Cheney accused of cover-up in shooting

[Moses]

The Times February 14, 2006
Cheney accused of cover-up over hunter shooting
From Tom Baldwin in Washington

WHEN the Vice-President of the United States discharges his shotgun into the face of 78-year-old Republican lawyer it seems strange that the world does not hear about it for nearly 24 hours.

Harry Whittington was peppered with bird pellets by Dick Cheney on Saturday during a quail hunt at a ranch in Texas. He was taken to hospital and put in intensive care.

President Bush and White House staff were informed that night. But it was not until 18 hours after the shooting that the news emerged and then only because a reporter got a tip-off from Katharine Armstrong, the ranch owner. Yesterday, Mr Cheney was battling media claims of a cover-up, while the status of police inquiries remained unclear.

The local sheriff’s office in Kennedy County was saying as little as possible. “We have no information to release,” Sandra Guzman, the sheriff’s assistant, said. When did they know about the incident — and what did they know? “I can’t say, an investigation is going on,” Ms Guzman said. Are you investigating to see if a crime was committed? “I’m not sure,” she replied and then hung up.

A spokesman for the Texas Rangers said: “The Secret Service are handling everything. When I call up and ask for information, people get weird with me.”

The White House press corps were turning their fire on Scott McClellan, the President’s spokesman. They were incredulous that the media had not been told sooner. He was accused of “totally ducking and weaving”, and “being a jerk”.

Mr McClellan, who is usually treated with more respect, pleaded with reporters not to yell at him, and implored them to “calm down”.

The way that information is disseminated by the Vice-President’s office is already controversial, given the prosecution of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, his former chief of staff, for alleged leaks about a CIA operative. Yesterday Mr Cheney and his staff were being attacked for revealing too little, not too much.

Mrs Armstrong said yesterday that everyone at the ranch had been so “focused” on getting medical treatment for Mr Whittington that it was not until Sunday that she reported the incident to The Caller-Times, a newspaper based 60 miles away in Corpus Christi. Larger Texas newspapers in Dallas, Houston and Austin were not informed.

According to her eye-witness account, Mr Cheney and Pam Willeford, the US Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, were approached from behind by Mr Whittington just as the Vice-President was turning to shoot. “Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good,” she said.

As for Mr Whittington, he was yesterday said to be recovering from wounds to his face and neck that resembled chicken pox. Mr McClennan said that the Vice-President had visited him and “was pleased to see that he was doing fine and in good spirits. I know the President is, as well.”

Mr Bush knows Mr Whittington from his days as Texas Governor. In 1999 he put him in charge of a commission regulating funerals. Eliza May, who had headed the commission, was then suing the state, saying she had been dismissed because she investigated a funeral-home chain owned by a friend of Mr Bush. The suit was settled two years later. Mr Whittington donated $1,000 to Mr Bush’s first presidential campaign and $2,000 to his re-election.


Mr Cheney, a staunch ally of the National Rifle Association, has experienced political discomfort from hunting before — not least over a duck shooting trip with a conservative Supreme Court judge in Louisiana in 2004 at a time that the court was hearing a case involving him the Vice-President.

White House sources yesterday were unaware of any evidence that Mr Cheney may have consumed alcohol before the accident on Saturday. Mary Matalin, one of his advisers, said: “He was not careless or incautious. He didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do.”

HUNTING VOTES, DUCKING ISSUES


* Lyndon Johnson often invited politicians to hunt at his Texas ranch as a test of their toughness. John F. Kennedy killed his first deer on a trip to Johnson’s ranch after the 1960 election

* Bill Clinton went on a duck hunting trip in 1993 to reassure sportsmen that his pro-gun control stance did not mean he was against hunting. The party brought down only one duck and, in typical Clinton fashion, there was some question over whether he fired the fatal shot

* While campaigning for Governor of Texas in 1994, George W. Bush took reporters along for the first day quail season. Instead of bagging a quail, Bush shot a killdeer, an endangered species of bird

* To downplay his image as a liberal elitist, John Kerry invited the press on a carefully staged hunt for geese in Ohio in the 2004 campaign. He bagged one bird but someone else carried it home

FIRING LINE

Heated exchanges took place when Scott McClellan faced the press.


QUESTION Why didn’t we hear about it for 24 hours?


MR McCLELLAN I think the first priority was making sure that Mr Whittington was getting the medical care that he needed. And I know that the Vice-President’s Office worked with Mrs Armstrong to get that information out, as well. My understanding is Mrs Armstrong contacted the local paper early Sunday morning.


Q You and the press duty officer don’t administer medical treatment. So why couldn’t the press office have alerted us Saturday night, when you guys found out?

McCLELLAN Well, the Vice-President’s Office was working to get that information out, and they got it out Sunday morning through Mrs Armstrong.


Q Well, why the wait?

McCLELLAN Well, I think they wanted to make sure that he was getting the care he needed. And then I mean, they proactively worked to get it out . . .


Q Well, I mean, you know, you can certainly make sure he’s getting the care and tell us, too.


McCLELLAN And they worked to get it out.


