Charlie Savage Takeover Summary

Charlie Savage’s Takeover analyzed several questions of the Bush-Cheney Administration. These questions examined more on the Cheney side of President Bush’s presidency. As such, in Takeover, Charlie Savage contends that Vice President Cheney assumed unprecedented and illegal powers to change laws and shape American Foreign Policy. Savage contends that Cheney played a pivotal role (an illegal one) in the “run-up” to the Iraqi War. Savage argued that Cheney’s concern with executive power began with the Watergate Scandal, when the scandal wrongly reduced the power of the presidency. Cheney; therefore, made it his life’s work to reverse that process and to restore the executive branch to its “proper constitutional power.” To that, it became Cheney’s

mission to make sure that no one stood in the way of the president – not congress, not the courts, not even the American people.
So, what did Cheney do? Besides many illegal instances, there are two that stick out on top of all the others. First, Cheney, illegally empowered his attorney, David Addington; and Office of Legal Council justice, John Yoo , to write “signing statements ” in order to trump the rulings of Congress. In the Frontline’s documentary, “Cheney’s War” the narrator argued that early in Cheney’s career, that Cheney decided that the president should not have to seek congressional authorization in a time of war. As such, in the wake of September 11th, Cheney ordered David Addington to remain at the White House in order to begin constructing a statement to give authority to President Bush that would surpass that of Congress and the Judiciary. Barton Gellman in “Cheney’s War” stated, “What extraordinary powers is the president going to need to meet this threat?” The narrator commented, that they would need to gather as much information as possible, but in order to trump Congress; they would need the backing of the Judiciary.
To that, over the course of the Bush presidency, close to one thousand “signed statements” had been issued through the Vice President’s office. Cheney’s belief was that Congress was limiting the power of the president. John Yoo, believed, “the Justice Department had long through that Congress cannot limit the commander-in-chief power, that Congress cannot tell the president how to exercise his judgment . . .” Through the working of Addington and Yoo, Vice President Cheney, supplied President Bush with an astonishing amount of power through the statements .
Cheney’s second, more notable, illegal implication is the warrantless surveillance program.

This program meant that the presidency had begun to ignore law. For Savage, Bush and Cheney’s authorization to ignore law, “was no different in principle between the warrant law and any other law that regulates how the president can carry out his national security responsibilities.” Furthermore, Savage claims, that this act “locked down the president’s power to arrest U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and imprison them in a military brig without trial if he or she thinks they pose a terror threat.” What Savage argues is that Bush through Cheney’s “signed statements” did not need to seek congressional approval, but as president could enact in any manner that he, as president, deemed necessary in order to protect the

nation.
Cheney, through the aforementioned use of statements, devised (Bush approved) the National Security Agency to monitor the phone calls and emails of American citizens. Furthermore, Vice President Dick Cheney also promoted the illegal (both domestic and international) use of torture. Vice President Cheney acknowledged (2008) that he gave the order for interrogation tactics that caused detainees to be blindfolded, water boarded, slapped, and other forms of torture.
The Bush-Cheney Administration argued that this was all “legal” because the nation was at war.

However it was Cheney’s actions of signed statements and warrantless surveillance that made Americans question the Bush Presidency and the Iraqi War. Through the data mining of surveillance, the Bush-Cheney Administration was able to collect and apply the messages and emails as distant, unconnected evidence to illegal detain Americans. This is a critical step for it opened the door for scrutiny into why the United States went to war in the beginning. The Bush Administration argued that it had intelligence that there were weapons of mass distraction in Iraq. However, this intelligence never definitively proved the claim. In fact, “The Whole Truth about Iraq” made the claim that intelligence is a means to get you out of war or even to avoid war – not to get you into war, as the Bush Administration used it. The argument is that there was no “true” intelligence – no “true”

evidence.

In summary, Vice President Cheney said . . .

“I've been around town for 34 years. Time after time after time, administrations have traded away the authority of the president to do his job. We're not going to do that in this administration. The president's bound and determined to defend those principles and to pass on this office, his and mine, to future generations in better shape then we found it. And for us to compromise on this basic fundamental principle would, in effect, do that. It would further weaken the presidency, and we don't want to do that.”

Vice President Cheney, therefore, took unprecedented and illegal powers to change laws and shape American. Cheney’s concern with executive power was to restore the executive branch to its “proper constitutional power” through any means necessary.