In My Time - Dick Cheney [166]
I SOON SETTLED INTO an early morning routine that varied little during my eight years in office. Around 6:30 a.m. my CIA briefer would arrive with my copy of the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB, which contains reports on the most critical intelligence issues of the day. We met in the library on the first floor of the Vice President’s Residence, and while I read through the briefing book, the briefer waited, ready to answer questions and to take the book back when I had finished. Scooter Libby, my chief of staff, often joined me for these sessions. Most days, after I received and read through my own copy of the PDB, I would join the president for his briefing. If I was traveling or at an undisclosed location, the president would often be briefed in the White House Situation Room, so I could join by secure videoconference.
During my years as vice president, I had some absolutely first-rate briefers. When a new briefer was assigned to me, we would sit together and go over a list of issues I was particularly interested in following. As a result, my copy of the PDB quickly expanded to two sections. The first section was identical to the president’s copy. The second section—“behind the tab,” we called it—contained responses to questions I’d asked or items my briefers knew I was interested in. Some mornings I would pull material from my section behind the tab and tell my briefer I thought the president needed to see it. Other times I would raise questions in the session with the president based on items I’d seen behind the tab. On at least one occasion, I asked to have material reinserted in the President’s Daily Brief after others on the national security staff decided that he didn’t need to see it. In my experience, intelligence was an absolutely crucial element for those in policymaking positions, and if the briefers thought it should be in the PDB, it should go in.
I had spent time on intelligence issues throughout my career, beginning when I was Ford’s chief of staff, then when I served on the House Intelligence Committee, and, of course, as secretary of defense. But when I became vice president, I had been away from it for eight years, and I felt it was important to get up to speed. Early on in the administration, I visited various parts of the intelligence community, such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. I thought it showed respect to go see people on their turf, and I could meet more of them by visiting an intelligence agency in person.
ONE OF THE CHALLENGES we faced immediately on taking office was the energy crisis in California. The state was experiencing brownouts because it lacked the generating capacity to meet power needs. Over the previous ten years, California’s economy had grown 34 percent, and not a single new power plant had been built. Heavy environmental regulations, in particular, discouraged new construction. The state had also, over the years, imposed price caps, so that utility companies facing a significant increase in the price of electricity were unable to pass this cost on to the consumers.
Alan Greenspan, my old friend, who was now the chairman of the Federal Reserve, had been warning us about the looming California crisis since before the inauguration. Now he advised that since California accounted for close to 15 percent of the U.S. economy, the energy shortages there could lead to a nationwide recession. We put in place some short-term emergency orders that required out-of-state utilities to sell their surpluses