{{Infobox company | company_logo = | company_type = Public | traded_as = | foundation = 1919, Duncan, Oklahoma, USA | founder = Erle P. Halliburton | location = Houston, Texas, USA Dubai, UAE | key_people = David J. Lesar(Chairman), (President) & (CEO) | area_served = Worldwide | industry = Oil & gas equipment & services | num_employees = 52,000 (September 2009) | products = Products and services to the energy industry | revenue = US$18.279 billion (2008)(U.S. 46% International 54%) | operating_income = $4.010 billion (2008) oilfield services corporation with operations in more than 70 countries. It has hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands and divisions worldwide and employs over 50,000 people.

The company has headquarters in the North Belt office in Houston, Texas, and in offices in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (opened March 2007), where Chairman and CEO David J. Lesar works and resides, "to focus [the] company’s Eastern Hemisphere Growth." The company will remain incorporated in the United States.

Halliburton's major business segment is the Energy Services Group (ESG). ESG provides technical products and services for petroleum and natural gas exploration and production. Halliburton's former subsidiary, KBR, is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants. Halliburton announced on April 5, 2007 that it had finally broken ties with KBR, which had been its contracting, engineering and construction unit as a part of the company for 44 years.

Business overview

Locations

U.S. regional office locations are Anchorage, Alaska; Bakersfield, California; Denver, Colorado; Lafayette, Louisiana; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Farmington, New Mexico; Naples, Utah; and Odessa, Texas.

Major international offices are in Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Panama, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Gabon, Nigeria, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Libya, Austria, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Australia, Russia, China, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, U.A.E., Oman, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

Worldwide technology centers are in Duncan, Oklahoma; Carrollton, Texas; Houston, Texas; Stavanger, Norway; Pune, India; and Singapore.

Divisions

Energy Services (the company's historical cornerstone), formation evaluation, digital and consulting solutions, production volume optimization, and fluid systems are the major business segments. These businesses continue to be profitable, and the company is one of the world's largest players in these service industries; Schlumberger is a close competitor, followed by Weatherford International, and Baker Hughes.

With the acquisition of Dresser Industries in 1998, the Kellogg-Brown & Root division (in 2002 renamed to KBR) was formed by merging Halliburton's Brown & Root (acquired 1962) subsidiary and the M.W. Kellogg division of Dresser (which Dresser had merged with in 1988). KBR is a major international construction company, which is a highly volatile undertaking subject to wild fluctuations in revenue and profit. Asbestos-related litigation from the Kellogg acquisition caused the company to book more than US$4.0 billion in losses from 2002 through 2004.

As a result of the asbestos-related costs and staggering losses on the Barracuda Caratinga FPSO construction project based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Halliburton lost approximately $900 million U.S. a year from 2002 through 2004. A final non-appealable settlement in the asbestos case was reached in January 2005 which allowed Halliburton subsidiary KBR to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy and returned the company to quarterly profitability. So, while Halliburton's revenues have increased because of its contracts in the Middle East, its bottom line continues to suffer.

At a meeting for investors and analysts in August 2004, a plan was outlined to divest the KBR division through a possible sale, spin-off or initial public offering. Analysts at Deutsche Bank valued KBR at up to $2.15 billion, while others believed it could be worth closer to $3 billion by 2005. KBR became a separately listed company on April 5, 2007.

History

Early history (as HOWCO)

In 1919, Erle Halliburton started the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company.

In 1920, he brought a wild gas well under control, using cement, for W.G. Skelly, near Wilson, Oklahoma. On March 1, 1921, the Halliburton “method and means of excluding water from oil wells” was assigned a patent from the U.S. Patent Office. Halliburton invented the revolutionary cement jet mixer, to eliminate hand-mixing of cement, and the measuring line, a tool used to guarantee cementing accuracy. By 1922, the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company (HOWCO) was prospering from the Mexia, Texas oil boom, cementing its 500th well in late summer.

In 1924, the company was incorporated in Delaware, with 56 people on its payroll. The stock of the corporation was owned by Erle and Vida Halliburton and by seven major oil companies: Magnolia, Texas, Gulf, Humble, Sun, Pure and Atlantic.

In 1926, its first foreign venture began with sale of equipment to Burma and India.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Halliburton continued cementing across America. In 1938, Halliburton cemented its first offshore well using a truck on a barge off the Louisiana coast. In 1940, Halliburton opened offices in Venezuela and introduced bulk handling of cementing to the industry. In 1947, the Halliburton first marine cementing vessel went into service.

In 1951, Halliburton first appeared in Europe as Halliburton Italiana SpA, a wholly owned subsidiary in Italy. Over the next seven years, Halliburton launched Halliburton Company Germany GmbH, set up operations in Argentina and established a subsidiary in England. By 1951, HOWCO had service centers operating in Canada, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Halliburton revenues top $100 million for the first time in 1952.

Erle P. Halliburton died in Los Angeles in 1957. HOWCO is at this time worth $190 million with camps all over the world. The same year, HOWCO purchased Welex, which pioneered jet perforation. Otis Engineering, an oil field service and equipment company specializing in manufacturing pressure control equipment for oil and gas producing wells, was acquired in 1959.

As Halliburton

On July 5, 1961, the company changed its name to the Halliburton Company. In 1963, Halliburton was the first company in Oklahoma to receive the Presidential “E” for Export flag in recognition of notable contributions to foreign trade.

Halliburton opened a manufacturing center in Duncan, Oklahoma, in 1964. The company began to experiment with new technologies to help their services – for example, beginning in 1965 a pilot operation of a computer network system – the first such installation in the oilfield services industry. In 1966, Workers break ground for a new wing at the Research Center in Duncan that triples the space for the Chemical Research and Design Department. In 1968, an automated mixing system for drilling mud is developed by Halliburton, primarily for use offshore. Gearhart Industries (acquired by Halliburton Energy Services in 1989) introduced the first digital computer logging system in 1974.

In 1969, Halliburton began construction of a base camp at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope.

In 1975, it responded to environmental concerns by working with the nonprofit Clean Gulf Associates to contain and clean up oil spills. In 1976, Halliburton established the Halliburton Energy Institute in Duncan, Oklahoma, to provide an industry forum for disseminating technical information.

In 1980, Halliburton Research Center opens in Duncan, Oklahoma. The company's billionth sack of cement for customers was pumped in 1983.

In 1989, Halliburton acquired logging and perforating specialist company Gearhart Industries and combined it with its subsidiary Welex to form Halliburton Logging Services.

Throughout the 1980s, Halliburton's subsidiaries continued their projects around the world (under management of former CEO Brian Darcy) even in countries once considered enemies. Equipment was provided for the first multiwell platform offshore China, and an Otis Engineering team controlled a gigantic Tengiz field blowout in the Soviet Union.

1990s

Following the end of Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, the Pentagon, led by then defense secretary Dick Cheney, paid Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root Services over $8.5 million to study the use of private military forces with American soldiers in combat zones. Halliburton crews also helped bring 725 burning oil wells under control in Kuwait.

In 1995, Cheney replaced Thomas H. Cruikshank, as chairman and CEO. Cruikshank had served since 1989.

In the early 1990s, Halliburton was found to be in violation of federal trade barriers in Iraq and Libya, having sold these countries dual-use oil drilling equipment and, through its former subsidiary, Halliburton Logging Services, sending six pulse neutron generators to Libya. After having pleaded guilty, the company was fined $1.2 million, with another $2.61 million in penalties.

During the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, Kellogg Brown-Root (KBR) supported U.S. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Hungary with food, laundry, transportation, and other life-cycle management services.

In 1998, Halliburton merged with Dresser Industries, which included Kellogg. Prescott Bush was a director of Dresser Industries, which is now part of Halliburton; his son, former president George H. W. Bush, worked for Dresser Industries in several positions from 1948 to 1951, before he founded Zapata Corporation.

2000s

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2001 that a subsidiary of Halliburton Energy Services called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. (HPS) opened an office in Tehran. The company, HPS, operated on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. Although HPS was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in 1975 and is "non-American", it shares both the logo and name of Halliburton Energy Services and, according to Dow Jones Newswires, offers services from Halliburton units worldwide through its Tehran office. Such behavior, undertaken while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, may have violated the Trading with the Enemy Act. A Halliburton spokesman, responding to inquiries from Dow Jones, said "This is not breaking any laws. This is a foreign subsidiary and no U.S. person is involved in this. No U.S. person is facilitating any transaction. We are not performing directly in that country." Later Dave Lesar would book his own flights to the Tehran office through the UK arm of KBR. No legal action has been taken against the company or its officials.

In April 2002, KBR was awarded a $7 million contract to construct steel holding cells at Camp X-Ray.

From 1995 to 2002, Halliburton Brown & Root Services Corp was awarded at least $2.5 billion but has spent considerably less to construct and run military bases, some in secret locations, as part of the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program. This contract was a cost plus 13% contract and BRS employees were trained on how to pass GAO audits to ensure maximum profits were attained. It was also grounds for termination in the Balkans if any BRS employee spoke of Dick Cheney's being CEO. BRS was awarded and re-awarded contracts termed "noncompetitive" because BRS was the only company capable of pulling off the missions. DynCorp actually won the competitively let second contract, but never received any work orders in the Balkans.

In November 2002, KBR was tasked to plan oil well firefighting in Iraq, and in February 2003 was issued a contract to conduct the work. Critics contend that it was a no-bid contract, awarded due to Dick Cheney's position as vice president. Concern was also expressed that the contract could allow KBR to pump and distribute Iraqi oil. Others contend, however, that this was not strictly a no-bid contract, and was invoked under a contract that KBR won "in a competitive bid process." The contract, referred to as LOGCAP, is a contingency-based contract that is invoked at the convenience of the Army. Because the contract is essentially a retainer, specific orders are not competitively bid (as the overall contract was).

In May 2003, Halliburton revealed in SEC filings that its KBR subsidiary had paid a Nigerian official $2.4 million in bribes in order to receive favorable tax treatment. , United Arab Emirates In October 2004, Halliburton opened a new facility on , replacing an older facility that opened in 1948, in Rock Springs, Wyoming. With over approximately 500 employees, Halliburton is one of the largest private employers in Sweetwater County.

On January 24, 2006, Halliburton's subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build "temporary detention and processing facilities" or internment camps. According to Business Wire, this contract will be executed in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. Critics point to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as a possible model. According to a press release posted on the Halliburton website, "The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities."

In February 2008, a hard disk and two computers containing classified information were stolen from Petrobras while in Halliburton's custody. Allegedly, the content inside the stolen material was data on the recently discovered Tupi oil field. Initial police inquiries suggest that it could be a common container theft operation. The container was a ramshackle in complete disorder indicating that thieves were after "valuables and not only laptops," said an expert consulted by the daily newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.

In 2008, Halliburton agreed to outsource its mission-critical information technology infrastructure to a Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex data center operated by CyrusOne Networks LLC.

On May 14, 2010, President Barack Obama said in an interview with CNN that "you had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else" when referring to the congressional hearings held during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. "The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn't." According to Tim Probert, executive vice president of Halliburton, “Halliburton, as a service provider to the well owner, is contractually bound to comply with the well owner's instructions”.

