As Bush’s VP Vetter In 2000, Cheney ‘Sidestepped The Scrutiny He Imposed On Others’»
In July 2000, after serving as the head of then-Texas Governor George W. Bush’s vice presidential search committee, Dick Cheney was announced as the Republican vice presidential nominee. As the vice presidential vetter, Cheney required at least 11 potential candidates to fill out “an extraordinarily detailed, 83-question form” delving into their backgrounds.
Bush’s staff assured the press at the time that Cheney “subjected himself to the same kind of scrutiny” as the other contenders. But a new book by Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman reveals that Cheney “never filled out his own questionnaire.” Gellman explained what happened on Tuesday in an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross:
GELLMAN: Well, secrecy and discretion have always been very big for Dick Cheney and because he was not formally a candidate and in fact kept denying interest, kept denying that he was a candidate, he never filled out the vetting form. At the time, when Cheney’s selection was announced, the campaign’s spokespeople claimed he did put himself through the same process as everyone else and I’ve established that that’s simply not true. He didn’t fill out the questionnaire, which would have called for a giant box load of documents to be delivered
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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/18/cheney-vp-vet/