ATHENS, Ga., Jan. 19 (UPI) -- Walter Mondale, the first U.S. vice president with an office in the West Wing of the White House, says that Dick Cheney has made the office too powerful.
Mondale spoke at a three-day conference at the University of Georgia on the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
He said that Cheney has created "almost a parallel National Security Council that operated almost on its own."
The vice presidency was once a powerless office with the incumbent given ceremonial functions and denied critical information. In one of the more notorious instances, Harry Truman only learned of the existence of the atomic bomb after he succeeded President Franklin Roosevelt who died.
Richard Moe, Mondale's former chief of staff, said that giving the vice president real responsibility was one of Carter's great accomplishments.
Mondale said that Cheney is too much an independent center of power in the Bush administration.
"I think that Cheney has probably been at the center of cooking up all these farcical estimates of national risk, weapons of mass destruction, 9/11's connection with Iraq...and I don't think that serves the president," he said.
