[Mb-civic] VP Accident Tale Filled With Discrepancies - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

VP Accident Tale Filled With Discrepancies

By CALVIN WOODWARD and NANCY BENAC
The Associated Press
Saturday, February 18, 2006; 3:52 AM

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney said he didn't immediately 
disclose his hunting accident because he wanted the confusing details to 
come out right. Instead, authorized accounts came out slowly _ and often 
still wrong.

The result: a week of shifting blame, belatedly acknowledged beer 
consumption (not "zero" drinking after all) and evolving discrepancies 
in how the shooting happened, its aftermath and the way it was told to 
the nation.

"There's a reason they call this crisis management," said corporate 
damage-control specialist Eric Dezenhall, "and that's because it's a mess."

___

BLAME

In the first days after the vice president wounded attorney Harry 
Whittington while shooting at quail last Saturday in Texas, blame was 
placed on the victim for not announcing his presence to fellow hunter 
Cheney.

"The vice president did everything right," Katharine Armstrong, the 
ranch owner approved by Cheney to disclose the accident, said Monday. 
Whittington, 78, should have shouted that he was rejoining the hunting 
group after drifting off to retrieve a downed bird. "The mistake exposed 
him to getting shot," she said. "It's incumbent on him. He did not do that."

The White House picked up on that theme the same day in attempting to 
deflect any responsibility from the vice president. "If I recall," Bush 
spokesman Scott McClellan said of Armstrong, "she pointed out that the 
protocol was not followed by Mr. Whittington, when it came to notifying 
the others that he was there."

The about-face came Wednesday when Cheney made his first public comment 
on the accident.

"It was not Harry's fault," he said. "You can't blame anybody else. I'm 
the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."

___

DRINKING

Although there is no evidence that beer impaired Cheney's judgment, 
initial denials that he had consumed alcohol were wrong.

"No one was drinking," Armstrong said at the outset. "No, zero, zippo." 
She said the hunters washed down lunch with Dr Pepper. Later, she 
qualified her comments and said beer might have been in the cooler but 
she did not think anyone drank any.

The investigating officer from the Kenedy County sheriff's department, 
after interviewing Whittington in the hospital, reported that the victim 
"explained foremost there was no alcohol during the hunt."

Authorities did not investigate the accident until the next day. The 
Texas Parks and Wildlife accident report, dated two days after the 
shooting, checked "No" on the question of whether Cheney appeared under 
the influence of intoxicants. It did not address whether the hunters had 
been drinking at all. (The report also included a diagram depicting 
Whittington's wounds on the wrong side of his body.)

Cheney acknowledged Wednesday, "I had a beer at lunch" several hours 
before the group's afternoon hunt, asserting "nobody was under the 
influence."

___

VICTIM'S CONDITION

In the rush to assure everyone Whittington was "just fine," some 
important details were left out.

Initial reports had him treated at the scene, then taken by ambulance to 
the hospital, where in no time he was cracking jokes with the nurses. It 
turned out that after being taken to the emergency room of a local, 
small hospital, he was flown by helicopter to the intensive care unit of 
the larger hospital in Corpus Christi.

According to Armstrong's initial account of the accident scene: "He was 
talking. His eyes were open." Later, Cheney said that when he rushed up 
to the stricken man and talked to him, Whittington had one eye open and 
did not respond. He was, however, conscious.

Doctors said Tuesday that Whittington suffered a mild heart attack while 
in the hospital when one of the pellets migrated to his heart. He was 
released Friday.

___

LICENSE

Cheney did not have all his hunting papers in order, as suggested by the 
White House and initially stated by Texas authorities.

On Sunday, a spokesman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said 
Cheney was legally hunting with a license he bought in November. While 
that was true, the department's accident report the next day stated that 
he was in violation of a law requiring him to have an upland game bird 
stamp.

___

DISCLOSURE

The accident raised questions about the flow of information into and out 
of the White House communications apparatus.

Asked why no one released news of the shooting on Saturday night, 
McClellan said "the vice president's office was working to make sure 
information got out" but that details were slow to reach Washington that 
evening.

Armstrong, for her part, said no one at the ranch even discussed 
releasing the news on Saturday.

She said her family realized Sunday morning that it would be a story and 
decided to call the local newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. 
She said she then discussed news coverage with Cheney for the first time.

"I said, 'Mr. Vice President, this is going to be public, and I'm 
comfortable going to the hometown newspaper,'" she told The Associated 
Press. "And he said, 'You go ahead and do whatever you are comfortable 
doing.'"

___

TELLING WASHINGTON

McClellan said President Bush was told shortly before 8 p.m. EST 
Saturday that Cheney had shot Whittington, less than half an hour after 
Bush first heard there had a been an accident of some sort involving 
Cheney's hunting party. Confirmation that Cheney was the shooter was 
obtained when deputy chief of staff Karl Rove called Armstrong, 
McClellan said.

However, McClellan said he didn't personally know Cheney was the shooter 
until the next morning, about 6 a.m. EST Sunday, when he was awakened 
with the news.

He said he only knew the previous evening that someone in Cheney's party 
had been involved in a hunting accident.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/18/AR2006021800240.html?nav=hcmodule
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