---
aliases:
- Richard Cheney
- Richard B. Cheney
born: 1941-01-30
category: Political Figure
created: 2026-09-22
location: Casper, Wyoming
relations:
- end: 1977
  fn: 1
  role: deputy assistant to the president, then chief of staff
  start: 1974
  type: employed_by
  with: '[[White House]]'
- end: 1993
  fn: 1
  role: Secretary of Defense
  start: 1989
  type: head_of
  with: '[[Department of Defense]]'
- end: 2000
  fn: 4
  role: chief executive
  type: head_of
  with: '[[Halliburton]]'
summary: Ford's chief of staff who edited the Rockefeller Commission report in 1975,
  co-author of the Iran-Contra minority report, Secretary of Defense, Halliburton
  chief executive and Vice President from 2001 to 2009.
tags:
- Person
- WhiteHouse
- RockefellerCommission
- IranContra
- Halliburton
updated: 2026-09-22
---

Richard Bruce Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on January 30, 1941, and grew up in Casper, Wyoming. He was a congressional fellow in 1968, worked at the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Cost of Living Council, was deputy assistant to President [Gerald R. Ford](/people/gerald-r-ford/) in 1974 and 1975 and his chief of staff from 1975 to 1977, represented Wyoming in the House from 1979 until March 17, 1989, was Secretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993, and was Vice President under [George W. Bush](/people/george-w-bush/) from 2001 to 2009.[^1]

### The Rockefeller Commission Report

In June 1975, as deputy to the chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney led the editing of the draft report of the [Rockefeller Commission](/events/rockefeller-commission-1975/) on [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) activities in the [United States](/places/united-states/). His handwritten comments survive. The section "Alleged Plans to Assassinate Certain Foreign Leaders," 86 pages long, was removed and replaced with a note that the commission had lacked time to finish the subject; language calling CIA activities "unlawful" was softened to "improper," except for the drug experiments, which were labeled "illegal"; and a recommendation that CIA employees be able to report improper activities was narrowed to orders "outside of established channels."[^2]

### Iran-Contra

As a House Republican on the Iran-Contra investigating committees, Cheney signed the minority report of November 1987, drafted principally by the committee staffer Michael Malbin. It held that "energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government" and that "to whatever extent the [Boland Amendments](/events/boland-amendment/) tried to prohibit such activity they were clearly unconstitutional."[^3]

### Halliburton

Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton in the late 1990s. [Ray Hunt](/people/ray-hunt/) of [Hunt Oil](/organizations/hunt-oil-company/) joined its board in 1998 and went at once onto its compensation committee, which that year gave Cheney a bonus of 1.1 million dollars and restricted stock worth 1.5 million on a salary of 1.18 million.[^4] As Vice President, he said on August 26, 2002, that the case of the Iraqi defector [Hussein Kamel](/people/hussein-kamel/) "should serve as a reminder to all that we often learned more as the result of defections than we learned from the inspection regime itself"; Kamel had told UN inspectors in August 1995 that Iraq's chemical, biological and missile stocks had been destroyed.[^5]

### Allegations

[Cathy O'Brien](/people/cathy-obrien/), who describes herself as a survivor of [Project Monarch](/programs/project-monarch/) mind control, named Cheney among officials she said abused her, in *Trance Formation of America* (1995, with Mark Phillips). Her claims about named officials are uncorroborated.[^6]

[^1]: U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art and Archives, "CHENEY, Richard Bruce." https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/10884
[^2]: Prados, John, and Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi, eds. "Gerald Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report in 1975; Removed Section on CIA Assassination Plots." National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 543, February 29, 2016, document 15. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2016-02-29/gerald-ford-white-house-altered-rockefeller-commission-report
[^3]: *Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair,* H. Rept. 100-433, S. Rept. 100-216, November 1987, minority report. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/18221
[^4]: Halliburton Company, Schedule 14A proxy statement, 2004, Securities and Exchange Commission.
[^5]: Rangwala, Glen. "The interview with Hussein Kamel," February 2003, quoting the UNSCOM and IAEA note of the meeting of August 22, 1995; Barry, John. *Newsweek,* March 3, 2003.
[^6]: O'Brien, Cathy, and Mark Phillips. *Trance Formation of America.* 1995. Sole source for the passage so cited.