Vice President Dick Cheney was seen as the true power behind the throne of George W Bush during his first term in office. Now FRONTLINE reveals how Cheney plotted for years to increase the power of the president at the expense of the American people.

Cheney turned from draft-dodger during the Vietnam War to a political hawk, rising under his friend Donald Rumsfeld's wing from the late 1960s. For decades he conducted a secretive campaign to give the president almost limitless rein in wartime. His chance to unleash that power came after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. 

Cheney re-interpreted the bounds of executive power, granting the president the ability to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy on citizens. The plot was not unopposed, however. In an in-depth interview former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith explains he began to question how the administration could ignore domestic laws and international treaties.

He soon clashed with Cheney's office, culminating in an infamous incident in 2004 when President Bush ordered officials to visit Attorney General John Ashcroft in his hospital room to urge him to approve a domestic surveillance programme. Ashcroft, although sickly and under medication, stoutly refused and the White House, facing the prospect of half its lawyers resigning in protest just before an election, backed down. But not for long. After the election, opposing lawyers were purged, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales was made Attorney General and the noose began to tighten on the law.