- Thank you for watching "Dick Cheney: A Heartbeat Away", which first aired on Wyoming PBS on November 13th, 2015.

On behalf of myself and the entire team, I wanna express our profound sympathies on the passing of Vice President Cheney on November 3rd.

Wyoming PBS is dedicated to providing dignified recognition of his legacy and of this national moment.

I'm joined by Geoff O'Gara, the producer of the documentary you just watched.

Geoff, welcome.

Tell us about making this documentary.

What inspired it and what were some of the challenges?

- Well, I think, what inspired it was we had one of the most consequential people in politics, or really in American history from this century in Wyoming.

Dick Cheney was a man of enormous consequence, played a major role in three different presidential administrations.

He will go down in the history books in a variety of ways for a variety of things that he did.

We had the great good fortune of him being a resident of Wyoming with the kind of loyalty to Wyoming that probably gave us an opening to do a documentary that we might not otherwise have gotten, if I had approached him from say, Hoboken, New Jersey, I think the answer would've been no.

But coming from Wyoming and coming from Wyoming PBS, Ruby Calvert, of course, was involved with us then.

The family met with us a couple of times, talked to us, and then Vice President Cheney and I met and had lunch a couple of times together as well.

Just trying to feel each other out and see what would the approach be.

I found him from the very beginning to be very frank.

I knew he would be fairly controlled in front of the camera, 'cause that was his reputation.

We'd all seen that.

But I think on a one-on-one level, personally, he was very open.

- [Geoff] And you might even tell that.

story you told me earlier about the, taking the idea taking this back to the Kennedy era How careers were essentially, shaped by things that might be viewed as accidental.

- Sure.

Well, I can't remember who said it now, but the argument goes that when JFK picked LBJ to be his running mate, that opened up the Senate seat, obviously in Texas, and John Tower won that Senate seat.

That in turn, set the situation for me eventually, to become Secretary of Defense, because when the Senate rejected Tower, then I was picked and selected.

And then it obviously, had a huge impact on my career, probably led directly, ultimately, to being vice president.

And my departure from the House was a huge break for Newt Gingrich.

So, the argument goes basically, that when President Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson to be vice president, he created Cheney and Gingrich.

- And didn't ask me a lot of questions about myself, and he probably knew plenty about me.

I think the man knew how to do his research ahead of time and was not very controlling, interestingly enough, not attempting to steer every conversation in the direction he wanted it to go.

He kind of said the only way Al Simpson did when we worked with him, "Just bring it on, Geoff, you know, ask whatever questions you want to ask and I won't answer them or not."

So, we proceeded on that level, and again, I think the introduction, our first meetings together, I'd covered him as a journalist before, but never just had lunch with him in this manner.

We got a good rapport established, I think, and it made it possible to go into those interviews knowing I could ask any question I wanted to.

He could also refuse to answer any question he wanted to, but there were no, you know, no lines in the sand drawn ahead of time.

- I think oftentimes I'm not anti-environmental concerns.

Hell, I was the sponsor in the House of the last Wyoming Wilderness Bill.

I care a lot about those kinds of things.

But I think lots of times the policies that are sometimes pursued in the name of clean air and so forth are a lot more politically motivated or ideology that says all fossil fuels are bad, or that we ought to be out subsidizing the likes of Solandra, which, you know, turned out to be a very bad bet.

Markets work, and we've benefited enormously from that.

And I always begin with a proposition that we ought to start with markets, and if we're gonna have a coherent energy policy and bring in other sources.

The ultimate test is whether or not they can compete with the sources we already have.

I'm not big on providing large subsidies so that we can be less efficient in terms of how we consume energy.

- How do you approach a vice president, former vice president of the United States, about doing his documentary?

This is his story.

- Well, first of all, I don't approach him first, somebody else does, who knows him in a much more personal way than I do.

In fact, I learned later that the reason he was willing to make this documentary was Al Simpson, his good friend, Al Simpson, who we had done a documentary about with a lot of cooperation.

Of course, Al Simpson, you know, he would talk about anything.

He was absolutely fearless in terms of a microphone, but he apparently told Dick Cheney, "You should do this, do this piece of work."

Ruby Calvert made the first approach to the family.

She was then the general manager at Wyoming PBS.

I'm sure that it went through Lynn Cheney, who I think did a little bit of gatekeeping with her husband.

Liz Cheney was also very involved in our early meetings and discussions.

I think in a way she had more questions for me than Dick Cheney did when we were just doing the workup and trying to determine what would we do.

