Playboy – Dick Cheney likes lattes. Seated in his favorite brown-leather chair in the sunlit study of his home in McLean, Virginia, the former vice president of the United States can toss back two of the warm java blasts in an hour. They come from a stainless-steel machine in the kitchen and a slender, mustachioed housekeeper named Gus, who serves them in custom-ordered white Starbucks cups outfitted with cardboard Starbucks sleeves.
Behind a small desk sits the chair Cheney occupied for eight years as vice president in the White House, and above the white-trimmed fireplace hang three framed swords. One was a gift from the cadets at West Point when Cheney was secretary of defense; the second came from the U.S. Marine Corps commandant when Cheney was guest of honor at the Marine Corps ball two months after 9/11; the third belonged to Samuel Fletcher Cheney, the vice president’s great-grandfather, who fought for the Union in the Civil War—enduring 34 battles, some of the conflict’s bloodiest fighting—only to lose part of his left hand in a sawmill accident after the war’s end.
