Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency - Background

Background

Barton Gellman, a staff writer for The Washington Post, participated in a lengthy series of Pulitzer Prize-winning stories about Vice President Cheney published in November 2007. Angler is the conclusion of that investigation, and arranges the findings in a narrative fashion.

Throughout the course of the interviews, Gellman spoke on record to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and his predecessor Andrew H. Card Jr., senior presidential advisers Dan Bartlett and Karl Rove, and numerous high-ranking Justice Department alumni, including John Ashcroft and James B. Comey. Cheney and President Bush declined Gellman's requests to be interviewed.

Of the title of the book, Gellman said in a television interview:

"Cheney’s Secret Service codename. They have a wry sense of humor about the way they give codenames, and a lot of times they have a double meaning. Obviously, Cheney is an avid fisherman. I thought it was a nice metaphor for the way that he works. He tends to approach the levers of power obliquely. He doesn’t like to—like you to see him coming, doesn’t like to have an overt public role. He finds his way to the place where decisions are made and often doesn’t leave many signs of his presence.