I told him from the very beginning, "We want the whole story.

We want to know how you grew up?

What made you the person you were that ended out in these positions of enormous power?"

And he, again, was very open and frank about that.

- When we first found out about Vice President Cheney's passing, we went through our archives to look through all, we get so much media for these films, Geoff, and so Kyle Nickoloff, who was a member of our team at the time and helped you with this film, looked through all of his archives, and I could not believe how many pictures we got from so many different organizations.

Can you share with us a little bit about all the different organizations?

I know there was National Archives, the family themselves, but to look for all of the media that we had to capture for this film, what kind of hoops do you have to go through?

What's that process?

- Well, there's no shortage of media.

I mean, when you're in national office, your life is documented pretty closely, and a lot of that material will end out at the National Archives.

Some will go to the Library of Congress, but the most important places to go for these things are those archives.

There are usually some materials that you can get from the White House itself.

They keep a certain remainder of things, but my recollection is that we were primarily dependent on those great institutions, the National Archives and the Library of Congress.

The other place though, that we got a lot of valuable material was from the Cheney family.

We needed pictures of, you know, him as a boy.

We needed pictures of the family, the children growing up.

We needed pictures of him running for Congress for the first time and drove around.

This actually brings me to an interesting moment in the making of this documentary.

We told 'em from the beginning, told the family from the beginning, they would not have editorial control, but, of course, they would also, we would edit to correct things that were misspoken or anything like that.

We weren't trying to embarrass anybody, but we were gonna ask our questions.

We were gonna take his answers and put together the documentary as we saw fit.

I think Ruby shared a few early drafts of it with the family.

And there was a point when I was waiting for these family photos to come, they were wonderful, lots of them.

They hadn't come.

And we had a phone call with Liz Cheney and she said, "Well, we're not sure we like the direction this is going.

We're not sure we're gonna send you those photographs."

And I was like, oh my God, here we go.

This is a problem.

What do we do?

And you know, I still had to say, "Well, we're not gonna let you come in and edit the documentary."

Well, Dick Cheney understood that, and we had a conversation, he and Ruby Calvert and myself, and we talked this thing through and Ruby and I said, "We're making a documentary where we have to be able to say we had the final word editorially."

And there was a moment at the very end of the conversation where he just said, "Well, Geoff, I guess it's all a matter of trust," end of conversation.

Now, knowing Dick Cheney, there's a little irony in that.

Of course, it isn't just like, I trust you, Geoff, it's more like, Geoff, it's a matter of trust.

- Yeah.

- And that's right.

- úI take it, you know, that is the way the man was.

Having said that, with that little tone of irony, like, I know what you could do, Geoff.

He did not interfere at all, and we received all the photographs.

- So, he truly respected our need for that independence and editorial oversight.

That's something that public media, we take that very seriously, Geoff.

- Yeah, I think so.

And I think, again, we've seen that, I've seen that with a lot of Wyoming politicians, Al Simpson being the best example, but Dick Cheney as often as he was reticent, not likely to talk a great deal about one thing or another.

When he did speak, you know, he spoke pretty honestly, and he'd go right to whatever truth he had to tell.

And I did feel that was true in the interviews we did, which were extensive.

I mean, there's a lot more material in your archives than made it into the documentary, because we did spend hours with him.

- Yeah.

- You don't want civilians whose sole mission in life is their political and personal political wellbeing leading in those kinds of situations.

You want people, in my opinion, who will take the hits and whatever political heat is involved, because they made the decisions and they can't pass the blame onto the military, or head for the hills themselves.

They've gotta be willing to stand by and support their actions, and they should not make military decisions based on what's good for their political career and reputation.

- Yeah.

Kyle Nickoloff and I had a discussion about that, and he said, "Joe, this could have been a four hour long, four part series, really, because of all the experiences that Vice President Cheney went through, not just when he was in the role of vice president, but from a Wyoming standpoint and our local audience what he did in Wyoming politics as well.

It is an incredible plethora of experiences that he had."

So, how do you take all of those together and mold the story, the beginning to the end?

I mean, that's gotta be such a challenge as a filmmaker to be able to pick out the pieces that are the most important.

- Yeah, as you said earlier, we could have done four hours plus.

We could have done a lot more, partly because again, he was very forthcoming.

He gave us lengthy interviews, covered pretty much every topic we asked.

One or two exceptions, which we can talk about in a little bit, but I'll give you an example.

