page_title: David Addington
section_title: Vice President's office
hierarchical_section_title: David Addington / Vice President's office
caption_attribution_description: These images have been released in response to a FOIA request, case number 2014-0012-F, received by the National Archives. For more information on these images, please visitResearching Vice Presidential Materials. These photos will be available in the National Archives Catalog in July 2015. Local Identifier: V1562-24 Created By: President (2001-2009 : Bush). Office of Management and Administration. Office of White House Management. Photography Office. 1/20/2001-1/20/2009 From: Collection: Vice Presidential Records of the Photography Office (George W. Bush Administration), 1/20/2001 - 1/20/2009 Contact: Presidential Materials Division (LM) National Archives Building 7th and Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20408 Phone: 202-357-5200 Fax: 202-357-5939 Production Dates: 9/11/2001 Persistent URL: catalog.archives.gov/id/20933173 Access Restrictions: Unrestricted Use Restrictions: Unrestricted
context_page_description: David Spears Addington is an American lawyer who was legal counsel and Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. He was the vice president of domestic and economic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation from 2010 to 2016.
  During 21 years of federal service, Addington worked at the CIA, the Reagan White House, the Department of Defense, four congressional committees, and the Cheney Office of the Vice President. He was appointed to replace I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. as Cheney's chief of staff upon Libby's resignation when Libby was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on October 28, 2005. Addington was described by U.S. News & World Report as "the most powerful man you've never heard of" in May 2006.
context_section_description: As counsel to the Vice President, Addington's duties involved protecting the legal interests of the Office of the Vice President. Although limited duties have been given under the Constitution, each vice president has a role in association with the president.
  As chief of staff, Addington supervised the Vice President's staff. In both roles, Addington also provided advice to the White House staff, as he had the additional role of Assistant to the President, as his predecessor Scooter Libby had likewise held. As vice presidential counsel, Addington is known for his focus on the constitutional independence of the Vice President. He tried to protect the inner workings of the Office of the Vice President from investigations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and private organizations.
  After he began working for Cheney, Addington was influential in numerous policy areas. He provided advice and drafted memoranda on many of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration. Addington's influence strongly reflects his hawkish views on US foreign policy, a position he had apparently already committed to as a teenager during the late phase of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. In his House Judiciary Committee testimony, Addington said that he applied three filters in formulating advice on the War on Terror: (i) comply with the Constitution, (ii) within the law, maximize the President's options, and (iii) ensure legal protection of military and intelligence personnel engaged in counterterrorism activities.
  Addington has consistently advocated that under the Constitution, the President has substantial and expansive powers as commander-in-chief during wartime, if need be. He is the legal force behind over 750 signing statements that President George W. Bush issued when signing bills passed by Congress, expanding the practice relative to other Presidents. Charlie Savage, the former national legal affairs writer for The Boston Globe who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on signing statements, quotes former associate White House counsel Brad Berenson saying that Addington "would dive into a 200-page bill like it was a four-course meal" as he crafted the statements.
  A declassified CIA congressional briefing memo of February 4, 2003 states "The (CIA) General Counsel described the process by which the (enhanced interrogation) techniques were approved by a bevy of lawyers from the NSC, the Vice President’s office and the Justice Department," which makes it likely that Addington was aware of the coercive methods if not one or more of the "torture memos" as well, although it is not clear exactly what the CIA memo meant by the word 'approved' as none of the lawyers mentioned was in the chain of command that approves CIA operations and the White House-level lawyers relied on Justice Department legal opinions rather than developing and issuing legal opinions of their own. Press reports have alleged that Addington helped to shape an August 2002 opinion from the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that said torture might be justified in some cases, although John Yoo, author of many of the "Torture Memos", dismissed the notion of Addington's authorship of Department of Justice memos as "so erroneous as to be laughable."
  US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Colin Powell's chief of staff when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—at the same time Addington was Cheney's personal counsel as Secretary of Defense—and then later when Powell was Secretary of State, stated in an in-depth interview regarding extraordinary measures taken post 9/11: "The man who, to me, brings all of this together more than Cheney himself, because he has one foot in the legal camp—and I must admit it's a fairly brilliant foot—and he has one foot in the operator camp, that's David Addington."
  Press reports also state that Addington reportedly took a leading role in pressing for the use of torture (so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques") for interrogations when a delegation of top Bush administration attorneys
caption: David Addington speaking to Vice President Cheney on September 11, 2001
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