It was anticipated that Halliburton’s $2.5 billion "Restore Iraqi Oil" (RIO) contract would pay for itself as well as for reconstruction of the entire country. Plans called for more oil to be exported from Iraq's northern oil fields than actually occurred. Halliburton’s work on the pipeline crossing the Tigris river at Al Fatah has been called a failure. Critics claim that the oil fields are barely usable and access to international markets is severely limited. As an example, against the advice of its own experts, Halliburton attempted to dig a tunnel through a geological fault zone. The underground terrain was a jumble of boulders, voids, cobblestones, and gravel and not appropriate for the kind of drilling Halliburton planned. "No driller in his right mind would have gone ahead," said Army geologist Robert Sanders when the military finally sent people to inspect the work.

Controversies

Halliburton has become the object of several controversies involving the 2003 Iraq War and the company's ties to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney retired from the company during the 2000 U.S. presidential election campaign with a severance package worth $36 million. As of 2004, he had received $398,548 in deferred compensation from Halliburton while Vice President. Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000 and has received stock options from Halliburton.

In the run-up to the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded a $7 billion contract for which 'unusually' only Halliburton was allowed to bid.

Bunnatine Greenhouse, a civil servant with 20 years of contracting experience, had complained to Army officials on numerous occasions that Halliburton had been unlawfully receiving special treatment for work in Iraq, Kuwait and the Balkans. Criminal investigations were opened by the U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Pentagon's inspector general.

In one of Greenhouse's claims, she said that military auditors caught Halliburton overcharging the Pentagon for fuel deliveries into Iraq. She also complained that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office took control of every aspect of Halliburton's $7 billion Iraqi oil/infrastructure contract. After her testimony, Greenhouse was demoted for poor performance. Greenhouse's attorney, Michael Kohn, stated in The New York Times that "she is being demoted because of her strict adherence to procurement requirements and the Army's preference to sidestep them when it suits their needs."

On September 8, 2010, an internal report released by BP into the Deepwater Horizon Incident claimed that poor practices of Halliburton staff had contributed to the disaster. Investigations carried out by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling found that Halliburton was jointly at fault along with BP and Transocean for the spill. The cement that Halliburton used was an unstable mixture, and eventually caused hydrocarbons to leak into the well, eventually causing the explosion that started the crisis.

In early December 2010, the Nigerian government filed corruption charges against Cheney in connection with his role as the chief executive of Halliburton. The case relates to an alleged $182 million contract involving a four-company joint venture to build a liquefied natural gas plant on Bonny Island in southern Nigeria. Earlier in 2009, KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, agreed to pay $402 million after admitting that it bribed Nigerian officials, and Halliburton paid $177 million to settle allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission without admitting any wrongdoing. In mid-December 2010, the case was settled when Nigeria agreed to drop the corruption charges against Cheney and Halliburton in exchange for a $250 million settlement. According to Femi Babafemi, the spokesperson for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the $250 million would include approximately $130 million frozen in a Swiss bank, and the rest would be paid as fines.

The Federal Contractor Misconduct Database details 10 instances of misconduct since 1995 under which Halliburton has agreed to pay settlements of $791 million. A further 22 instances of misconduct relate to the company's former subsidiary KBR.

Environmental issues

In 2002, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reports were completed to measure the amount of chemicals emitted from Halliburton's Harris County, Texas facility. The TRI is a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and waste management activities reported annually by certain industries as well as federal facilities. The facility had 230 TRI air releases in 2001 and 245 in 2002.

On June 7, 2006, Halliburton's Farmington, New Mexico facility created a toxic cloud that forced people to evacuate their homes.

Halliburton may also be implicated in the oil spills in the Timor Sea off Australia in August 2009 and in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 for improper cementing. Halliburton staff were employed on the Transocean operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Mexican Gulf. Halliburton staff completed cementation of the final production well 20 hours prior to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion, but had not yet set the final cement plug.

Jamie Leigh Jones testified at a Congressional hearing that she had been gang-raped by as many as seven co-workers in Iraq in 2005 when she was an employee of KBR, and then falsely imprisoned in a shipping container for 24 hours without food or drink. KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton at the time. Jones and her lawyers said that 38 women have contacted her reporting similar experiences while working as contractors in Iraq, Kuwait, and other countries. On September 15, 2009, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Jones, in a 2 to 1 ruling, and found that her alleged injuries were not, in fact, in any way related to her employment and thus, not covered by the contract.

Sale of KBR

On April 15, 2006, Halliburton filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell up to 20 percent of its KBR stock on the NYSE under the ticker symbol "KBR", as part of an eventual plan for KBR to be a separate company from Halliburton.

In November 2006, Halliburton began selling its stake in KBR, its major subsidiary, and by February 2007 had completely sold off the subsidiary. In June 2007, several days after Stewart Bowen, the Special Inspector General, released a new report, the Army announced that KBR would share another $150 billion contract with two other contractors, Fluor and Dyncorp, over the next 10 years.

Baghdad incident

In accordance with the law of armed conflict and to maintain non-combatant status, Halliburton does not arm its truck drivers. Trucks are often the target of insurgent attacks. On September 20, 2005, a convoy of four Halliburton trucks was ambushed north of Baghdad. All four trucks were struck by improvised explosive devices and were disabled. Their US National Guard escort was thought to have abandoned the disabled vehicles, leaving the drivers defenseless. Three of the four truck drivers were killed by the insurgents while the surviving driver, Preston Wheeler, caught the event on video. Although the trucks had military camouflage paint, the drivers were civilian. The US military returned to the scene 45 minutes later. However, in a statement by senior military officials in Iraq, an investigation revealed that troops did not abandon the civilians and they were all exiting the "kill zone" during the ambush.

Subsidiaries

As of Halliburton's latest form 10-K filings with the SEC, Exhibit 21.1 lists the following as subsidiaries of Halliburton Co.:

Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. Algeria Div (Algeria)

Breswater Marine Contracting B.V. (Netherlands)

DII Industries, LLC (United States)

Easy Well Solutions AS (Norway)

Halliburton Affiliates, LLC (United States)

Halliburton AS (Norway)

Halliburton Canada Holdings, Inc. (United States)

Halliburton Company Germany GmbH (Germany)

Halliburton de Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V. (Mexico)

Halliburton Energy Cayman Islands Limited (Cayman Islands)

Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. (United States)

Halliburton Group Canada Inc. (Canada)

Halliburton Group Holdings (1) Company (Canada)

Halliburton Group Holdings (2) Company (Canada)

Halliburton Holdings (No. 3) (United Kingdom)

Halliburton International, Inc. (United States)

Halliburton Latin America S.A. (Panama)

Halliburton Manufacturing and Services Limited (United Kingdom)

Halliburton Netherlands Operations Cooperatie (Netherlands)

Halliburton Norge Holding AS (Norway)

Halliburton Norway Holdings C.V. (Netherlands)

Halliburton Overseas Limited (Cayman Islands)

Halliburton Products and Services Ltd (Iran)

Hobbymarkt Delft BV (Netherlands)

Kellogg Energy Services, Inc. (United States)

Landmark Graphics Corporation (United States)

Oilfield Telecommunications, LLC. (United States)

Corporate affairs

Headquarters

Halliburton's headquarters (North Belt office) is located in Harris County, in northern Houston, Texas, near George H.W. Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Halliburton was headquartered in Dallas, Texas from 1961 to 2003. The company moved its headquarters from the Southland Life Building in Dallas to of space in Lincoln Plaza in Downtown Dallas in 1985. 20 employees worked in Halliburton's headquarters in Dallas.

Halliburton planned to move its headquarters to Houston in 2002. Halliburton, which signed its lease to occupy a portion of 5 Houston Center in Downtown Houston in 2002, moved its headquarters there by July 2003. Halliburton occupied of space on the 24th floor in 5 Houston Center. In 2009 Halliburton announced that it planned to move its headquarters to the North Belt offices in Houston. In addition it planned to consolidate operations at its Westchase and North Belt offices. The move occurred in 2009. The North Belt complex will house 2,200 employees. Halliburton planned to add a research and development facility with laboratories, a new cafeteria, a childcare center, two additional parking garages, and fitness and wellness centers for employees. The plans for the North Belt office had been delayed by one year, and Halliburton expects completion in 2013. The construction of the North Belt administration building is scheduled to begin in late 2010.

According to Marilyn Bayless, the president of the North Houston Greenspoint Chamber of Commerce, in 2003 Halliburton had planned to move operations out of the North Belt office because other area school districts offered the freeport tax exemptions while the Aldine Independent School District (AISD), where the North Belt office is located, did not. In order to attract businesses, in May 2003, AISD began offering the same tax exemption as other jurisdictions. Subsequently, Halliburton retained the North Belt office.

See also

List of oilfield service companies

Private military contractor

References

Further reading

External links

Category:Companies based in Dallas, Texas Category:Companies based in Houston, Texas Category:Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange Category:Companies established in 1919 Category:Energy companies of the United States Category:Engineering companies of the United States Category:Drilling rig operators Category:Anti-corporate activism Category:George W. Bush administration controversies Category:Military-industrial complex Category:Corporate crime Category:Private military contractors Category:History of oil in Oklahoma Category:Economy of Anchorage, Alaska Category:Economy of Denver, Colorado Category:Economy of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Category:Lafayette, Louisiana Category:Oilfield services companies Category:Economy of Bakersfield, California

ar:هاليبرتون bg:Halliburton cs:Halliburton da:Halliburton de:Halliburton et:Halliburton es:Halliburton eo:Halliburton eu:Halliburton fa:هالیبرتون fr:Halliburton it:Halliburton nl:Halliburton ja:ハリバートン (企業) no:Halliburton pt:Halliburton ro:Halliburton ru:Halliburton fi:Halliburton sv:Halliburton tr:Halliburton uk:Halliburton vi:Halliburton

name	Dick Cheney
order	46th
office	Vice President of the United States
term start	January 20, 2001
term end	January 20, 2009
president	George W. Bush
predecessor	Al Gore
successor	Joe Biden
order3	17th
office3	United States Secretary of Defense
term start3	March 20, 1989
term end3	January 20, 1993
president3	George H. W. Bush
deputy3	Donald J. Atwood, Jr.
predecessor3	Frank Carlucci
successor3	Les Aspin
order4	15th
title4	United States House of Representatives Minority Whip
term start4	January 3, 1989
term end4	March 20, 1989
leader4	Robert H. Michel
predecessor4	Trent Lott
successor4	Newt Gingrich
state5	Wyoming
district5	At-large
term start5	January 3, 1979
term end5	March 20, 1989
predecessor5	Teno Roncalio
successor5	Craig L. Thomas
order6	7th
office6	White House Chief of Staff
term start6	November 21, 1975
term end6	January 20, 1977
president6	Gerald Ford
predecessor6	Donald Rumsfeld
successor6	Hamilton Jordan
birth date	January 30, 1941
birth place	Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S.
spouse	Lynne Cheney (m. 1964-present)
children	Elizabeth CheneyMary Cheney
residence	McLean, VirginiaJackson, Wyoming
profession	PoliticianBusinessman
alma mater	Yale UniversityUniversity of Wyoming (BA, MA) University of Wisconsin-Madison
religion	Methodist
party	Republican
signature	Dick Cheney Signature.svg
Signature alt	Cursive signature in ink
awards	}}

Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney (born January 30, 1941) served as the 46th Vice President of the United States (2001-2009), under George W. Bush.

Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, but was primarily raised in Sumner, Nebraska and Casper, Wyoming. He began his political career as an intern for Congressman William A. Steiger, eventually working his way into the White House during the Nixon and Ford administrations, where he served the latter as White House Chief of Staff. In 1978, Cheney was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Wyoming; he was reelected five times, eventually becoming House Minority Whip. Cheney was selected to be the Secretary of Defense during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, holding the position for the majority of Bush's term. During this time, Cheney oversaw the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, among other actions.