One of the problems that, you know, we always have in doing documentaries is you need to have it, it needs to be mobile, things need to happen.

You can't just have a talking head, even if it's a very interesting talking head, going nonstop for hours at a time.

So, we were trying to think of how to get the right kind of illustrations for the things he was talking about.

Now, in some cases, like the war in Iraq, you can get footage and we got plenty of it, of the actual undertaking of warfare in the Middle East and pictures of him in action as Vice President and as Secretary of Defense.

But for the early days in Wyoming, you know, his early growth as a politician who had worked in the White House, we'll get to his early life at some other point.

But he'd worked in the White House, he had great experience, but he came back to Wyoming to run for the House of Representatives.

And, you know, the stories were always told about how he just got in a little car, a little Mustang, and drove around the state all by himself.

Well, we wanted to illustrate that.

And I found a friend in Casper happened to have a mustang, a vintage Mustang.

I called the Cheney family up and called the vice president and said, "Look, I got a car, would you like to come over and get in it and like, drive the back roads outside of Casper?"

Well, you know, he got in the car, drove himself, no secret service detail, nothing at all.

Drove to Casper, met us there, got in this Mustang.

We went outside of town on the open road and he got in that car and just started driving and we'd drive alongside, you know, shooting him in the car.

So, again, it says a lot of nice things about Wyoming that he was able to do that, you know, a man with his history in government and the number of enemies that he'd made, but who could come back to Wyoming and who was spirited enough himself to do that for us.

Just, "Yeah, I'm gonna drive over to Casper, Geoff, I'll meet you there," and gets in this whole car and starts driving.

- It's incredible to me to know the legacy of the family.

We don't really talk very much about Lynn's family and where exactly she started and where she's from.

And Casper, I know you mentioned a little bit, but Casper is where the Vincent family is from, and so, it's interesting that you mentioned the Mustang being in Casper, Natrona County, not many people know is a big place for the Cheney family.

- Yeah, well, that's true.

And of course, Dick Cheney began his life in Lincoln, Nebraska.

So, you know, there's some movement around here, but that's sort of the American story, isn't it?

I mean, people come from various places and all walks of life.

Let's not forget that Dick Cheney was a roughneck for a while.

Kind of a hard-drinking roughneck from what we know.

Lynn Vincent may be one of the reasons that he pulled out of that and got his life straightened out and, you know, ended up going to college and graduate school and I think was on his way to a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin when the political life kind of grabbed him and took him away.

But yeah, they had a really interesting life and, you know, both of them were academics.

Of course, Lynn Cheney went on to head the National Endowment for the Humanities for a period of time.

She, I might say was a great interview as well, not just on the subject of her husband, but on her work in the humanities field.

- But when I had my biggest controversy at the Endowment, it was over a set of history standards that I found just entirely too negative.

Presenting a story of the United States that was distorted and made would make our kids think this wasn't an amazing country.

That on that issue, the Senate voted to support my condemnation of these history standards, 99 to zero.

So, it was an academic thing, I think, more than a political thing.

- Really an interesting couple.

And of course, you know, their children as well.

I mean, we got to know the whole family in the process of doing this documentary, including Liz Cheney, who did not yet have a political career of her own.

- That it's such a challenging position to be in, the Vice President, and all the challenges that, that administration went through.

But the support that he had in Wyoming was very strong.

- Yeah, I think that was true.

I mean, Dick Cheney was a man of loyalty.

And I think that goes back to his earlier life in Wyoming.

It extended to his work in Washington.

I mean, there are people like Donald Rumsfeld who just appear again and again in administrations where he worked, close associate Scooter Libby, we all know about Scooter Louis Libby, or Louis Scooter Libby.

So, I guess I would say that is a trait that probably comes out of his upbringing and his life back here.

He, yes, indeed, always returned to Wyoming.

He did keep a place in Washington, outside of Washington, but shoot, we saw him all the time.

I mean, at one point went on a fishing trip with him in Wind River Canyon.

You know, things like that he genuinely loved to do, hunting, fishing, things that he could do in Wyoming and had grown up doing.

He never stopped, never, never quit doing those things.

- I think that for Wyoming PBS it was such an honor.

I came on shortly after that film was completed, and it was such an honor to be able to pledge that film in Wyoming, because I know that, again, Wyoming is very proud to have a former vice president of the United States as one of our own sons.

Was there anything else as you were filming this, Geoff, that was unique, that you must have had those moments where you thought, oh, I really wanna put this into the film, but, you know, PBS we like to keep it right at that hour-long timeframe.

