In October of 1989, Dick Cheney sat down with Wyoming Public Media’s then News Director Bob Beck.
Cheney had been secretary of defense for President George H.W. Bush for just about a year. He was back in Wyoming to receive the University of Wyoming’s (UW) outstanding alumni award. Beck caught up with Cheney in WPM’s studios for this interview, which is transcribed below in full.
Cheney died on Nov. 3 at the age of 84. His funeral will be held at 11 a.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 20 at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Thanks to the American Heritage Center for tracking down this archival conversation and converting it from a cassette tape into a digital file. The conversation is part of the Wyoming Public Radio Records at the American Heritage Center at UW.
Editor’s Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for understandability.
Bob Beck: Testing, 5, 4, 3, 2, and one. Testing, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
It won't be as formal as the last time. We'll just kinda visit here and I'll take what you say, what's good, and the crummy things we'll leave out. But I guess the first thing, as you take a look back and when you went to the university [of Wyoming] for the first time, what kind of things stand out in your mind as you think about UW?
Dick Cheney: Well, I first came to school here as a student 26 years ago. It was the fall of 1963 and I'd gone to school originally at Yale for a couple of years. But [I] didn't like it, dropped out, went to work. And by the time I came back here, all of my classmates were graduating.
I was older than the rest of my classmates. I lived [in] an apartment on an alley over on 5th Street, but it was within walking distance and it cost me $22.50 a month [in] rent.
I remember that first fall because the first time I ever saw a president of the United States was John F. Kennedy. He came to the campus here in Wyoming and spoke to [a] big crowd, huge crowd, over in the old field house.
I remember the motorcade afterwards as it left. And of course, this was just a few weeks before Dallas. And I also remember that fall and standing in the student union watching the television set as they announced that the president died, the day of his assassination in Dallas.
It was a different era then, over a quarter of a century ago, but, obviously, it was a very important part of my life.
BB: As you are where you are now and you take a look back on those times, any inkling that this is what you were going to do, and be this far?
DC: No. What I really got interested in while I was a student here at the university was politics and government, public service. There was a professor in the political science department in those days named Ralph Wade. And he got me involved in an internship. He and Stan Hathaway, who was then the Republican state chairman in the state – and this is before Stan ran for governor – they got me involved as an intern in the Wyoming State Senate one session. That was the first political job I ever had. It was fascinating. I enjoyed it. Then Professor Wade had an impact in getting me another fellowship after that, that took me to Wisconsin, where I worked for a governor.
[Wade] was part of my faculty advisory team, if you will, when I worked on both my BA and my master's here. So an interest started, originated here, during my days at Laramie. I didn't expect at that time that I'd ever pursue a career in politics. When I left Laramie, my plan was to get a PhD in political science and then go teach. I wanted to become a professor. And, of course, down the road, the experiences that I had in the Wyoming Legislature, working for the governor of Wisconsin and then working in the Congress, ultimately led me down the path of a political career instead of a career in political science. But it all started right here at Laramie.
BB: Maybe you can come back someday and try and fulfill that dream.
DC: Maybe. Come back if they'd have me on campus and sign up to teach.
BB: Yeah, [let me] ask you a little bit about just what the last year has been like for you. I was just thinking it was about a year ago this week, the last time I saw you, before you became secretary of defense, drove up. You and Pete [Simpson] came and visited with me in my office. And you were running for Congress. At that time, did you have any thought, had it come up that this could be a possibility for you?
DC: No. I planned to spend the rest of my political career in Congress. I loved being Wyoming's congressman. It was a great job. I'd done it for 10 years and I had no inclination that I'd be doing anything else.
Obviously, after the [John] Tower nomination was defeated in the Senate, that same day, I was contacted by General [Brent] Scowcroft and Governor [John] Sununu (R-NH), two key advisors to the president. They first talked to me about becoming secretary of defense. The next day the president actually offered me the job, but it was a surprise.