Out of office during the Clinton presidency, Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000.

Early life and education

Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Marjorie Lorraine (née Dickey) and Richard Herbert Cheney. He is of predominantly English and Welsh ancestry; Cheney's 8th great-grandfather, William Cheney immigrated from England to Massachusetts in the 17th century. Although not a direct descendant, he is collaterally related to Benjamin Pierce Cheney (1815–1895), the early American expressman. Cheney is a distant cousin of both Harry S. Truman and Barack Obama; the three share a common ancestor in Mareen Duvall, a Huguenot who fled from France to England in the 17th century and later settled in Maryland.

He attended Calvert Elementary School before his family moved to Casper, Wyoming, where he attended Natrona County High School. His father was a soil conservation agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his mother was a softball star in the 1930s; Cheney was one of three children. He attended Yale University, but by his own account had problems adjusting to the college, and flunked out twice. Among the influential teachers from his days in New Haven was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield, whom Cheney repeatedly credited with having helped to shape his approach to foreign policy. He later attended the University of Wyoming, where he earned both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in political science. He subsequently started, but did not finish, doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

In November 1962, at the age of 21, Cheney was convicted of driving while intoxicated (DWI). He was arrested for DWI again the following year. Cheney said that the arrests made him "think about where I was and where I was headed. I was headed down a bad road if I continued on that course."

In 1964, he married Lynne Vincent, his high school sweetheart, whom he had met at age 14.

When Cheney became eligible for the draft, during the Vietnam War, he applied for and received five draft deferments. In 1989, The Washington Post writer George C. Wilson interviewed Cheney as the next Secretary of Defense; when asked about his deferments, Cheney reportedly said, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." Cheney testified during his confirmation hearings in 1989 that he received deferments to finish a college career that lasted six years rather than four, owing to sub par academic performance and the need to work to pay for his education. Initially, he was not called up because the Selective Service System was only taking older men. When he became eligible for the draft, he applied for four deferments in sequence. He applied for his fifth exemption on January 19, 1966, when his wife was about 10 weeks pregnant. He was granted 3-A status, the "hardship" exemption, which excluded men with children or dependent parents. In January 1967, Cheney turned 26 and was no longer eligible for the draft.

Early White House appointments

Cheney's political career began in 1969, as an intern for Congressman William A. Steiger during the Richard Nixon Administration. He then joined the staff of Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity from 1969–70. He held several positions in the years that followed: White House Staff Assistant in 1971, Assistant Director of the Cost of Living Council from 1971–73, and Deputy Assistant to the president from 1974–1975. As deputy assistant, Cheney suggested several options in a memo to Rumsfeld, including use of the US Justice Department, that the Ford administration could use to limit damage from an article, published by The New York Times, in which investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reported that Navy submarines had tapped into Soviet undersea communications as part of a highly classified program.

Cheney was Assistant to the President under Gerald Ford. When Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defense, Cheney became White House Chief of Staff, succeeding Rumsfeld. He later was campaign manager for Ford's 1976 presidential campaign.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

In 1978, Cheney was elected to represent Wyoming in the U.S. House of Representatives and succeed retiring Congressman Teno Roncalio, having defeated his Democratic opponent, Bill Bailey. Cheney was reelected five times, serving until 1989.

Committee assignments

Originally declining, U.S. Congressman Barber Conable persuaded Cheney to join the moderate Republican Wednesday Group in order to move up the leadership ranks. He was elected Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee from 1981 to 1987. Cheney was the Ranking Member of the Select Committee to investigate the Iran-Contra Affair. He promoted Wyoming's petroleum and coal businesses as well,

Leadership

In 1987, he was elected Chairman of the House Republican Conference. The following year, he was elected House Minority Whip. He served for two and a half months before he was appointed Secretary of Defense instead of former U.S. Senator John G. Tower, whose nomination had been rejected by the U.S. Senate in March 1989.

Votes

He voted against the creation of the U.S. Department of Education, citing his concern over budget deficits and expansion of the federal government, and claiming that the Department was an encroachment on states' rights. He voted against funding Head Start, but reversed his position in 2000.

Cheney supported Bob Michel’s (R-IL) bid to become Republican Minority Leader. In April 1980, Cheney endorsed Governor Ronald Reagan for President, becoming one of Reagan's earliest supporters.

In 1986, after President Ronald Reagan vetoed a bill to impose economic sanctions on South Africa for its policy of apartheid, Cheney was one of 83 Representatives to vote against overriding Reagan's veto. In later years, he articulated his opposition to unilateral sanctions against many different countries, stating "they almost never work" and that in that case they might have ended up hurting the people instead.

In 1986, Cheney, along with 145 Republicans and 31 Democrats, voted against a non-binding Congressional resolution calling on the South African government to release Nelson Mandela from prison, after the Democrats defeated proposed amendments that would have required Mandela to renounce violence sponsored by the African National Congress (ANC) and requiring it to oust the communist faction from its leadership; the resolution was defeated. Appearing on CNN, Cheney addressed criticism for this, saying he opposed the resolution because the ANC "at the time was viewed as a terrorist organization and had a number of interests that were fundamentally inimical to the United States."

The federal building in Casper, a regional center of the fossil fuel industry, is named the Dick Cheney Federal Building.

Secretary of Defense

President George H. W. Bush nominated Cheney for the office of Secretary of Defense immediately after the U.S. Senate failed to confirm John Tower for that position. The senate confirmed Cheney by a vote of 92 to 0 and he served in that office from March 1989 to January 1993. He directed the United States invasion of Panama and Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East. In 1991 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bush.

Early tenure

Cheney worked closely with Pete Williams, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, and Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, from the beginning of his tenure. He focused primarily on external matters, and left most internal Pentagon management to Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald J. Atwood, Jr.

Budgetary practices

Cheney's most immediate issue as Secretary of Defense was the Department of Defense budget. Cheney deemed it appropriate to cut the budget and downsize the military, following President Ronald Reagan's peacetime defense buildup at the height of the Cold War. As part of the fiscal year 1990 budget, Cheney assessed the requests from each of the branches of the armed services for such expensive programs as the B-2 stealth bomber, the V-22 Osprey tilt-wing helicopter, the Aegis destroyer and the MX missile, totaling approximately $4.5 billion in light of changed world politics. Cheney opposed the V-22 program, which Congress had already appropriated funds for, and initially refused to issue contracts for it before relenting. When the 1990 Budget came before Congress in the summer of 1989, it settled on a figure between the Administration's request and the House Armed Services Committee's recommendation. In subsequent years under Cheney, the proposed and adopted budgets followed patterns similar to that of 1990. Early in 1991, he unveiled a plan to reduce military strength by the mid-1990s to 1.6 million, compared with 2.2 million when he entered office. Cheney's 1993 defense budget was reduced from 1992, omitting programs that Congress had directed the Department of Defense to buy weapons that it did not want, and omitting unrequested reserve forces.

Over his four years as Secretary of Defense, Cheney downsized the military and his budgets showed negative real growth, despite pressures to acquire weapon systems advocated by Congress. The Department of Defense's total obligational authority in current dollars declined from $291 billion to $270 billion. Total military personnel strength decreased by 19 percent, from about 2.2 million in 1989 to about 1.8 million in 1993.

Political climate and agenda

Cheney publicly expressed concern that nations such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, could acquire nuclear components after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact obliged the first Bush Administration to reevaluate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) purpose and makeup. Cheney believed that NATO should remain the foundation of European security relationships and that it would remain important to the United States in the long term; he urged the alliance to lend more assistance to the new democracies in Eastern Europe.

Cheney's views on NATO reflected his skepticism about prospects for peaceful social development in the former Eastern Bloc countries, where he saw a high potential for political uncertainty and instability. He felt that the Bush Administration was too optimistic in supporting General Secretary of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor, Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Cheney worked to maintain strong ties between the United States and its European allies.

Cheney persuaded the Saudi Arabian aristocracy to allow bases for US ground troops and war planes in the nation. This was an important element of the success of the Gulf War, as well as a lightning-rod for Islamists who opposed having non-Muslim armies near their holy sites.

International situations

Using economic sanctions and political pressure, the United States mounted a campaign to drive Panamanian ruler General Manuel Antonio Noriega from power after he fell from favour. In May 1989, after Guillermo Endara had been duly elected President of Panama, Noriega nullified the election outcome, drawing intensified pressure. In October, Noriega suppressed a military coup, but in December, after soldiers of the Panamanian army killed a US serviceman, the United States invasion of Panama began under Cheney's direction. The stated reason for the invasion was to seize Noriega to face drug charges in the United States, protect US lives and property, and restore Panamanian civil liberties. Although the mission was controversial, US forces achieved control of Panama and Endara assumed the Presidency; Noriega was convicted and imprisoned on racketeering and drug trafficking charges in April 1992.

In 1991, the Somali Civil War drew the world's attention. In August 1992, the United States began to provide humanitarian assistance, primarily food, through a military airlift. At President Bush's direction, Cheney dispatched the first of 26,000 US troops to Somalia as part of the Unified Task Force (UNITAF), designed to provide security and food relief. Cheney's successors as Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin and William J. Perry, had to contend with both the Bosnian and Somali issues.

Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

On August 1, 1990, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sent invading forces into neighboring Kuwait, a small petroleum-rich state long claimed by Iraq as part of its territory. An estimated 140,000 Iraqi troops quickly took control of Kuwait City and moved on to the Saudi Arabia/Kuwait border. The United States had already begun to develop contingency plans for the defense of Saudi Arabia by the US Central Command, headed by General Norman Schwarzkopf, because of its important petroleum reserves.

US and world reaction

Cheney and Schwarzkopf oversaw planning for what would become a full-scale US military operation. According to General Colin Powell, Cheney "had become a glutton for information, with an appetite we could barely satisfy. He spent hours in the National Military Command Center peppering my staff with questions."

Shortly after the Iraqi invasion, Cheney made the first of several visits to Saudi Arabia where King Fahd requested US military assistance. The United Nations took action as well, passing a series of resolutions condemning Iraq's invasion of Kuwait; the UN Security Council authorized "all means necessary" to eject Iraq from Kuwait, and demanded that the country withdraw its forces by January 15, 1991. By then, the United States had a force of about 500,000 stationed in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Other nations, including Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Syria, and Egypt, contributed troops, and other allies, most notably Germany and Japan, agreed to provide financial support for the coalition effort, named Operation Desert Shield.

On January 12, 1991, Congress authorized Bush to use military force to enforce Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions on Kuwait.

Military action

The first phase of Operation Desert Storm, which began on January 17, 1991, was an air offensive to secure air superiority and attack Iraq's forces, targeting key Iraqi command and control centers, including Baghdad and Basra. Cheney turned most other Department of Defense matters over to Deputy Secretary Atwood and briefed Congress during the air and ground phases of the war. He flew with Powell to the region (specifically Riyadh) to review and finalize the ground war plans.

After an air offensive of more than five weeks, the UN coalition launched the ground war on February 24. Within 100 hours, Iraqi forces had been routed from Kuwait and Schwarzkopf reported that the basic objective—expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait—had been met on February 27. After consultation with Cheney and other members of his national security team, Bush declared a suspension of hostilities.

