Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

by Peter Baker

For nearly five years, Bush and Cheney had waged war largely as they saw fit. If intelligence officers needed to eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls without warrants, Cheney arranged for Bush to authorize it. If the military wanted to hold terrorism suspects without trial, Bush and Cheney agreed to let it. The two had operated on the principle that it was better to act than ask permission, convinced that protecting the country required the most expansive interpretation of presidential powers. If they were later forced to retreat from controversial decisions, they reasoned, it was worth the price to prevent what in those early hours and days seemed like a certain “second wave” of attacks. Better to “push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop,” as David Addington had memorably put it. For years, that had worked. Now the Supreme Court in the latest and broadest of a series of decisions on the war on terror was interposing itself as a larger force.