Dick Cheney, the powerful former United States Vice President and chief architect of the “war on terror” who helped lead the country into the ill-fated Iraq war, has died, his family announced Monday. He was 84.

Cheney, the 46th vice president who served alongside Republican President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, was a towering and often polarizing figure in Washington for decades. His influence was considered exceptional, making him one of the most consequential modern vice presidents.

His political legacy remains deeply intertwined with the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent decision to invade Iraq in 2003, based on faulty assumptions regarding weapons of mass destruction. Cheney, a sardonic former Wyoming representative, White House chief of staff, and defense secretary, became a changed man following the 11 September 2001, terror attacks.

Recalling the day a second hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center, Cheney said in a 2002 interview with CNN’s John King: “At that moment, you knew this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act.”

He became determined to enforce US power throughout the Middle East with a neo-conservative doctrine of regime change and pre-emptive war. While he wielded enormous influence, contemporary accounts emphasize that Bush, who styled himself “The Decider,” was the ultimate authority in the administration.

In a dramatic late-career twist, Cheney, a hardline conservative, became largely estranged from the Republican Party in his final years due to his intense criticism of President Donald Trump.

He branded Trump a “coward” and the greatest-ever threat to the republic. In an ironic coda to his storied political career, Cheney cast his final presidential vote in 2024 for a liberal Democrat and fellow member of the vice president’s club, Kamala Harris, reflecting the shift away from his traditional conservatism by the populist GOP.

Cheney was plagued by cardiovascular disease for most of his adult life, surviving a series of heart attacks. He continued to lead a vigorous life, thanks in part to a heart transplant he received in 2012, which he hailed in a 2014 interview as “the gift of life itself.”