There'd been some speculation before the election last year, and some press pieces about the possibility that I might join a Bush administration, but I never gave much credence. It was just press speculation. But obviously, it's a very different October this year than it was last year.
BB: And you take a look at this October, all the things happening in Central America. You've got the Noriega situation. Obviously, it's probably a little more exciting than it ever has been for you since you've been at the Hill.
DC: It is exciting, an interesting time to be secretary of defense. There's so much change underway in the world. I mean, you think about what's happening in Eastern Europe. [In] Poland, you've got a government headed by a non-communist. The Communist Party of Hungary abolished themselves last week, adopted a new name. We've seen the immigration of thousands of Germans out of the German Democratic Republic, East Germany to the West. Fundamental change would appear underway inside the Soviet Union. So it is a very interesting time to be there.
But it's also a time of great uncertainty. It was relatively easy over the last 40 years at times if you knew who the bad guys were to worry about defense strategy and so forth. And now, when there's a great deal of flux and uncertainty about what course the Soviet Union's gonna follow, whether or not we'll be able to negotiate arms control agreements, what kinds of weapon systems we're gonna need in the future, all of those questions are up for grabs these days.
BB: You know, when you take a look at some of those issues that you brought up, you've obviously been in the limelight, you've made some statements. Some even are viewed as somewhat controversial, especially in regards to the Soviet Union. How is it now that you're in the limelight? Do you have to watch what you say? Do you even think about it or are you just kinda the same guy?
DC: Well, you have to be cautious in the sense that now I work for somebody else, work for the president.
One of the things I really enjoyed about being the congressman from Wyoming was I could say exactly what I thought anytime I wanted to. That's what the people in Wyoming basically liked and wanted to have me do. But I didn't have a boss other than the voters of Wyoming.
Once you leave the Hill and you go work in somebody else's administration, once I went to work for George Bush as president, then you really have to adapt your policies to his views. You get the right to argue inside the administration to help shape those policies. But once he's made a decision, you gotta go support it.
Now, it's not hard because basically we agree on some terms of general direction. But still, nonetheless, as a secretary of defense, you do in fact have to be more cautious than when you're just one of 435 congressmen. Because when you speak, you speak with a certain amount of authority and people pay more attention to what you say.
BB: I want to ask you also, as we take a look back to the ‘63 time when you came to the University of Wyoming. You mentioned Professor Wade. Are there other people that played a pretty big role in and helped mold you as you got on in life?
DC: Oh yeah. From the university here, people like Jack Richards, who was for a time the chairman of the department. There was a professor named John Volante. I remember I took a special tutorial from him. I spent a semester just the two of us with a reading list that we worked up together. I read Winston Churchill’s six volume history of World War II [”The Second World War”], which was absolutely fascinating, which got me interested in foreign policy and national security issues.
And then of course there were the students that became lifelong friends, many of them from Casper. My roommate, before Lynn and I got married, Joe Meyer, who's now the attorney general over in Cheyenne. Dave Nicholas, of course, who lives here in Laramie, but who's now working for me at NATO headquarters, but who was a student here at Laramie in those days.
So those kinds of relationships that you pick up while you're a student here at the university stick with you for a long time.
BB: Distinguished alum award. Now, I'll just bring you back to this. What do you think about getting an award like this?
DC: It's a little bit humbling. If you had told me when I walked onto the campus 26 years ago, if you told anybody that someday, Cheney, who took six years to get his BA, will be rewarded with a distinguished alumni award of the University of Wyoming, nobody would've believed it.
But it is nice, obviously. It's recognition from people whose views I have enormous respect for, and to be honored by your home state university and your alma mater in that fashion is a very warm experience.
BB: [Graduating UW football player] Mike Schutte doesn't even want be on the same stage with you. He says maybe they should have a stage for the rest of us and put him up in a higher one.
DC: Mike will hold his own. Mike's the guy I first met when we were juniors in high school. We both attended Boys State that year, so we've known each other since we were about 17 years old. Long time. Okay.
BB: Thank you very much. Thank you.
DC: Thank you very much.