Aftermath

A total of 147 U.S. military personnel died in combat, and another 236 died as a result of accidents or other causes. Iraq agreed to a formal truce on March 3, and a permanent cease-fire on April 6. There was subsequent debate about whether the UN coalition should have driven as far as Baghdad to oust Saddam Hussein from power. Bush agreed that the decision to end the ground war when they did was correct, but the debate persisted as Hussein remained in power and rebuilt his military forces. Arguably the most significant debate concerned whether U.S. and coalition forces had left Iraq too soon. In an April 15, 1994 interview with C-SPAN, Cheney explained that occupying and attempting to take over the country would have been a "bad idea" and would have led to a "quagmire."

Cheney regarded the Gulf War as an example of the kind of regional problem the United States was likely to continue to face in the future.

We're always going to have to be involved [in the Middle East]. Maybe it's part of our national character, you know we like to have these problems nice and neatly wrapped up, put a ribbon around it. You deploy a force, you win the war and the problem goes away and it doesn't work that way in the Middle East it never has and isn't likely to in my lifetime.

Private sector career

Between 1987 and 1989, during his last term in Congress, Cheney was a director of the Council on Foreign Relations foreign policy organization.

With the new Democratic administration under President Bill Clinton in January 1993, Cheney left the Department of Defense and joined the American Enterprise Institute. He also served a second term as a Council on Foreign Relations director from 1993 to 1995. From 1995 until 2000, he served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton, a Fortune 500 company and market leader in the energy sector.

Cheney's record as CEO was subject to some dispute among Wall Street analysts; a 1998 merger between Halliburton and Dresser Industries attracted the criticism of some Dresser executives for Halliburton's lack of accounting transparency. Although Cheney is not named as an individual defendant in the suit, Halliburton shareholders are pursuing a class-action lawsuit alleging that the corporation artificially inflated its stock price during this period; the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on whether the case can continue to be litigated. Cheney was named in a December 2010 corruption complaint filed by the Nigerian government against Halliburton, which the company settled for $250 million.

During Cheney's tenure, Halliburton changed its accounting practices regarding revenue realization of disputed costs on major construction projects. Cheney resigned as CEO of Halliburton on July 25, 2000. As vice president, he argued that this step removed any conflict of interest. Cheney's net worth, estimated to be between $30 million and $100 million, is largely derived from his post at Halliburton, as well as the Cheneys' gross income of nearly $8.82 million.

He was also a member of the board of advisors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) before becoming vice president.

2000 election

In early 2000, while serving as the CEO of Halliburton, Cheney headed then-Governor of Texas George W. Bush's vice-presidential search committee. On July 25, after reviewing Cheney's findings, Bush surprised some pundits by asking Cheney himself to join the Republican ticket. Halliburton reportedly reached agreement on July 20 to allow Cheney to retire, with a package estimated at $20 million.

A few months before the election Cheney put his home in Dallas up for sale and changed his drivers' license and voter registration back to Wyoming. This change was necessary to allow Texas' presidential electors to vote for both Bush and Cheney without contravening the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids electors from voting for someone from their own state for both President and Vice-President.

Cheney campaigned against Al Gore's running mate, Joseph Lieberman, in the 2000 presidential election. While the election was undecided, the Bush-Cheney team was not eligible for public funding to plan a transition to a new administration. So, Cheney opened a privately funded transition office in Washington. This office worked to identify candidates for all important positions in the cabinet. According to Craig Unger, Cheney advocated Donald Rumsfeld for the post of Secretary of Defense to counter the influence of Colin Powell at the State Department, and tried unsuccessfully to have Paul Wolfowitz named to replace George Tenet as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Vice Presidency

First term

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Cheney remained physically apart from Bush for security reasons. For a period, Cheney stayed at an undisclosed location, out of public view. He also utilized a heavy security detail, employing a motorcade of 12 to 18 government vehicles for his daily commute from the Vice Presidential residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory to the White House.

On the morning of June 29, 2002, Cheney served as Acting President of the United States under the terms of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, while Bush was undergoing a colonoscopy. Cheney acted as President from 11:09 UTC that day until Bush resumed the powers of the presidency at 13:24 UTC.

Iraq War

Following 9/11, Cheney was instrumental in providing a primary justification for entering into a war with Iraq. Cheney helped shape Bush's approach to the "War on Terrorism", making numerous public statements alleging Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and made several personal visits to CIA headquarters, where he questioned mid-level agency analysts on their conclusions. Cheney continued to allege links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, even though President Bush received a classified President's Daily Brief on September 21, 2001 indicating the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11th attacks and that "there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda." Furthermore, in 2004, the 9/11 Commission concluded that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Following the US invasion of Iraq, Cheney remained steadfast in his support of the war, stating that it would be an "enormous success story", and made many visits to the country. He often criticized war critics, calling them "opportunists" who were peddling "cynical and pernicious falsehoods" to gain political advantage while US soldiers died in Iraq. In response, Senator John Kerry asserted, "It is hard to name a government official with less credibility on Iraq [than Cheney]."

In a March 24, 2008 extended interview conducted in Ankara, Turkey with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz on the fifth anniversary of the original U.S. military assault on Iraq, Cheney responded to a question about public opinion polls showing that Americans had lost confidence in the war by simply replying "So?" This remark prompted widespread criticism, including from former Oklahoma Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards, a long-time personal friend of Cheney.

Second term

Bush and Cheney were re-elected in the 2004 presidential election, running against John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards. During the election, the pregnancy of his daughter Mary and her sexual orientation as a lesbian became a source of public attention for Cheney in light of the same-sex marriage debate. Cheney has stated that he is in favor of gay marriages but that each individual state should decide whether to permit it.

Cheney's former chief legal counsel, David Addington, became his chief of staff and remained in that office until Cheney's departure from office. John P. Hannah served as Cheney's national security adviser. Until his indictment and resignation in 2005, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr. served in both roles.

On the morning of July 21, 2007, Cheney once again served as acting president for about two and a half hours. Bush transferred the power of the presidency prior to undergoing a medical procedure, requiring sedation, and later resumed his powers and duties that same day.

After his term began in 2001, Cheney was occasionally asked if he was interested in the Republican nomination for the 2008 elections. However, he always maintained that he wished to retire upon the expiration of his term and he did not run in the 2008 presidential primaries. The Republicans nominated Arizona Senator John McCain.

Disclosure of documents

Cheney was a prominent member of the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), commonly known as the Energy task force, which comprised energy industry representatives, including several Enron executives. After the Enron scandal, the Bush administration was accused of improper political and business ties. In July 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the US Department of Commerce must disclose NEPDG documents, containing references to companies that had made agreements with the previous Iraqi government to extract Iraq's petroleum.

Beginning in 2003, Cheney's staff opted not to file required reports with the National Archives and Records Administration office charged with assuring that the executive branch protects classified information, nor did it allow inspection of its record keeping. Cheney refused to release the documents, citing his executive privilege to deny congressional information requests. Media outlets such as Time magazine and CBS News questioned whether Cheney had created a "fourth branch of government" that was not subject to any laws. A group of historians and open-government advocates filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, asking the court to declare that Cheney's vice-presidential records are covered by the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and cannot be destroyed, taken or withheld from the public without proper review.

CIA leak scandal

On October 18, 2005, The Washington Post reported that the vice president's office was central to the investigation of the Valerie Plame CIA leak scandal, for Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was one of the figures under investigation. Following an indictment, Libby resigned his positions as Cheney's chief of staff and assistant on national security affairs.

On September 8, 2006, Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State, publicly announced that he was the source of the revelation of Plame's status. Armitage said he was not a part of a conspiracy to reveal Plame's identity and did not know whether one existed.

In February 2006, The National Journal reported that Libby had stated before a grand jury that his superiors, including Cheney, had authorized him to disclose classified information to the press regarding intelligence on Iraq's weapons .

On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted on four felony counts for obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators.

Assassination attempt

On February 27, 2007, at about 10 a.m., a suicide bomber killed 23 people and wounded 20 more outside Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan during a visit by Cheney. Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the attack and said Cheney was its intended target. The Taliban claimed that Osama Bin Laden supervised the operation. The bomb went off outside the front gate, however, while Cheney was inside the base and half a mile away. He reported hearing the blast, saying "I heard a loud boom...The Secret Service came in and told me there had been an attack on the main gate." The purpose of Cheney's visit to the region had been to press Pakistan for a united front against the Taliban.

Policy formulation

Cheney has been characterized as the most powerful and influential Vice President in history. Both supporters and detractors of Cheney regard him as a shrewd and knowledgeable politician who knows the functions and intricacies of the federal government. A sign of Cheney's active policy-making role was then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert's provision of an office near the House floor for Cheney in addition to his office in the West Wing, his ceremonial office in the Old Executive Office Building, and his Senate offices (one in the Dirksen Senate Office Building and another off the floor of the Senate).

Cheney has actively promoted an expansion of the powers of the presidency, saying that the Bush administration’s challenges to the laws which Congress passed after Vietnam and Watergate to contain and oversee the executive branch—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Presidential Records Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the War Powers Resolution—are, in Cheney's words, "a restoration, if you will, of the power and authority of the president."

In June 2007, the Washington Post summarized Cheney’s vice presidency in a Pulitzer Prize-winning four-part series, based in part on interviews with former administration officials. The articles characterized Cheney not as a "shadow" president, but as someone who usually has the last words of counsel to the president on policies, which in many cases would reshape the powers of the presidency. When former Vice President Dan Quayle suggested to Cheney that the office was largely ceremonial, Cheney reportedly replied, "I have a different understanding with the president." The articles described Cheney as having a secretive approach to the tools of government, indicated by the use of his own security classification and three man-sized safes in his offices.

The articles described Cheney’s influence on decisions pertaining to detention of suspected terrorists and the legal limits that apply to their questioning, especially what constitutes torture. U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Colin Powell's chief of staff when he was both Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the same time Cheney was Secretary of Defense, and then later when Powell was Secretary of State, stated in an in-depth interview that Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld established an alternative program to interrogate post-9/11 detainees because of their mutual distrust of CIA.

The Washington Post articles, principally written by Barton Gellman, further characterized Cheney as having the strongest influence within the administration in shaping budget and tax policy in a manner that assures "conservative orthodoxy." They also highlighted Cheney’s behind-the-scenes influence on the administration’s environmental policy to ease pollution controls for power plants, facilitate the disposal of nuclear waste, open access to federal timber resources, and avoid federal constraints on greenhouse gas emissions, among other issues. The articles characterized his approach to policy formulation as favoring business over the environment.

In June 2008, Cheney allegedly attempted to block efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to strike a controversial US compromise deal with North Korea over the communist state's nuclear program.

In July 2008, a former Environmental Protection Agency official stated publicly that Cheney's office had pushed significantly for large-scale deletions from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on the health effects of global warming "fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases." In October, when the report appeared with six pages cut from the testimony, The White House stated that the changes were made due to concerns regarding the accuracy of the science. However, according to the former senior adviser on climate change to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, Cheney's office was directly responsible for nearly half of the original testimony being deleted.

On February 14, 2010, in an appearance on ABC's This Week, Cheney reiterated his support of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques for captured terrorist suspects, saying, "I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program." At the time, Cheney still enjoyed strong support from voters in the Republican Party.

Post Vice-Presidency

Political activity

The Washington Post reported in 2008 that Cheney purchased a home in McLean, Virginia (Washington suburbs), which he was to tear down for a replacement structure. He also maintains homes in Wyoming and on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Said to be writing a book, his memoirs are likely to be published in spring 2011. The Washington Post reported that the book will charge that in his second term George W. Bush ignored Cheney's advice and, in a word, went "soft". According to the article, Cheney "felt Bush was moving away from him." Cheney said Bush was "shackled by public reaction and the criticism he took." The article characterized the Cheney doctrine as "cast iron strength at all times—never apologize, never explain" while Bush moved towards a conciliatory approach. Personal factors also contributed to the growing distance between the two men. Cheney was dismayed when Mr. Bush forced his old friend and mentor Donald Rumsfeld out of the Pentagon in 2006. Cheney reportedly further accused Bush of abandoning Lewis "Scooter" Libby, likening his action to "leaving a soldier on the battlefield".

Cheney will be subject of an HBO television mini-series based on Barton Gellman's 2008 book Angler and the 2006 documentary "The Dark Side"^video, produced by the Public Broadcasting System.

Cheney maintained a visible public profile after leaving office, being especially critical of Obama administration policies on national security. In May 2009, Cheney spoke of his support for same-sex marriage, becoming one of the most prominent Republican politicians to do so. Speaking to the National Press Club, Cheney stated: "People ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish. I do believe, historically, the way marriage has been regulated is at a state level. It's always been a state issue, and I think that's the way it ought to be handled today."

Although, by custom, a former Vice President receives unofficial six month protection from the United States Secret Service, President Obama reportedly extended the protection period for Cheney.

On July 11, 2009 CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told the Senate and House intelligence committees that the CIA withheld information about a secret counter-terrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from Dick Cheney. Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the CIA interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counter-terrorism center at the CIA shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year. Wall Street Journal reported, citing former intelligence officials familiar with the matter, that the program was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives.

Criticism of President Obama

Cheney has publicly criticized President Obama since the 2008 presidential election. On December 29, 2009, four days after the attempted bombing of an international passenger flight from Netherlands to United States, Cheney criticized Obama: "[We] are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe. [...] Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war? It doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn't fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency—social transformation—the restructuring of American society." In response, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on the official White House blog the following day, "[I]t is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers. Unfortunately too many are engaged in the typical Washington game of pointing fingers and making political hay, instead of working together to find solutions to make our country safer."

During a February 14, 2010 appearance on ABC's This Week, Cheney reiterated his criticism of the Obama administration's policies for handling suspected terrorists, criticizing the "mindset" of treating "terror attacks against the United States as criminal acts as opposed to acts of war".

In a May 2, 2011, interview with ABC News, Cheney praised the Obama administration for the operation that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Memoir

In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir is a memoir written by former Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney. The book was released on August 30, 2011 and outlines Cheney's version of 9/11, the War on Terrorism, the 2001 War in Afghanistan, the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, enhanced interrogation techniques and other events.

Health problems

Cheney's long histories of cardiovascular disease and periodic need for urgent health care raised questions of whether he was medically fit to serve in public office. Once a heavy smoker, Cheney sustained the first of five heart attacks in 1978, at age 37. Subsequent attacks in 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2010 have resulted in moderate contractile dysfunction of his left ventricle. He underwent four-vessel coronary artery bypass grafting in 1988, coronary artery stenting in November 2000, urgent coronary balloon angioplasty in March 2001, and the implantation of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator in June, 2001.

On September 24, 2005, Cheney underwent a six-hour endo-vascular procedure to repair popliteal artery aneurysms bilaterally, a catheter treatment technique used in the artery behind each knee. Cheney was hospitalized for tests after experiencing shortness of breath five months later. In late April 2006, an ultrasound revealed that the clot was smaller. CBS News reported that during the morning of November 26, 2007, Cheney was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and underwent treatment that afternoon.

On July 12, 2008, Cheney underwent a cardiological exam; doctors reported that his heartbeat was normal for a 67-year-old man with a history of heart problems. As part of his annual checkup, he was administered an electrocardiogram and radiological imaging of the stents placed in the arteries behind his knees in 2005. Doctors said that Cheney had not experienced any recurrence of atrial fibrillation and that his special pacemaker had neither detected nor treated any arrhythmia. On October 15, 2008, Cheney returned to the hospital briefly to treat a minor irregularity.

On January 19, 2009, Cheney strained his back "while moving boxes into his new house". As a consequence, he was in a wheelchair for two days, including his attendance at the 2009 United States presidential inauguration.

On February 22, 2010, Cheney was admitted to George Washington University Hospital after experiencing chest pains. A spokesperson later said Cheney had experienced a mild heart attack after doctors had run tests. On June 25, 2010, Cheney was admitted to George Washington University Hospital after reporting discomfort.

In early July 2010, Cheney was outfitted with a left-ventricular assist device (LVAD) at Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute to compensate for worsening congestive heart failure. The device pumps blood continuously through his body. He was released from Inova on August 9, 2010, and will have to decide whether to seek a full heart transplant. This pump is centrifugal and as a result he is alive without a pulse.

Public perception

In the beginning of the Bush administration, Cheney's public opinion polls were more favorable than unfavorable. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, both Bush's and Cheney's approval ratings rose, with Cheney reaching 68 percent and the president with 90 percent. The polling numbers for both men declined after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, however. Cheney's Gallup poll figures are consistent with those from other polls:

April 2001 – 63% approval, 21% disapproval

January 2002 – 68% approval, 18% disapproval

January 2004 – 56% approval, 36% disapproval

January 2005 – 50% approval, 40% disapproval

January 2006 – 41% approval, 46% disapproval

July 2007 – 30% approval, 60% disapproval

March 2009 – 30% approval, 63% disapproval

In April 2007, Cheney was awarded an honorary doctorate of public service by Brigham Young University, where he delivered the commencement address. His selection as commencement speaker was controversial. The college board of trustees issued a statement explaining that the invitation should be viewed "as one extended to someone holding the high office of vice president of the United States rather than to a partisan political figure". BYU permitted a protest to occur so long as it did not "make personal attacks against Cheney, attack (the) BYU administration, the church or the First Presidency".

Cheney has often been compared to Darth Vader, a characterization originated by his critics but later adopted humorously by Cheney himself as well as members of his family and staff.

Personal life

Cheney is a member of the United Methodist Church and was "the first Methodist Vice President to serve under a Methodist president."

His wife, Lynne Cheney, was Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1996. She is now a public speaker, author, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The couple have two children, Elizabeth and Mary, and six grandchildren. Elizabeth, his elder daughter, is married to Philip J. Perry, former General Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security. Mary Cheney, a former employee of the Colorado Rockies baseball team and Coors Brewing Company, a campaign aide to the Bush re-election campaign, and an open lesbian, currently lives in Great Falls, Virginia with her longtime partner Heather Poe.

Hunting incident

On February 11, 2006, Cheney accidentally shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, in the face, neck, and upper torso with birdshot pellets when he turned to shoot a quail while hunting on a southern Texas ranch.

Whittington suffered a mild heart attack and atrial fibrillation due to a pellet that embedded in the outer layers of his heart. The Kenedy County Sheriff's office cleared Cheney of any criminal wrongdoing in the matter, and in an interview with Fox News, Cheney accepted full responsibility for the incident. Whittington was discharged from the hospital on February 17, 2006. Later, Whittington stated, "My family and I are deeply sorry for all that vice president Cheney has had to go through this past week."

References

Further reading

;Works by

Professional Military Education: An Asset for Peace and Progress : A Report of the Crisis Study Group on Professional Military Education (Csis Report) 1997. ISBN 0-89206-297-5

Kings of the Hill: How Nine Powerful Men Changed the Course of American History 1996. ISBN 0-8264-0230-5

;Works about

Andrews, Elaine. Dick Cheney: A Life Of Public Service. Millbrook Press, 2001. ISBN 0-7613-2306-6

Gellman, Barton. Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. Penguin Press, 2008. ISBN 9781594201868

Goldstein, Joel K. "Cheney, Vice Presidential Power and the War on Terror," APSA 2009 Toronto Meeting Paper, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1450601

Hayes, Stephen. Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President. HarperCollins, 2007. ISBN 0060723467

Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet. Viking, 2004. ISBN 0-670-03299-9

Nichols, John. Dick: The Man Who is President. New Press, 2004. ISBN 1-56584-840-3

External links

US Department of State from the Internet Archive

The New York Times — Dick Cheney archives

Vice Presidential Debate, October 5, 2004: Transcript text, 1, 2004&endDate;=&s; Audio and Video (RealPlayer or MPG format)

{{U.S. Cabinet Official box | before= Donald Rumsfeld | after= Hamilton Jordan | years= 1975–1977 | president= Gerald Ford | office= White House Chief of Staff}} {{U.S. Secretary box |before=Frank C. Carlucci |after=Les Aspin |years=1989–1993 |president= George H. W. Bush |department= Secretary of Defense}}

Category:1941 births Category:American anti-communists Category:American chief executives Category:American Enterprise Institute Category:American Methodists Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:American people of French descent Category:Attempted assassination survivors Category:Cheney family Category:Ford Administration personnel Category:United States congressional aides Category:Living people Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Wyoming Category:People from Casper, Wyoming Category:People from Jackson, Wyoming Category:People from Lincoln, Nebraska Category:People of Huguenot descent Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Republican Party Vice Presidents of the United States Category:United Methodists Category:United States Secretaries of Defense Category:United States vice-presidential candidates, 2000 Category:United States vice-presidential candidates, 2004 Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Category:University of Wyoming alumni Category:White House Chiefs of Staff Category:Wyoming Republicans

ar:ديك تشيني frp:Dick Cheney az:Dik Çeyni bcl:Dick Cheney bg:Дик Чейни ca:Dick Cheney cs:Dick Cheney da:Dick Cheney pdc:Dick Cheney de:Dick Cheney et:Dick Cheney el:Ντικ Τσένεϋ es:Dick Cheney eo:Dick Cheney eu:Dick Cheney fa:دیک چینی fr:Dick Cheney ga:Dick Cheney gl:Dick Cheney ko:딕 체니 hi:डिक चेनी hr:Dick Cheney id:Dick Cheney is:Dick Cheney it:Dick Cheney he:דיק צ'ייני ka:რიჩარდ ჩეინი la:Ricardus Cheney lv:Diks Čeinijs lt:Dick Cheney hu:Dick Cheney mr:रिचर्ड चेनी nl:Dick Cheney ja:ディック・チェイニー no:Dick Cheney pl:Dick Cheney pt:Richard Cheney ro:Dick Cheney ru:Чейни, Ричард sco:Dick Cheney simple:Dick Cheney sk:Dick Cheney sl:Dick Cheney sr:Дик Чејни sh:Dick Cheney fi:Dick Cheney sv:Dick Cheney ta:டிக் சேனி tt:Дик Чейни th:ดิก ชีนีย์ tr:Dick Cheney uk:Дік Чейні ur:ڈک چینی vi:Dick Cheney war:Dick Cheney yi:דיק טשעיני yo:Dick Cheney zh:迪克·切尼

Name	Barack Obama
Alt	A portrait shot of Barack Obama, looking straight ahead. He has short black hair, and is wearing a dark navy blazer with a blue striped tie over a light blue collared shirt. In the background are two flags hanging from separate flagpoles: the American flag, and the flag of the Executive Office of the President.
Office	44th President of the United States
Vicepresident	Joe Biden
Term start	January 20, 2009
Predecessor	George W. Bush
Jr/sr2	United States Senate
State2	Illinois
Term start2	January 3, 2005
Term end2	November 16, 2008
Predecessor2	Peter Fitzgerald
Successor2	Roland Burris
Office3	Member of the Illinois Senate from the 13th District
Term start3	January 8, 1997
Term end3	November 4, 2004
Predecessor3	Alice Palmer
Successor3	Kwame Raoul
Birth name	Barack Hussein Obama II
Birth date	August 04, 1961
Birth place	Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.
Party	Democratic
Spouse	Michelle Robinson (1992–present)
Children	Malia (b.1998) Sasha (b.2001)
Residence	White House (Official)Chicago, Illinois (Private)
Alma mater	Occidental CollegeColumbia University (B.A.)Harvard Law School (J.D.)
Profession	Community organizerLawyerConstitutional law professorAuthor
Religion	Christianity
Signature	Barack Obama signature.svg
Signature alt	Barack Obama
Website	The White HouseBarack Obama@BarackObama - TwitterBarack Obama - FacebookBarack Obama - Google+
Footnotes	}}

Barack Hussein Obama II (; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. In October 2009, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

President Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 and the Budget Control Act of 2011. In foreign policy, he ended the war in Iraq, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered enforcement of the UN-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. In April 2011, Obama declared his intention to seek re-election in the 2012 presidential election.