Q The Vice-President shoots somebody accidentally and you don’t — and you know this Saturday night and you don’t think that you should alert us to this? . . . We didn’t know for nearly 24 hours.


McCLELLAN That’s not correct. Sunday morning . . .


Q When I’m asking you a serious question, you should give us a serious answer . . .


McCLELLAN You don’t have to yell.


Q . . . instead of jerking us around.


McCLELLAN You don’t have to yell.

Q . . . it is you made a decision, when you knew Saturday night, not to inform the press corps? Why you left it for the Vice-President's Office through a ranch owner to tell local media and not the White House press corps?

McCLELLAN I think they worked to get it out, and they worked to get it out as soon as they could

Q Promptly?

McCLELLAN I think as soon as possible. But the first priority needs to be on making sure that they're receiving medical care.
The ambulance got there, the Secret Service were working, he had many doctors with him.

McCLELLAN That's right.

Q So that was taken care of. The question of informing the press and the American people is another subject






Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.

[Moses]

RJ Eskow: Cheney's Chappaquiddick II: The Real Story Emerges

RJ Eskow
Wed Feb 15, 11:53 AM ET




The real story is already emerging, if you're willing to do a little digging. Cheney and Whittington went hunting with two women (not their wives), there was some drinking, and Whittington wound up shot. Armstrong didn't see the incident but claimed she had, Cheney refused to be questioned by the Sheriff until the next morning, and a born-again evangelical physician has been downplaying Whittington's injuries since they occurrred. Neither the press nor law enforcement seems inclined to investigate.

Before the right-wing commenters howl - there's documentation for all of these statements. Let's take them one by one: In addition to Cheney and Whittington, the hunting party included Katherine Armstrong (who was in the car at the time of the shooting: more on that later). After lots of evasive comments that only referred to a "third hunter," we now know her identity: Pamela Willeford, the US Ambassador to Switzerland.

Then there was this Armstrong quote on MSNBC and picked up by Firedoglake (later dutifully scrubbed, but preserved on Google cache): "There may be a beer or two in there," (Armstrong) said, 'but remember not everyone in the party was shooting.'"

Interestingly, Armstrong's playing with words here. She later said that she (Armstrong) hadn't had anything to drink, so at least one of the other three must have been drinking - and the other three were shooting. So while her statement was literally correct ("not everyone ... was shooting"), it gives the false impression that nobody drank and shot.

Then there was this item (courtesy kos):
Armstrong said she saw Cheney's security detail running toward the scene. "The first thing that crossed my mind was he had a heart problem," she told The Associated Press. In other words, she didn't see the accident. All of her statements, replete with colorful sidebars about getting "peppered pretty good," gave the false impression she was an eyewitness. She wasn't.

And what about Dr. David Blanchard, who made such light of Whittington's injuries? Before the heart attack occurred, Blanchard gave no indication that pellets had entered Whittington's torso or major organs (we now know that at least one other pellet entered his liver). I found an interesting quote. After asserting that spiritual beliefs help people recover more quickly (which studies have suggested may be true), Blanchard said this of people with out of body and near death experiences:

"These people do quite well in their disease processes," he said. "The Lord wasn't quite ready for them yet . . . It makes believers out of them." It's likely that Blanchard is also the same "Dr. David Blanchard" who is listed as Vice Chairperson of World Hope International, a Christian evangelical aid group.

Blanchard's certainly entitled to his own beliefs, and World Hope International (if he's the same Blanchard) has done some good work, albeit with a proselytizing bent. But most evangelicals in this country are ardent supporters of the Bush/Cheney Administration. This may explain the otherwize puzzling word choices Dr. Blanchard made to play down Whittington's injuries, especially before the heart attack made that more difficult to do.

So was Cheney drinking, and was there anything inappropriate about this hunting party? We don't know, and nobody's investigating. There's reason to be suspicious. We do have the suggestion that drinking was taking place, we have inconsistencies and a pattern of deception in Armstrong's statements, we have a shooting injury that's far more serious than originally claimed ... and a Sheriff's Department and national press that have already proclaimed the VP innocent of all wrongdoing.

I was right to call this Cheney's Chappaquiddick. The parallels get stronger every day. Of course, Chappaquiddick happened almost forty years ago, and Ted Kennedy's turned his personal life around. Cheney's actions happened this weekend. There's reason to be suspicious of the Vice President's behavior, starting with the cover-up itself.

They're trying to spin it as just a badly handled case of press relations, but it's could be a whole lot more than that.












Copyright © 2006 HuffingtonPost.com.

[Moses]

I am certain that tips have been passsed to the media starting in the first term, that Cheney's activities and uses of Air Force 2 and his expenses should be investigated. The secrecy instituted supposedly as a matter of security has been used to cover up gross misconduct. And yet not one peep about investigating this.

A precident was set in the last Administration that the Secret Service can be questioned in detail about any personal matter of the President. This would certainly be true of the Vice President. Seeing as taxpayers are footing what is said to be a profligate bill for the VP , the taxpayers deserve an investigation. Members of congress who have not demanded this, but cave into the neocon agenda.... yet another betrayal of their country.