Was there anything else that you would wanna put in?

- Well, there were, you know, we had to explore what I guess you'd call the darker side.

This was not a career that was all, you know, roses and happiness.

When Dick Cheney left office his approval rating nationally was extremely low.

I mean, you know, it was less than 20% as I recall.

So, he definitely did some things that he knew were unpopular and that could be questioned for very good reasons.

I've thought about him a great deal in the years since.

We have not stayed in touch.

We're not friends.

I think we probably respected each other, each in his own way.

But I've watched his reputation and I've read enough about the various things that he was involved in and did the way that he justified some of the things he did.

I would say that to me, not to him, there was an element of tragedy in the way his career played out, because it didn't end well with the war in Iraq.

That was a definitely for the whole nation, a troubling time.

His role in it was not viewed very positively.

And some of the things that he advocated hard for, like what they call the unitary executive, which is to say concentrating power in the executive, I think late in his life, I wouldn't say he regret it, 'cause this was not a man with regrets.

But I would say he probably thought very hard about it, because we have seen presidents since his time in office apply that in ways that I know he didn't agree with and didn't approve of.

So, again, this is not a man who would ever say of himself, "I'm a tragic figure, or I'm a dramatic figure."

He was very kind of straight ahead, had a mission, really high-minded admissions, and he pursued them, lived his life, and I think accepted the consequences of it.

We probably could have explored that.

I would've loved to have him talk about that.

It's almost unfair for me to talk about it now, but again, he was not the type who would.

You would ask him a question about some element of trouble or criticism.

I remember once asking him about the critics who felt maybe a Secretary of Defense should have served in the military, which he didn't.

He got deferments during the Vietnam War.

And his response to me was, "No, Geoff, I don't think people care about that."

That was Dick Cheney.

You know, he knew what he was doing in life.

He pursued the things that mattered to him, the causes that he believed in.

And I think he retired fully satisfied with himself.

We all, I think, can learn from his life and think hard about some of the things he did, and, you know, reflect on what it means for the future of this country.

- I commend you for placing all of those stories together in one hour and a half.

I wanna correct myself, I believe it was an hour and a half long film, not just an hour, but that must have been really tough to do, but you did an amazing job doing it, Geoff.

I'm just very impressed with the film and I know many, many are as well.

- Well, I appreciate it and I guess, I wanna just say Wyoming PBS had the ambition to take on a project like that.

And we had a great team.

Kyle Nickoloff edited like crazy.

We had other members of my team, like Virginia Moore coming over and helping and, you know, it was a team effort.

- Yeah.

- It always is.

- Yeah, it always is.

And you know, we have multiple, we're still doing projects with you now, Geoff, let's talk just a little bit.

I guess we could talk just a little bit about that as well.

What's the project you're working on right now in partnership with Wyoming PBS?

- It's why I'm a little cross-eyed in this interview.

I've been meeting with an editor this morning on the current project, which is looking at the West in 1776.

It's something else to look at what is now Wyoming, and say, "What was going on out there?"

The maps just have this blank space.

So, that's what we're doing.

And it's been a fascinating exercise in history and archeology, because a lot of the evidence is just what's in the ground?

Who was here, what were they doing?

When did the horse arrive, when did the gun arrive, et cetera, et cetera.

That's what we're doing.

And once again, it's, you know, partnering with Wyoming PBS.

I have always said, and you know, it's true, there are so many untold stories out there.

You know, when I spend time now back east, I'm in a place where the stories have been dug and redug and told again and again.

I've never felt that way in Wyoming.

Lots of stories still to tell.

- Well, and that's our mission at Wyoming PBS.

It's all about Wyoming stories for us.

That's our key, our key goal, and our key passion here at the station.

So, is there just a tiny little bit of a tease that you can give us about Wyoming 250 years ago?

Is there something just a little and interesting that you could share from this production?

- I guess I would just say that there was another kind of revolution happening out here, and what it was, was the beginnings of the European and American invasion, if you will.

And I don't mean that in a negative way, I just mean the arrival of this new civilization, really from Europe coming through the American colonies, had just begun to be felt out here.

And I think people don't realize that the civilizations that were here, the various tribes were very much aware of it, even though the Verendrye brothers hadn't yet crossed the big horns.

We didn't yet have even the trappers here, because they were afraid of what they called the snakes, which was the Eastern Shoshone.

But there was so much already going on that was the beginning of that.

