Sir John Swan, the former premier, looked back his on efforts in the 1990s to persuade the late Dick Cheney, the US Secretary of Defence of the day, to keep the island’s American bases from closing at a time when their presence here was seen as obsolete.

Sir John reflected as news broke yesterday of the former US vice-president’s death at age 84.

“I was pushing to keep them open, and I was able to encourage him to some extent — but not very much,” Sir John said.

“There was a media blitz that talked about how the bases were being used by military people visiting Bermuda for the purpose of playing golf and enjoying themselves.”

The curtains closed on the US Naval Air Station in Bermuda in 1995, in an era when the country was downscaling its global military presence after the end of the Cold War and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

The “media blitz” recalled by Sir John was an unforgiving episode in December 1992 of the ABC show PrimeTime Live, which portrayed the Bermudian base as the navy's “Club Med” with no military mission.

Mr Cheney, who was defence secretary from 1989 to 1993, was already under pressure to cut military spending under the administration of President George H.W. Bush.

PrimeTime’s withering expose of the US NAS as a useless military relic compounded pressure on Mr Cheney to pull the plug, with American congresswoman Pam Schroeder stating: “If the navy itself acknowledges that NAS Bermuda serves no military purpose, the secretary should put it on the base closure list.”

Mr Cheney, who led the Pentagon during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in 1990, was due to make his recommendations on base closures to the Base Closing Commission in mid-March 1993.

The bad press for Bermuda at the end of 1992 and its capacity to sway the opinion of American officials led to furore in the House of Assembly two days later, with Sir John insisting: “We have to make out the importance of the Bermuda location in terms of its value to the United States.

“Not only in terms of the military point of view, but also from the civilian standpoint — Bermuda has value in terms of drug containment, as well as mid-ocean search and rescue.”

Mr Cheney, who was succeeded under President Bill Clinton by Les Aspin as defence secretary, was on the island in 1995 and suggested to The Royal Gazette that a ray of hope could come for the shuttered island’s bases in times of need.

Speaking to the newspaper after addressing a business convention, Mr Cheney said the US Naval Air Station at St David's and the US Naval Annex in Southampton “were an important part of our overall operations at one time”.

He added: “In a crisis, if we ever got into a major problem, it would be possible to seek approval to use those facilities again.”

It was not to be — and the island would inherit the American bases, while Mr Cheney would go on to serve as vice-president, and spearhead a far larger Iraq campaign, from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush.