq. According to Kaplan, these officials said that the ISOG "has no role to play on security issues, doesn't coordinate at all with White House efforts against Iran at the United Nations, and confines itself to promoting regime change from within." He added, "Still, the simple fact of ISOG's existence suggests that, despite being burned so badly in Iraq for listening exclusively to like-minded advisers, the administration intends to keep its own counsel on Iran too. On the up side, the creation of ISOG offers further proof that government officials have finally gotten serious about the threat from Tehran" (April 10, 2006).
Earlier, in March 2006, the State Department announced the creation of the Office of Iranian Affairs, which several journalists and bloggers claimed would be under Cheney's authority. In a May 19, 2006 article for the Los Angeles Times, Laura Rozen wrote that "the State Department's new Iranian Affairs office is headed by David Denehy, a longtime democracy specialist at the International Republican Institute, who will work under Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the vice president." However, Patricia Kushlis, a blogger and former foreign service officer, contested this account, pointing out that "Cheney was principal deputy assistant secretary, not assistant secretary for the Near East, and Denehy's working for her is highly unlikely since, according to an AP report on May 19, she will soon leave State to produce her fifth child."
According to the New York Times (April 8, 2006), the State Department requested $85 million for a Cheney-run program "for scholarships, exchange programs, radio and television broadcasts, and other activities aimed at shaking up Iran's political system." But observers were skeptical about the program's impact. Said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor of national affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California: "It sounds good to fund civil society groups, but not when you don't know who the groups are. No real group wants a direct affiliation with the United States. It will just get them into trouble with the government."
Cheney's "unpublicized" meetings with Syrian dissidents in early 2005 also spurred speculation that the administration was repeating the strategy it followed with former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, who helped feed misleading information to the United States about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. The meetings were first reported in the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, which claimed to have received confirmation about the meeting from the State Department. According to an Agence France Presse summary of the newspaper, Cheney, Hannah, and a number of additional officials from the Pentagon and the National Security Council met with the dissidents to "discuss ways of 'weakening the Syrian regime'" (March 26, 2005).
Among those participating on the Syrian side was Farid Ghadry, a U.S.-based businessman who heads the Reform Party of Syria. According to Dreyfuss, Ghadry is "a pro-Israeli Syrian who's maintained ties to neoconservatives in Washington and who is close to [David] Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav Wurmser, the director of Middle East affairs for the Hudson Institute."
Mourhaf Jouejati, a Syria specialist at George Washington University, told Dreyfuss that Ghadry is a "mini-me of Ahmed Chalabi." Jouejati also claimed that Liz Cheney, Hannah, and the Wurmsers "are the backbone for Farid Ghadry's movement. The question is, are they just seeking leverage with Syria, or is it a serious option? If it is the latter, I would be scared, because that means that they don't know what they are doing." According to Dreyfuss, Ghadry's connections with the Wurmsers may have resulted from his membership at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and participation in meetings of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a neoconservative-driven policy institute that aims to tighten military relations between the United States and Israel.
In November 2004, Cheney gave a rare interview on Lifetime to discuss the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign and her plans for the future. Asked what issues she planned "to champion," Cheney said: "I'll continue to help empower women internationally. I've done a lot of that in the State Department, focusing on empowering Arab women. The president has accomplished a tremendous amount by liberating 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq; 25 million of them are women. Women who lived under the oppression of the Taliban are now able to vote."
Cheney's husband, Philip Perry, has served as general council to the Department of Homeland Security.
