ian Gulf War. During that time he also oversaw the Pentagon's first big wave of post-Cold War defense cuts -- and characteristically cautioned Congress against cutting too deeply, too rapidly. In November 1991, several months after the Gulf War ended, Cheney publicly worried about the future of the Soviet Union -- which dissolved one month later -- and foresaw an instability that continues today. Cheney was born in Lincoln, Neb., and his father was a longtime Agriculture Department worker. He attended elementary school and high school in Casper, Wyo. He was football co-captain and senior class president, and won a full scholarship to Yale -- Bush's alma mater. He attended Yale for one year but had to leave because of failing grades. He moved back to Wyoming where he worked for the power company stringing and cutting lines, before enrolling at the University of Wyoming, where he renewed a relationship with high school sweetheart Lynne Anne Vincent. They married in 1964 and both went to the University of Wisconsin for doctorates. She earned her doctoral degree, but politics lured him to Washington in 1968, where he was a congressional fellow and became a protege of Michigan Republican Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, a close friend of President Gerald Ford. Cheney served under Rumsfeld in the anti-poverty agency of the Nixon years, on the Nixon White House staff and under Rumsfeld again as assistant director of the Cost of Living Council, Nixon's agency to combat inflation. When Ford tapped Rumsfeld to become his chief of staff, Rumsfeld made Cheney his deputy. When Rumsfeld left the White House to be defense secretary, Cheney moved up to become the youngest chief of staff ever, at age 34. He held the post for 14 months. After Ford left office, Cheney returned to Casper, Wyoming and ran for the state's single congressional seat. Despite his heart attack in the middle of the first campaign -- which he discussed with all of Wyoming's Republicans in a ...