Early life and career

Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (now called Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children) in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is the first President to have been born in Hawaii. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas and was of English and Irish descent. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a Luo from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship. The couple married on February 2, 1961, separated when Obama Sr. went to Harvard University on scholarship, and divorced in 1964. Obama Sr. remarried and returned to Kenya, visiting Barack in Hawaii only once, in 1971. He died in an automobile accident in 1982.

After her divorce, Dunham married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii. When Suharto, a military leader in Soetoro's home country, came to power in 1967, all Indonesian students studying abroad were recalled, and the family moved to the Menteng neighborhood of Jakarta. From ages six to ten, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, including Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School. Because of his childhood background, today Obama is quite popular in Indonesia.

In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, and with the aid of a scholarship he attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, from the fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. She finally returned to Hawaii in 1994 and lived there for one year, before dying of ovarian cancer.

Of his early childhood, Obama recalled, "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind." He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. Reflecting later on his formative years in Honolulu, Obama wrote: "The opportunity that Hawaii offered—to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect—became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear." Obama has also written and talked about using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind." At the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency, Obama identified his high-school drug use as a great moral failure.

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College. In February 1981, he made his first public speech, calling for Occidental's disinvestment from South Africa due to its policy of apartheid. In mid-1981, Obama traveled to Indonesia to visit his mother and sister Maya, and visited the families of college friends in Pakistan and India for three weeks.

Later in 1981, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation, then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Chicago community organizer and Harvard Law School

Two years after graduating, Obama was hired in Chicago as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988. During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen. He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In mid-1988, he traveled for the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya, where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time. He returned in August 2006 for a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya.

In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, and president of the journal in his second year. During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago. Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations, which evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.

University of Chicago Law School and civil rights attorney

In 1991, Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book. He then served as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years—as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004—teaching constitutional law.

From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois's Project Vote, a voter registration drive with ten staffers and seven hundred volunteer registrars; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, and led to Crain's Chicago Business naming Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be. In 1993 he joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 13-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.

From 1994 to 2002, Obama served on the boards of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project; and of the Joyce Foundation. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures.

Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the general election, and was reelected again in 2002. In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.

In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority. He sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained, and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations. During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms. Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate.

U.S. Senate campaign

In May 2002, Obama commissioned a poll to assess his prospects in a 2004 U.S. Senate race; he created a campaign committee, began raising funds and lined up political media consultant David Axelrod by August 2002, and formally announced his candidacy in January 2003.

Obama was an early opponent of the George W. Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq. On October 2, 2002, the day President Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War, Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally, and spoke out against the war. He addressed another anti-war rally in March 2003 and told the crowd that "it's not too late" to stop the war. Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun to not participate in the election resulted in wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates. In the March 2004 primary election, Obama won in an unexpected landslide—which overnight made him a rising star within the national Democratic Party, started speculation about a presidential future, and led to the reissue of his memoir, Dreams from My Father.

In July 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, and it was seen by 9.1 million viewers. His speech was well received and elevated his status within the Democratic Party.

Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004. Six weeks later, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination to replace Ryan. In the November 2004 general election, Obama won with 70% of the vote.

U.S. Senator: 2005–2008

Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 3, 2005, becoming the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. CQ Weekly characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007. Obama announced on November 13, 2008, that he would resign his Senate seat on November 16, 2008, before the start of the lame-duck session, to focus on his transition period for the presidency.

Legislation

Obama cosponsored the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. He introduced two initiatives bearing his name: Lugar–Obama, which expanded the Nunn–Lugar cooperative threat reduction concept to conventional weapons; and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which authorized the establishment of USAspending.gov, a web search engine on federal spending. On June 3, 2008, Senator Obama—along with Senators Tom Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain—introduced follow-up legislation: Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008.

Obama sponsored legislation that would have required nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks, but the bill failed to pass in the full Senate after being heavily modified in committee. Regarding tort reform, Obama voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which grants immunity from civil liability to telecommunications companies complicit with NSA warrantless wiretapping operations.

In December 2006, President Bush signed into law the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, marking the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor. In January 2007, Obama and Senator Feingold introduced a corporate jet provision to the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which was signed into law in September 2007. Obama also introduced Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections, and the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007, neither of which has been signed into law.

Later in 2007, Obama sponsored an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act adding safeguards for personality-disorder military discharges. This amendment passed the full Senate in the spring of 2008. He sponsored the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act supporting divestment of state pension funds from Iran's oil and gas industry, which has not passed committee; and co-sponsored legislation to reduce risks of nuclear terrorism. Obama also sponsored a Senate amendment to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing one year of job protection for family members caring for soldiers with combat-related injuries.

Committees

Obama held assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veterans' Affairs through December 2006. In January 2007, he left the Environment and Public Works committee and took additional assignments with Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He also became Chairman of the Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. He met with Mahmoud Abbas before Abbas became President of the Palestinian Authority, and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi condemning corruption within the Kenyan government.

Presidential campaigns

2008 presidential campaign

On February 10, 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. The choice of the announcement site was viewed as symbolic because it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic "House Divided" speech in 1858. Obama emphasized the issues of rapidly ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care, in a campaign that projected themes of "hope" and "change".

A large number of candidates entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries. The field narrowed to a duel between Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton after early contests, with the race remaining close throughout the primary process but with Obama gaining a steady lead in pledged delegates due to better long-range planning, superior fundraising, dominant organizing in caucus states, and better exploitation of delegate allocation rules. On June 7, 2008, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama.

On August 23, Obama announced his selection of Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate. Biden was selected from a field speculated to include former Indiana Governor and Senator Evan Bayh and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Hillary Clinton called for her delegates and supporters to endorse Obama, and she and Bill Clinton gave convention speeches in support of Obama. Obama delivered his acceptance speech, not at the convention center where the Democratic National Convention was held, but at Invesco Field at Mile High to a crowd of over 75,000 and presented his policy goals; the speech was viewed by over 38 million people worldwide.

During both the primary process and the general election, Obama's campaign set numerous fundraising records, particularly in the quantity of small donations. On June 19, 2008, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976.

McCain was nominated as the Republican candidate and the two engaged in three presidential debates in September and October 2008. On November 4, Obama won the presidency with 365 electoral votes to 173 received by McCain. Obama won 52.9% of the popular vote to McCain's 45.7%. He became the first African American to be elected president. Obama delivered his victory speech before hundreds of thousands of supporters in Chicago's Grant Park.

2012 presidential campaign

On April 4, 2011, Obama announced his re-election campaign for 2012 in a video titled "It Begins with Us" that he posted on his website and filed election papers with the Federal Election Commission.

Presidency

First days

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President, and Joe Biden as Vice President, took place on January 20, 2009. In his first few days in office Obama issued executive orders and presidential memoranda directing the U.S. military to develop plans to withdraw troops from Iraq. He ordered the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp "as soon as practicable and no later than" January 2010, but during his first two years in office he has been unable to persuade Congress to appropriate funds required to accomplish the shutdown. Obama reduced the secrecy given to presidential records and changed procedures to promote disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. He also reversed George W. Bush's ban on federal funding to foreign establishments that allow abortions.

Domestic policy

The first bill signed into law by Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, relaxing the statute of limitations for equal-pay lawsuits. Five days later, he signed the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover an additional 4 million children currently uninsured.

In March 2009, Obama reversed a Bush-era policy which had limited funding of embryonic stem cell research. Obama stated that he believed "sound science and moral values ... are not inconsistent" and pledged to develop "strict guidelines" on the research.

Obama appointed two women to serve on the Supreme Court in the first two years of his Presidency. Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by Obama on May 26, 2009, to replace retiring Associate Justice David Souter, was confirmed on August 6, 2009, becoming the first Hispanic to be a Supreme Court Justice. Elena Kagan, nominated by Obama on May 10, 2010, to replace retiring Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, was confirmed on August 5, 2010, bringing the number of women sitting simultaneously on the Court to three, for the first time in American history.

On September 30, 2009, the Obama administration proposed new regulations on power plants, factories and oil refineries in an attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to curb global warming.

On October 8, 2009, Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a measure that expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

On March 30, 2010, Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, a reconciliation bill which ends the process of the federal government giving subsidies to private banks to give out federally insured loans, increases the Pell Grant scholarship award, and makes changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

In a major space policy speech in April 2010, Obama announced a planned change in direction at NASA, the U.S. space agency. He ended plans for a return of human spaceflight to the moon and ended development of the Ares I rocket, Ares V rocket and Constellation program. He is focusing funding (which is expected to rise modestly) on Earth science projects and a new rocket type, as well as research and development for an eventual manned mission to Mars. Missions to the International Space Station are expected to continue until 2020.

On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, a bill that provides for repeal of the Don't ask, don't tell policy of 1993 that has prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces. Repealing "Don't ask, don't tell" had been a key campaign promise that Obama had made during the 2008 presidential campaign.

On January 25, 2011, in his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Obama focused strongly on the themes of education and innovation, stressing the importance of innovation economics in working to make the United States more competitive globally. Among other plans and goals, Obama spoke of enacting a five-year freeze in domestic spending, eliminating tax breaks for oil companies and tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, banning congressional earmarks, and reducing healthcare costs. Looking to the future, Obama promised that by 2015, the United States would have 1 million electric vehicles on the road and by 2035, clean-energy sources would be providing 80 percent of U.S. electricity.

Economic policy

On February 17, 2009, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a $787 billion economic stimulus package aimed at helping the economy recover from the deepening worldwide recession. The act includes increased federal spending for health care, infrastructure, education, various tax breaks and incentives, and direct assistance to individuals, which is being distributed over the course of several years.

thumb|President Barack Obama signs the ARRA into law on February 17, 2009 in Denver, Colorado. [[Vice President of the United States|Vice President Joe Biden stands behind him.]] In March, Obama's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, took further steps to manage the financial crisis, including introducing the Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets, which contains provisions for buying up to $2 trillion in depreciated real estate assets. Obama intervened in the troubled automotive industry in March 2009, renewing loans for General Motors and Chrysler to continue operations while reorganizing. Over the following months the White House set terms for both firms' bankruptcies, including the sale of Chrysler to Italian automaker Fiat and a reorganization of GM giving the U.S. government a temporary 60% equity stake in the company, with the Canadian government shouldering a 12% stake. In June 2009, dissatisfied with the pace of economic stimulus, Obama called on his cabinet to accelerate the investment. He signed into law the Car Allowance Rebate System, known colloquially as "Cash for Clunkers", that temporarily boosted the economy.

