Cheney's doctor sniffed away $70,000 in nasal spray

By RUPERT CORNWELL in Washington

The doctor who used to regularly vouch for Vice-President Dick Cheney's good health was himself struggling at the time to overcome an addiction to prescription drugs.

Dr Gary Malakoff, of the George Washington University Medical Centre in Washington, has now been dropped from Cheney's medical team.

According to the New Yorker magazine he had treated Cheney, who has a history of heart problems, since 1995.

However, sealed divorce papers obtained by the magazine showed that Malakoff spent about US$46,000 ($70,000) on internet purchases of a narcotic nasal spray between mid-1999 and December 2001 - by which time Cheney had already been serving as Vice-President for almost a year.

The disclosure, which may revive the issue of Cheney's own health, comes at a rocky time for President George W. Bush's re-election campaign, and there has even been speculation that he may drop his Vice-President, one of the least popular members of the Administration, before the Republican convention in New York at the end of next month.

So drastic a move is considered extremely improbable by most observers. But even some senior Republicans are irritated by Cheney's obduracy on the issue of Iraq and his refusal to acknowledge that Saddam Hussein had neither significant weapons of mass destruction nor meaningful ties with al Qaeda.

If the Vice-President is to be replaced, they add, his health could always be used as a pretext.

However, Cheney does not look like someone about to make his political exit. Of late, he has taken an unusually visible role, lambasting John Kerry and never missing a chance to brand the Democratic presidential challenger as a "flipflopper" not to be trusted on security issues.

- INDEPENDENT