It was the impact that comes before the wave breaks that was already happening here in Wyoming.

Also, it was the end of the little ice age, something we don't even think in terms of anymore.

But it was at that point a huge climate change was underway, which meant the grasses were growing really tall, the buffalo, the bison were exploding.

So, there was a kind of a wealth in the land here that, you know, had never been seen before.

So, the people here were thriving, but they were also coping with an enormous amount of change that was oncoming and they were very aware of it.

It's really a fascinating time.

- It sounds fascinating.

I'm so excited to take a look at it and review it and also share it with the state and so Wyoming PBS is on the governor's task force for the semi-quincentennial celebrations next year.

And one of the plans that we have, Geoff, as you know, is an opportunity to share this with as many communities across the state as possible during the 4th of July celebrations next year in 2026.

So, I'm thrilled, I'm excited to be partnering with you on another project, another beautiful project.

I'm sure award-winning, and your talent to be able to tell, particularly, historical documentaries is very profound.

And we appreciate this continued partnership with you.

I'm very excited.

I feel like I'm gonna learn something from this.

I know I will.

- Well, I just appreciate the opportunity to tell these stories.

It's been wonderful.

- Yeah, thank you, Geoff.

Thank you so much.

So, you'll be coming out to Wyoming, I'm sure after the, maybe the snow starts to pull back a little bit.

Are you completely done with video and videography for this project?

- I was just there two weeks ago actually.

And we did what I think is the last of our primary shooting.

We're in the midst of an assembly edit right now, which for anybody doesn't know, that's the first step where you lay it all out.

I always think, you know, save a little powder for one more shot that we may need to come out and find some gap in the story that we want to fill.

Again, we've got plenty of people thanks to your staff to work with when we do.

I think we overshot, which I like to do.

I like to shoot more than I know I'm gonna need, because then you make discoveries.

You find material that you didn't even realize you've gotten.

And I think that's the situation we're in right now, working on the illustrations for it.

Of course, some of this will be done with animation, because it's a time when we don't even have still photographs, but we still have those amazing Wyoming landscapes where all this took place, and they are so largely unchanged.

Places like natural corrals down the red desert, you know?

There's a lot of, you could be walking in the landscape that people were walking in, in the 1770s in what's now Wyoming today.

It's still there.

- Yeah.

- And astonishing.

- It is astonishing.

We had talked about the project that Wyoming PBS would work on.

What could that project be?

And someone mentioned during that discussion that Wyoming is one of the rare places in the United States that you can go down the highway and you'll see homesteads that have not been uplifted, had not been moved or altered.

Just vast, vast swaths of land that have not been changed at all, even since before the 250th.

So, it's really astonishing.

- Yeah, Agnes Wright Spring, who wrote the Wyoming Guide for the Federal Writers Project back in the 1930s, she had a line in that, that said, "In Wyoming, the past presses so closely on the present."

- It's incredible.

More stories, more opportunities for stories out there.

So, well, any final words as we close to talk about Vice President Cheney and the documentary that you created?

Any final thoughts on that, Geoff?

- Only, I guess I'll repeat the quote I just made of Agnes Wright Spring, "The past presses so closely on the present."

When we look at Dick Cheney, he's a fascinating figure, almost a Shakespearean character, if you really think about it.

But you also need to look at the way the life he lived, the things he stood for, and the things he did while in office are still in play in various ways today.

What we learned from him, what we can apply today, you know, is just so interesting that someone from Wyoming, and he's not the only one could have played such an important role in history in this country.

We owe it to ourselves to not forget that and to keep thinking about what we learned from him and what we can learn of him even now.

- Yeah, two great leaders this year in Wyoming that we've lost this year, Al Simpson and Vice President Cheney.

It is so true.

The preservation of those stories and learning from them has a lot to do with what you do as a documentarian and what we do in sharing those documentaries with not just Wyoming, but the entire country.

Thank you so much, Geoff, and watching on Wyoming PBS means supporting Wyoming stories.

And we thank you so much.

You and I, of course, will be in contact again in the future to tell more stories, not just about former vice presidents who are part of Wyoming, but also right now that we're experiencing with this 250th celebration of an incredible nation.

So, Geoff, I really appreciate you taking all this time and for all the expertise that went into this.

Wyoming PBS thanks you very much for it.

- Thank you, Joanna.

And thanks to all the crew there at Wyoming PBS.

I love those guys.

- Yes, I will definitely let them know that you send your love and support.

Thank you, Geoff.

- Great, thank you.