Seymour Hersh opens "The Next Act," for The New Yorker (Nov. 20) with this anecdote:

A month before the November elections, Vice-President Dick Cheney was
sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive Office
Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats won
both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward
Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power?
At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion,
Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early
nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was
expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces
three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that
resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution:
putting “shorteners” on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces
and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats
won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not
stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The
White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions,
Cheney said, and thus stop Congress from getting in its way.

Asked about the story, Cheney’s office says it is short of having any record of it.