WASHINGTON (AP) – Former President George H.W. Bush is publicly criticizing for the first time key members of his son’s administration.
A biography of the nation’s 41st president to be published next week contains his sharply critical assessments of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
In interviews with biographer Jon Meacham, Bush, now 91, said that Cheney acted too independently and asserted too much “hard-line” influence within George W. Bush’s administration, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks. He had even harsher words for Rumsfeld, saying he “served the president badly.”
The book, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,” also contains the elder Bush’s ruminations about his son, whom he praised but also called responsible for empowering Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Of Cheney, who was a member of the elder Bush’s cabinet, Bush said, “He just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with.”