While the Americans among you are contemplating your liberties today, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the Washington Post’s recent investigative series on “The Angler” (the Secret Service code name for Vice President Cheney).  Like archeologists, WaPo’s Barton Gellman and Jo Becker have done an meticulous job of sifting through the layers covering the machinations of the Veep and his close allies, interviewing hundreds of Cheney insiders, opponents and bystanders, and looking in unexpected places.  They have uncovered a portrait of may arguably be the most powerful vice president in the history of the US, who sits at a deliberately constructed web of influence.

These articles detail how a man with no real active constitutional authority expanded the president’s ability to wage war, engineered the wide use of military tribunals and the trampling of the writ of habeas corpus and facilitated the expansion of the use of torture by Americans.  He was the gatekeeper for the nominations of Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts.  Through his personal network, he has been able to wield a level of control that is way out of proportion to the level of public attention and scrutiny he receives.  A list of these close allies and protégés are a veritable who’s who of the most controversial Administration officials: Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, John Bolton, Scooter Libby, Stephen Hadley and Paul Wolfowitz.

One example of the style and scope of his influence: The military commissions order signed by Bush in November of 2001 came straight from Cheney’s office, with input from the likes of John Yoo (then deputy chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, and reputed author of controversial and influential memos narrowly defining both torture and habeas corpus), David Addington (Cheney’s counsel), Alberto Gonzales, and a couple of others, and completely bypassing and leaving then National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell in the dark (Powell, upon finding out about it from CNN, said, “What the hell just happened?”).

The battle between the EPA and the VP’s office over regulation of pollution spouting energy plants in the Pacific Northwest is particularly telling.  It ends with EPA head Christine Todd Whitman’s resignation.

Here’s a few choice quotes from the series.  Chew on these if you don’t have time to read the rest:

Across the board, the vice president’s office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs.

A year after Bush announced at a news conference that “I’d like to close Guantanamo,” the camp remains open and has been expanded. Senior officials said Cheney, with few allies left, has turned back strong efforts — by Rice, England, new Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and former Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson, among others — to give the president what he said he wants.

In May 2005, a small group of the president’s senior advisers gathered to weigh a historic choice: who should succeed an ailing William H. Rehnquist as chief justice of the United States.

The meeting wasn’t held at the White House or the Justice Department. And the highest-ranking official in the room wasn’t the attorney general, the White House chief of staff, the White House counsel or the president’s chief political adviser, although they were all there.

It was Vice President Cheney, and it was to an unpretentious room off the vice president’s quarters that potential candidates were summoned for interviews.

The handful of candidates who survived a grilling of more than two hours by the Cheney-led selection committee would go on to what one participant described as a much shorter and “far more relaxed” interview with the president.

Cheney had just taken the oath of office, and [Dan] Quayle paid a visit to offer advice from one vice president to another.

“I said, ‘Dick, you know, you’re going to be doing a lot of this international traveling, you’re going to be doing all this political fundraising . . . you’ll be going to the funerals,’ ” Quayle said in an interview earlier this year. “I mean, this is what vice presidents do. I said, ‘We’ve all done it.’ ”

Cheney “got that little smile,” Quayle said, and replied, “I have a different understanding with the president.”