Dick Cheney, who served as vice president under George W. Bush and wielded outsize influence over U.S. policy after the Sept. 11 attacks, died Nov. 3, 2025, at age 84, his family said. The cause was complications from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease after a long history of heart problems.
Cheney was born in 1941 in Lincoln, Neb., and moved to Wyoming as a child, growing up in Casper. He left Yale University after academic struggles, earned a degree from the University of Wyoming, and pursued graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin. During the Vietnam War era, he received five draft deferments and did not serve in the military. (vpm.org)
He entered national politics in 1969 as a congressional intern and soon worked in the Nixon White House under Donald Rumsfeld. In 1975, at age 34, he became White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford. (vpm.org)
Elected Wyoming’s at-large U.S. representative in 1978, Cheney served a decade in the House before President George H.W. Bush named him secretary of defense in 1989. As Pentagon chief, he oversaw the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama and directed Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait. (army.mil)
After leaving government in 1993, Cheney joined the American Enterprise Institute and, in 1995, became chief executive of Halliburton, a role he held until 2000, when he resigned to join George W. Bush’s ticket. Bush and Cheney took office after the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision effectively ended the Florida recount in the 2000 election. (ir.halliburton.com)
As vice president from 2001 to 2009, Cheney was widely seen as among the most powerful holders of the office, shaping the administration’s post-9/11 strategy, including a doctrine of preemptive action and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On NBC’s Meet the Press in 2003, he predicted U.S. troops “will be greeted as liberators.” (vpm.org)
Cheney’s health problems were long-running: he suffered his first heart attack in 1978 and five in total, and he received a heart transplant in 2012. (people.com)
His tenure drew controversy. In 2007, his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of perjury and obstruction in the CIA leak case; and in 2006, Cheney accidentally shot attorney Harry Whittington in a Texas hunting accident. (vpm.org)
In later years, Cheney criticized Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. In a 2022 ad backing his daughter Liz Cheney’s House campaign, he said, “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump … He is a coward.” In 2024, Cheney said he would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris over Trump, citing a duty to put country over party. (vpm.org)
Tributes poured in following his death. Former President George W. Bush called Cheney “a calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges” and “among the finest public servants of his generation,” in a statement from the Bush Presidential Center. As of Tuesday, President Donald Trump had not issued a statement on Cheney’s death, according to Reuters and the Associated Press. (bushcenter.org)
The Cheney family remembered him as “a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country … and fly fishing.” He is survived by his wife, Lynne, to whom he was married 61 years, and their daughters, Liz and Mary. (boston.com)