Although spending and loan guarantees from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department authorized by the Bush and Obama administrations totaled about $11.5 trillion, only $3 trillion had actually been spent by the end of November 2009. However, Obama and the Congressional Budget Office predict that the 2010 budget deficit will be $1.5 trillion or 10.6% of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) compared to the 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion or 9.9% of GDP. For 2011, the administration predicted the deficit will slightly shrink to $1.34 trillion, while the 10-year deficit will increase to $8.53 trillion or 80% of GDP. The most recent increase in the U.S. debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion was signed into law on February 12, 2010. On August 2, 2011, after a lengthy congressional debate over whether to raise the nation's debt limit, Obama signed the bipartisan Budget Control Act of 2011. The legislation enforces limits on discretionary spending until 2021, establishes a procedure to increase the debt limit, creates a Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to propose further deficit reduction with a stated goal of achieving at least $1.5 trillion in budgetary savings over 10 years, and establishes automatic procedures for reducing spending by as much as $1.2 trillion if legislation originating with the new joint select committee does not achieve such savings. By passing the legislation, Congress was able to prevent an unprecedented U.S. government default on its obligations. The unemployment rate rose in 2009, reaching a peak in October at 10.1% and averaging 10.0% in the fourth quarter. Following a decrease to 9.7% in the first quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate fell to 9.6% in the second quarter, where it remained for the rest of the year. Between February and December 2010, employment rose by 0.8%, which was less than the average of 1.9% experienced during comparable periods in the past four employment recoveries. GDP growth returned in the third quarter of 2009, expanding at a 1.6% pace, followed by a 5.0% increase in the fourth quarter. Growth continued in 2010, posting an increase of 3.7% in the first quarter, with lesser gains throughout the rest of the year. In July 2010, the Federal Reserve expressed that although economic activity continued to increase, its pace had slowed and its Chairman, Ben Bernanke, stated that the economic outlook was "unusually uncertain." Overall, the economy expanded at a rate of 2.9% in 2010.

The Congressional Budget Office and a broad range of economists credit Obama's stimulus plan for economic growth. The CBO released a report stating that the stimulus bill increased employment by 1–2.1 million, while conceding that "It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package." Although an April 2010 survey of members of the National Association for Business Economics showed an increase in job creation (over a similar January survey) for the first time in two years, 73% of the 68 respondents believed that the stimulus bill has had no impact on employment.

Within a month of the 2010 midterm elections, Obama announced a compromise deal with the Congressional Republican leadership that included a temporary, two-year extension of the 2001 and 2003 income tax rates, a one-year payroll tax reduction, continuation of unemployment benefits, and a new rate and exemption amount for estate taxes. The compromise overcame opposition from some in both parties, and the resulting $858 billion Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 passed with bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress before Obama signed it on December 17, 2010.

Health care reform

Obama called for Congress to pass legislation reforming health care in the United States, a key campaign promise and a top legislative goal. He proposed an expansion of health insurance coverage to cover the uninsured, to cap premium increases, and to allow people to retain their coverage when they leave or change jobs. His proposal was to spend $900 billion over 10 years and include a government insurance plan, also known as the public option, to compete with the corporate insurance sector as a main component to lowering costs and improving quality of health care. It would also make it illegal for insurers to drop sick people or deny them coverage for pre-existing conditions, and require every American carry health coverage. The plan also includes medical spending cuts and taxes on insurance companies that offer expensive plans.

On July 14, 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,017-page plan for overhauling the U.S. health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of 2009. After much public debate during the Congressional summer recess of 2009, Obama delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9 where he addressed concerns over his administration's proposals. In March 2009, Obama lifted a ban on stem cell research.

On November 7, 2009, a health care bill featuring the public option was passed in the House. On December 24, 2009, the Senate passed its own bill—without a public option—on a party-line vote of 60–39. On March 21, 2010, the health care bill passed by the Senate in December was passed in the House by a vote of 219 to 212. Obama signed the bill into law on March 23, 2010.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill

On April 20, 2010, an explosion destroyed an offshore drilling rig at the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, causing a major sustained oil leak. The well's operator, BP, initiated a containment and cleanup plan, and began drilling two relief wells intended to stop the flow. Obama visited the Gulf on May 2 among visits by members of his cabinet, and again on May 28 and June 4. On May 22 he announced a federal investigation and formed a bipartisan commission to recommend new safety standards, after a review by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and concurrent Congressional hearings. On May 27, he announced a 6-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits and leases, pending regulatory review. As multiple efforts by BP failed, some in the media and public expressed confusion and criticism over various aspects of the incident, and stated a desire for more involvement by Obama and the federal government.

Foreign policy

In February and March, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made separate overseas trips to announce a "new era" in U.S. foreign relations with Russia and Europe, using the terms "break" and "reset" to signal major changes from the policies of the preceding administration. Obama attempted to reach out to Arab leaders by granting his first interview to an Arab cable TV network, Al Arabiya.

On March 19, Obama continued his outreach to the Muslim world, releasing a New Year's video message to the people and government of Iran. This attempt at outreach was rebuffed by the Iranian leadership. In April, Obama gave a speech in Ankara, Turkey, which was well received by many Arab governments. On June 4, 2009, Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University in Egypt calling for "a new beginning" in relations between the Islamic world and the United States and promoting Middle East peace.

On June 26, 2009, in response to the Iranian government's actions towards protesters following Iran's 2009 presidential election, Obama said: "The violence perpetrated against them is outrageous. We see it and we condemn it." On July 7, while in Moscow, he responded to a Vice President Biden comment on a possible Israeli military strike on Iran by saying: "We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East."

On September 24, 2009, Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to preside over a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

In March 2010, Obama took a public stance against plans by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to continue building Jewish housing projects in predominantly Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. During the same month, an agreement was reached with the administration of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with a new pact reducing the number of long-range nuclear weapons in the arsenals of both countries by about one-third. The New START treaty was signed by Obama and Medvedev in April 2010, and was ratified by the U.S. Senate in December 2010.

Iraq War

During his presidential transition, President-elect Obama announced that he would retain the incumbent Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, in his Cabinet.

On February 27, 2009, Obama declared that combat operations would end in Iraq within 18 months. His remarks were made to a group of Marines preparing for deployment to Afghanistan. Obama said, "Let me say this as plainly as I can: By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end." The Obama administration scheduled the withdrawal of combat troops to be completed by August 2010, decreasing troops levels from 142,000 while leaving a transitional force of 35,000 to 50,000 in Iraq until the end of 2011. On August 19, 2010, the last United States combat brigade exited Iraq. The plan is to transition the mission of the remaining troops from combat operations to counter-terrorism and the training, equipping, and advising of Iraqi security forces. On August 31, 2010, Obama announced that the United States combat mission in Iraq was over. On October 21, 2011 President Obama announced that all U.S. troops would leave Iraq in time to be, "home for the holidays."

War in Afghanistan

Early in his presidency, Obama moved to bolster U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan. He announced an increase to U.S. troop levels of 17,000 in February 2009 to "stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan", an area he said had not received the "strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires". He replaced the military commander in Afghanistan, General David D. McKiernan, with former Special Forces commander Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal in May 2009, indicating that McChrystal's Special Forces experience would facilitate the use of counterinsurgency tactics in the war. On December 1, 2009, Obama announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 military personnel to Afghanistan. He also proposed to begin troop withdrawals 18 months from that date. McChrystal was replaced by David Petraeus in June 2010 after McChrystal's staff criticized White House personnel in a magazine article.

Israel

During the initial years of the Obama administration, the U.S. increased military cooperation with Israel, including a record number of U.S. troops participating in military exercises in the country, increased military aid, and the re-establishment of the U.S.-Israeli Joint Political Military Group and the Defense Policy Advisory Group. It was reported high-ranking defense officials from both countries had been making an unusual number of trips between the two countries, including Ehud Barak. Part of the military aid increase in 2010 was to fund Israel's missile defense shield. Before his retirement in September 2011, Adm. Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made four trips to Israel during his four-year tenure, two of them in 2010. Prior to 2007 no Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had done so for over ten years.

In 2011, Obama's Ambassador to the United Nations vetoed a resolution condemning Israeli settlements, with the U.S. the only nation on the Security Council doing so. Like previous American presidential administrations, Obama supports the two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on the 1967 borders with land swaps.

Libya

In March 2011, as forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi advanced on rebels across Libya, formal calls for a no-fly zone came in from around the world, including Europe, the Arab League, and a resolution passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate. In response to the unanimous passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 on March 17, Gaddafi who had previously vowed to "show no mercy" to the citizens of Benghazi—announced an immediate cessation of military activities, yet reports came in that his forces continued shelling Misrata. The next day, on Obama's orders, the U.S. military took a lead role in air strikes to destroy the Libyan government's air defense capabilities in order to protect civilians and enforce a no-fly-zone, including the use of Tomahawk missiles, B-2 Spirits, and fighter jets. Six days later, on March 25, by unanimous vote of all of its 28 members, NATO took over leadership of the effort, dubbed Operation Unified Protector. Some Representatives questioned whether Obama had the constitutional authority to order military action in addition to questioning its cost, structure and aftermath.

|filename=050111 Osama Bin Laden Death Statement audioonly.ogg |title=President Obama announces the death of Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011. |description= }}

Osama bin Laden

Starting with information received in July 2010, intelligence developed by the CIA over the next several months determined what they believed to be the location of Osama bin Laden in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a suburban area 35 miles from Islamabad. CIA head Leon Panetta reported this intelligence to President Obama in March 2011. Meeting with his national security advisers over the course of the next six weeks, Obama rejected a plan to bomb the compound, and authorized a "surgical raid" to be conducted by United States Navy SEALs. The operation took place on May 1, 2011, resulting in the death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers and computer drives and disks from the compound. Bin Laden's body was identified through DNA testing, and buried at sea several hours later. Within minutes of the President's announcement from Washington, DC, late in the evening on May 1, there were spontaneous celebrations around the country as crowds gathered outside the White House, and at New York City's Ground Zero and Times Square. Reaction to the announcement was positive across party lines, including from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and from many countries around the world.

2010 midterm election

Obama called the November 2, 2010 election, where the Democratic Party lost 63 seats in, and control of, the House of Representatives, "humbling" and a "shellacking". He said that the results came because not enough Americans had felt the effects of the economic recovery.

Cultural and political image

Obama's family history, early life and upbringing, and Ivy League education differ markedly from those of African-American politicians who launched their careers in the 1960s through participation in the civil rights movement. Obama is also not a descendant of American slaves. Expressing puzzlement over questions about whether he is "black enough", Obama told an August 2007 meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists that "we're still locked in this notion that if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong." Obama acknowledged his youthful image in an October 2007 campaign speech, saying: "I wouldn't be here if, time and again, the torch had not been passed to a new generation."

Obama is frequently referred to as an exceptional orator. During his pre-inauguration transition period and continuing into his presidency, Obama has delivered a series of weekly Internet video addresses.

According to the Gallup Organization, Obama began his presidency with a 68% approval rating before gradually declining for the rest of the year, and eventually bottoming out at 41% in August 2010, a trend similar to Ronald Reagan's and Bill Clinton's first years in office. He experienced a small poll bounce shortly after the death of Osama bin Laden, which lasted until around June 2011, when his approval numbers dropped back to where they were prior to the operation. Polls show strong support for Obama in other countries, and before being elected President he has met with prominent foreign figures including then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Italy's Democratic Party leader and then Mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

According to a May 2009 poll conducted by Harris Interactive for France 24 and the International Herald Tribune, Obama was rated as the most popular world leader, as well as the one figure most people would pin their hopes on for pulling the world out of the economic downturn.

