Let’s see, Dick Cheney is the most controversial Vice President since Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in disgrace. Lynne Cheney is a controversial, far-right activist and author of some very racy novels. Mary Cheney is controversial in far-right circles because she’s a pregnant lesbian. And then there’s Philip Perry, the Department of Homeland Security’s General Counsel, and husband to Elizabeth Cheney.
Perry is hardly a household name, but he’s an interesting character nevertheless. For example, we learned this week that the Department of Homeland Security is refusing to cooperate with the Government Accountability Office and all attempts at administrative oversight, apparently because Perry has learned a few too many lessons from his father-in-law.
“[Homeland Security] has been one of our persistent access challenges,” GAO Comptroller General David Walker told the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. Walker said the problem is “systemic” and not the fault of any single individual. But he complained that GAO has had to go through the office of Chief Counsel Philip Perry. Perry is married to Elizabeth Cheney, a former State Department official who is one of the vice president’s two daughters. Walker said it is his understanding that Perry’s office has to review documents GAO seeks before they are released and that Perry selectively sits in on interviews with department employees.
We can’t say it runs in the family — Perry isn’t a blood relative — but the tactics are eerily similar.
Indeed, Perry isn’t just blocking oversight from outside agencies; he’s doing the same thing within DHS. Richard Skinner, the Homeland Security Inspector General, told the House Subcommittee that his investigations have been hindered. Last summer, Skinner wrote a memo to DHS staffers, telling them about what he does and authorizing them to cooperate with his work. Perry’s office has sat on the letter for over six months, and it still hasn’t been distributed.
According to GAO Comptroller David Walker, the DHS strategy of dealing with investigations is to “delay, delay, delay.” I wonder where Perry got that idea?
As it happens, the Washington Monthly has excellent timing. Art Levine has an article about Perry in the March 2007 issue, whom he describes as “Dick Cheney’s Dangerous Son-In-Law.” Consider this anecdote:
The basic elements of the legislation were simple: the EPA would get authority to regulate the security of chemical sites, and, as a first step, plants would submit plans for lowering their risks. One man present at the meeting, Bob Bostock, who was homeland security adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency, was relieved to see that something was finally being done. “We knew that these facilities had large enough quantities of dangerous chemicals to do significant harm to populations in these areas,” he says.
No one present was prepared for what came next: the late arrival of an unexpected visitor, Philip Perry, general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Perry, a tall, balding man who bears a slight resemblance to Ari Fleischer without the glasses, was brusque and to the point. The Bush administration was not going to support granting regulatory authority over chemical security to the EPA. “If you send up this legislation,” he told the gathering, “it will be dead on arrival on the Hill.”
No one doubted the finality of Perry’s message. The OMB, which sets the course for nearly every proposal coming out of the White House, is a much-feared department that raises or lowers its thumb on policy priorities, a sort of mini-Caesar at the interagency coliseum. But Philip Perry could boast one more source of authority: he was, and is, the husband of Elizabeth Cheney, and son-in-law of Vice President Dick Cheney. After Perry spoke, only Bostock dared to protest, though to little effect. “He was obnoxious,” Bostock recalls.
For the chemical industry, which has always had a chilly relationship with the EPA, Perry has been a consistent, quiet friend. “Phil Perry was never the EPA’s biggest fan,” says Whitman, recounting the relationship. “I think there was a predisposition on his part that we were trying to overreach.” Indeed, like many Republican hardliners, for whom the EPA represents all that is wrong with government regulation, Perry has sought to limit the role of the EPA, not expand it. He’s been successful.
As T.A. Frank put it, “[I]f you ardently oppose regulation, play your cards with skill, and, most important, have Dick Cheney as your father-in-law, there’s almost nothing you can’t make people not do.”
It’s quite a family, isn’t it?