Vice President Cheney keeps low profile following attacks

WASHINGTON -- It's been nearly a month since Vice President Dick Cheney was hustled into a bunker beneath the White House during the terrorist attacks. He hasn't been seen much since.

Though he is out of sight, his aides say he is bringing to bear his experience as a former defense secretary and White House chief of staff. They scoff at any suggestion that Cheney has been intentionally sidelined so as not to outshine the commander in chief.

But some have wondered about his low profile. "He was so conspicuously visible (before the attacks) that the absence now might seem to be significant," said Joel Goldstein, a professor at St. Louis University Law School and a scholar on the vice presidency.

Ron Klain, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Al Gore, said Cheney's under-the-radar role is appropriate.

"The public in this sort of situation expects to see the president, and that's precisely what they've seen," Klain said.

Cheney's people say out of sight doesn't mean out of the action.

The vice president has participated in virtually every meeting Bush has held with world leaders in the White House, they said, and he places several calls a week to other foreign officials.

He takes part in the administration's policy meetings examining the domestic consequences of President Bush's war on terrorism and has been a key liaison to Capitol Hill.

Even on Sept. 11, the day of the attacks, when congressional leaders were taken to a secure location outside Washington, Cheney was their link to the outside world.

On the domestic politics front, Cheney weighed in Sept. 28 when Democrats and the administration were trying to nail down a spending deal for the new fiscal year. He secured a written White House assurance that the Democrats wouldn't be attacked politically for overspending if they agreed to new levels that gave Bush more money for defense, and they approved more money for education.

Lobbying in person, he pushed lawmakers to pass the anti-terrorism legislation that Bush wanted, trying to bridge differences over the measures' impact on civil liberties and personal freedoms.

Concerns that Cheney might outshine Bush at the most critical moment in his presidency arose at the very start of the terrorism crisis. Bush was out of town and stayed away until nightfall. Cheney appeared to be running the government from the bunker.

"Presidential aides don't like having the president upstaged, even for a moment," said Goldstein. But Cheney adviser Mary Matalin rejected suggestions that the vice president's low public profile is intended to let Bush have the spotlight.

The president is relying on Cheney, with his background in intelligence-gathering and military and political matters, to process the information flowing into the White House, Matalin said.

"This is a campaign with a lot of different fronts," she said. "The vice president is doing what the president envisioned him doing: being an informed adviser of all these various undertakings."

Cheney is also helping to formulate the administration's economic stimulus package and helping to oversee the new Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security, which opens Monday, Matalin said.

From the start, Cheney emerged as the most integrally involved vice president in U.S. history, and has been an out-in-front player on almost every issue.

He was the architect of its energy package, and when the time came to promote it, he was all over the airwaves.

Cheney has been at Bush's side during photo sessions with the world leaders who have come calling since the Sept. 11 attacks, but has maintained a near-complete silence.

He has spoken out only once, in a television interview five days after the attacks, offering a vivid account of Secret Service agents hauling him into a bunker after jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center, and recalling his efforts to scatter top administration officials in case of additional attacks. He declined to be interviewed for this story.

Cheney will resurface publicly when he feels the time is right, Matalin said. Among other things, he plans a trip to the scene of the World Trade Center attacks.