Obama won Best Spoken Word Album Grammy Awards for abridged audiobook versions of Dreams from My Father in February 2006 and for The Audacity of Hope in February 2008. His concession speech after the New Hampshire primary was set to music by independent artists as the music video "Yes We Can", which was viewed 10 million times on YouTube in its first month and received a Daytime Emmy Award. In December 2008, Time magazine named Obama as its Person of the Year for his historic candidacy and election, which it described as "the steady march of seemingly impossible accomplishments".

On October 9, 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that Obama had won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". Obama accepted this award in Oslo, Norway on December 10, 2009, with "deep gratitude and great humility." The award drew a mixture of praise and criticism from world leaders and media figures. Obama is the fourth U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the third to become a Nobel laureate while in office.

In a 2010 Siena College poll of 238 presidential scholars, Obama was ranked 15th out of 43, with high ratings for imagination, communication ability and intelligence and a low rating for background (family, education and experience).

Family and personal life

In a 2006 interview, Obama highlighted the diversity of his extended family: "It's like a little mini-United Nations", he said. "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher." Obama has a half-sister with whom he was raised, Maya Soetoro-Ng, the daughter of his mother and her Indonesian second husband and seven half-siblings from his Kenyan father's family – six of them living. Obama's mother was survived by her Kansas-born mother, Madelyn Dunham, until her death on November 2, 2008, two days before his election to the Presidency. Obama also has roots in Ireland; he met with his Irish cousins in Moneygall in May 2011. In Dreams from My Father, Obama ties his mother's family history to possible Native American ancestors and distant relatives of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Obama's great-uncle served in the 89th Division that overran Ohrdruf, the first of the Nazi concentration camps to be liberated by U.S. troops during World War II.

Obama was known as "Barry" in his youth, but asked to be addressed with his given name during his college years. Besides his native English, Obama speaks Indonesian at the conversational level, which he learned during his four childhood years in Jakarta. He plays basketball, a sport he participated in as a member of his high school's varsity team.

Obama is a well known supporter of the Chicago White Sox, and threw out the first pitch at the 2005 ALCS when he was still a senator. In 2009, he threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the all star game while wearing a White Sox jacket. He is also primarily a Chicago Bears fan in the NFL, but in his childhood and adolesence was a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and recently rooted for them ahead of their victory in Super Bowl XLIII 12 days after Obama took office as President.

In June 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson when he was employed as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin. Assigned for three months as Obama's adviser at the firm, Robinson joined him at group social functions, but declined his initial requests to date. They began dating later that summer, became engaged in 1991, and were married on October 3, 1992. The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born on July 4, 1998, followed by a second daughter, Natasha ("Sasha"), on June 10, 2001. The Obama daughters attended the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. When they moved to Washington, D.C., in January 2009, the girls started at the private Sidwell Friends School. The Obamas have a Portuguese Water Dog named Bo, a gift from Senator Ted Kennedy.

Applying the proceeds of a book deal, the family moved in 2005 from a Hyde Park, Chicago condominium to a $1.6 million house in neighboring Kenwood, Chicago. The purchase of an adjacent lot and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer, campaign donor and friend Tony Rezko attracted media attention because of Rezko's subsequent indictment and conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama.

In December 2007, Money magazine estimated the Obama family's net worth at $1.3 million. Their 2009 tax return showed a household income of $5.5 million—up from about $4.2 million in 2007 and $1.6 million in 2005—mostly from sales of his books.

Obama tried to quit smoking several times, sometimes using nicotine replacement therapy, and, in early 2010, Michelle Obama said that he had successfully quit smoking.

Religious views

Obama is a Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life. He wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he "was not raised in a religious household". He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents (whom Obama has specified elsewhere as "non-practicing Methodists and Baptists"), to be detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known". He described his father as "raised a Muslim", but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful". Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change".

In an interview with the evangelical periodical Christianity Today, Obama stated: "I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life."

On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying "I'm a Christian by choice. My family didn't—frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me."

Obama was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ, a black liberation church, in 1988, and was an active member there for two decades. Obama resigned from Trinity during the Presidential campaign after controversial statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright became public. After a prolonged effort to find a church to attend regularly in Washington, Obama announced in June 2009 that his primary place of worship would be the Evergreen Chapel at Camp David.

Notes

}}

References

Further reading

Curry, Jessica. "Barack Obama: Under the Lights", Chicago Life, Fall 2004. Retrieved on January 14, 2008.

Graff, Garrett. "The Legend of Barack Obama", Washingtonian, November 1, 2006. Retrieved on January 14, 2008.

Koltun, Dave (2005) "The 2004 Illinois Senate Race: Obama Wins Open Seat and Becomes National Political "Star"" in "The Road to Congress 2004" Editors: Sunil Ahuja (Youngstown State University) and Robert Dewhirst (Truman State University), Nova Science Publishers, Hauppauge, New York, Binding: Hardcover Pub. Date: 2005, ISBN 1-59454-360-7

Lizza, Ryan. "Above the Fray", GQ, September 2007. Retrieved on October 27, 2010.

MacFarquhar, Larissa. "The Conciliator: Where is Barack Obama Coming From?", New Yorker, May 7, 2007. Retrieved on January 14, 2008.

McClelland, Edward, Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President, Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

Zutter, Hank De. "What Makes Obama Run?", Chicago Reader, December 8, 1995. Retrieved on January 14, 2008.

External links

;Official

President Barack Obama White House official website

* Full transcript and video of President Obama's inaugural address (from whitehouse.gov)

BarackObama.com (official re-election campaign website)

;Other

Collected news and commentary at Chicago Tribune

Category:1961 births Category:African American academics Category:African American lawyers Category:African American memoirists Category:African American United States presidential candidates Category:African American United States Senators Category:American Christians Category:American civil rights lawyers Category:American legal scholars Category:American Nobel laureates Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of Kenyan descent Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:American political writers Category:Audio book narrators Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Community organizers Category:Current national leaders Category:Democratic Party Presidents of the United States Category:Democratic Party United States Senators Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Illinois Democrats Category:Illinois lawyers Category:Illinois State Senators Category:Living people Category:Luo people Category:Nobel Peace Prize laureates Barack Category:Occidental College alumni Category:People associated with renewable energy Category:People from Honolulu, Hawaii Category:Politicians from Chicago, Illinois Category:Presidents of the United Nations Security Council Category:Presidents of the United States Category:Punahou School alumni Category:United Church of Christ members Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:United States presidential candidates, 2012 Category:United States Senators from Illinois Category:University of Chicago Law School faculty Category:Writers from Chicago, Illinois Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles

af:Barack Obama als:Barack Obama am:ባራክ ኦባማ ang:Barack Obama ab:Барақ Обама ar:باراك أوباما an:Barack Obama arc:ܒܪܐܩ ܐܘܒܐܡܐ ast:Barack Obama gn:Barack Obama ay:Barack Obama az:Barak Obama bm:Barack Obama bn:বারাক ওবামা bjn:Barack Obama zh-min-nan:Barack Obama ba:Барак Обама be:Барак Абама be-x-old:Барак Абама bh:बराक ओबामा bcl:Barack Obama bi:Barak Obama bg:Барак Обама bar:Barack Obama bo:བ་རག་ཨོ་པྰ་མ། bs:Barack Obama br:Barack Obama ca:Barack Hussein Obama cv:Барак Обама ceb:Barack Obama cs:Barack Obama cbk-zam:Barack Obama co:Barack Obama cy:Barack Obama da:Barack Obama pdc:Barack Obama de:Barack Obama dv:ބަރަކް އޮބާމާ nv:Hastiin alą́ąjįʼ dahsidáhígíí Barack Obama dsb:Barack Obama et:Barack Obama el:Μπαράκ Ομπάμα eml:Barack Obama myv:Обамань Барак es:Barack Obama eo:Barack Obama ext:Barack Obama eu:Barack Obama fa:باراک اوباما fo:Barack Obama fr:Barack Obama fy:Barack Obama fur:Barack Obama ga:Barack Obama gv:Barack Obama gd:Barack Obama gl:Barack Obama gan:奧巴馬 hak:Barack Obama ko:버락 오바마 ha:Barack Obama haw:Barack Obama hy:Բարաք Օբամա hi:बराक ओबामा hsb:Barack Obama hr:Barack Obama io:Barack Obama ilo:Barack Obama id:Barack Obama ia:Barack Obama ie:Barack Obama os:Обама, Барак is:Barack Obama it:Barack Obama he:ברק אובמה jv:Barack Obama kl:Barack Obama kn:ಬರಾಕ್ ಒಬಾಮ pam:Barack Obama ka:ბარაკ ობამა kk:Барак Обама kw:Barack Obama rw:Barack Obama sw:Barack Obama ht:Barack Obama ku:Barack Obama ky:Барак Хусеин Обама lad:Barack Obama lo:ບາຣັກ ໂອບາມາ ltg:Baraks Obama la:Baracus Obama lv:Baraks Obama lb:Barack Obama lt:Barack Obama li:Barack Obama ln:Barack Obama jbo:byRAK.obamas lmo:Barack Obama hu:Barack Obama mk:Барак Обама mg:Barack Obama ml:ബറാക്ക് ഒബാമ mt:Barack Obama mi:Barack Obama mr:बराक ओबामा arz:باراك اوباما mzn:باراک اوباما ms:Barack Obama mn:Барак Обама my:ဘာရတ်အိုဘားမား nah:Barack Obama na:Barack Obama nl:Barack Obama nds-nl:Barack Obama ne:बाराक ओबामा ja:バラク・オバマ nap:Barack Obama no:Barack Obama nn:Barack Obama nrm:Barack Obama nov:Barack Obama oc:Barack Obama mhr:Обама, Барак uz:Barack Obama pa:ਬਰਾਕ ਓਬਾਮਾ pag:Barack Obama pnb:بارک اوبامہ pap:Barack Obama ps:باراک حسين اوباما km:បារ៉ាក់ អូបាម៉ា pms:Barack Obama tpi:Barack Obama nds:Barack Obama pl:Barack Obama pt:Barack Obama crh:Barak Obama ksh:Barack Obama ro:Barack Obama rm:Barack Obama qu:Barack Obama ru:Обама, Барак sah:Барак Обама se:Barack Obama sc:Barack Obama sco:Barack Obama nso:Barack Obama sq:Barack Obama scn:Barack Obama si:බරාක් ඔබාමා simple:Barack Obama sk:Barack Obama sl:Barack Obama szl:Barack Obama so:Barack Obama ckb:باراک ئۆباما srn:Barack Obama sr:Барак Обама sh:Barack Obama su:Barack Obama fi:Barack Obama sv:Barack Obama tl:Barack Obama ta:பராக் ஒபாமா roa-tara:Barack Obama tt:Baraq Husseyın Obama II te:బరాక్ ఒబామా tet:Barack Obama th:บารัก โอบามา tg:Барак Ҳусейн Обама chr:ᏆᎳᎩ ᎣᏆᎹ tr:Barack Obama tk:Barak Obama uk:Барак Обама ur:بارک اوبامہ ug:باراك ئوباما vec:Barack Obama vi:Barack Obama wa:Barack Obama vls:Barack Obama war:Barack Obama wo:Barack Obama wuu:巴拉克·奥巴马 yi:באראק אבאמא yo:Barack Obama zh-yue:奧巴馬 diq:Barack Obama zea:Barack Obama bat-smg:Barack Obama zh:贝拉克·奥巴马