I've just finished parsing the 2004 Plum Book for Project Gnomon (currently at ~4,000 names), and was momentarily confused by the absence of any listing for the Office of The Vice President (OVP). Upon perusing some contemporary articles on the subject, I was reminded just how secretive Dick Cheney was about the details of his "Fourth Branch" - so secretive, in fact, that his staff refused to disclose their names even to the Federal Register. I've been able to glean a few from investigative articles here and there, but not many, and certainly nothing definitive. This will be quite a fascinating area of research once I complete Project Gnomon, but for the moment I am mainly concerned with a thorough accounting of who was in this office.
This is who I know so far to have been either explicitly or functionally in Cheney's OVP:
- John Hannah
- Stephen Yates
- Samantha Ravich
- C. Dean McGrath
- Aaron Friedberg
- Carol Kuntz
- Karen Knutson
- Nancy Dorn
- Nina Rees
- Cesar Conda
- David Addington
- Candida Wolf
- Juleanna Weiss
- Jennifer Millerwise
- Catherine Martin
- Jennifer Mayfield
- Jonathan Burks
- Eric Edelman
- Mary Matalin
- Victoria Nuland
- David Wurmser
- William Luti
- Lea (Lee?) McBride
There has to be more than this, for Cheney to have run an effective command & control operation against the national security apparatus. Granted, I haven't looked very deeply yet, as I still have large numbers of names to gather elsewhere, but if anyone has good stuff on Cheney's OVP - specifically, names other than these - that would be quite helpful. Most helpful of all would be a thorough listing.
I realize this is nothing new, and that plenty of people have already come to the conclusion that Cheney's OVP was the center of power in the Bush regime (though Bush still held position as absolute monarch), but it's exciting to see the fact illustrated in terms of raw information. The public was allowed to know who ran Homeland Security departments, but not who took Dick Cheney's phone calls. I just hope there was someone on his staff who hasn't been named yet in the media, whom I can have the privilege of naming first.
The smell of secrets this potent is intoxicating, but alas I still have to finish the rest of the list (sigh) and shouldn't let myself get mired in a hunt for Cheneyite wabbits until I've finished the easier parts. If I had to guess, I would say the gathering phase of Project Gnomon is about 20% complete, although I still haven't investigated the logistical details of accessing Federal Yellow Books (i.e., whether they can be checked out of libraries, or if I can only copy from them locally - as I can't afford to Xerox the amount of material I'd need).
Still ahead of me: The 2008 Plum Book, the complete Library of Congress records of presidential nominations for the inclusive years, Wikipedia explorations of the entire federal government, and only then do I plan on looking at accessing the Yellow Books. I have no clue how long that last part will take, although I imagine it will be a doozy if I have to manually copy names on the library premises - there are four Yellow Books per year, each with thousands of entries (though most are repetitive), and over eight years that means I'll have to canvass 32 of them.
Once that's complete, then I can begin the process of reconciling the names, eliminating redundancies (after verifying, of course, that they aren't simply two different people with the same name), and completing the official resume of each person during the inclusive years. Once I have that, Project Gnomon will be complete and I'll move on to the next Project, which I will discuss at the time.
Operation EchoLand is, I think, off to a great start. (FYI, OE is not the title of the book, just of the research project behind it). I haven't had to spend any money on anything yet, physically exert myself in any way, or rely on someone else's help or permission so far, so it's just been an exercise in carefree exploration. There has been some level of tedium at times, but leavened by the rewards of discovery when I begin to randomly notice some pattern or other, such as a name that keeps coming up in odd places, suggesting that this person is some kind of poobah.
The knowledge of how much fun I'll have once I get to the investigative stages of OE is a large part of the motivation that keeps me going through the tedious information-management chores as I move forward on building the Gnomon. This, BTW, is what I plan to share with Daily Kos once completed: An alphabetized list in the form (Last Name, Middle Names, First Name, "Nickname", Suffix) with each official title held listed beneath with the inclusive dates of each.
The ultimate list may be so large that it may require several consecutive diaries to give them all, but I fully intend for the Daily Kos community to have this information, as my own research has found it so difficult to bring together in one place. I will deliver the Gnomon. If anyone has Cheney OVP names not listed above, that will just make my job that much easier.
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Previous installments in this series:
Book Project Diary 6: Operation EchoLand
Book Project Diary 5: Your Mama Named You What?
Book Project Diary 4: Jackpot
Book Project Diary 3: Carly Fiorina Pals Around With Halliburton Executives (& Other Musings)
Book Project Diary 2: Feeling Like A Schmuck
Book Project Diary 1: Awed By The Magnitude