Now that Dick Cheney has done that heavily edited mea mostly culpa (transcript here) with the GOP News Channel ... I mean, the Fox News Channel ... ahem ... I think it's safe to say there are even more questions surrounding his little Texas turkey shoot than before his belated disclosures. First, Cheney's version of events, as elicited by the gentle questioning of former GOP flak Brit Hume:
Q: Describe the setting.
A: It's in south Texas, wide open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. But it's wild quail. It's some of the best quail hunting anyplace in the country. I've gone there, to the Armstrong ranch, for years. The Armstrongs have been friends for over 30 years. And a group of us had hunted all day on Saturday ...
Q: How many?
A: Oh, probably 10 people. We weren't all together, but about 10 guests at the ranch. There were three of us who had gotten out of the vehicle and walked up on a covey of quail that had been pointed by the dogs. The covey is flushed, we've shot, and each of us got a bird. Harry couldn't find his. It had gone down in some deep cover and so he went off to look for it. The other hunter and I then turned and walked about a hundred yards in another direction ...
Q: Away from him?
A: Away from him — where another covey had been spotted by an outrider. I was on the far right ...
Q: There was just two of you then?
A: Just two of us at that point. The guide or outrider between us, and of course, there's this entourage behind us, all the cars and so forth that follow me around when I'm out there. But the bird flushed and went to my right, off to the west. I turned and shot at the bird, and at that second, saw Harry standing there. Didn't know he was there ...
Q: You had pulled the trigger and you saw him?
A: Well, I saw him fall, basically. It had happened so fast.
Q: What was he wearing?
A: He was dressed in orange, he was dressed properly, but he was also ... There was a little bit of a gully there, so he was down a little ways before land level, although I could see the upper part of his body when ... I didn't see it at the time I shot, until after I'd fired. And the sun was directly behind him — that affected the vision, too, I'm sure.
But the image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there's Harry falling. And it was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life, at that moment.
Q: Then what?
A: Well, we went over to him, obviously, right away ...
Q: How far away from you was he?
A: I'm guessing about 30 yards, which was a good thing. If he'd been closer, obviously, the damage from the shot would have been greater.
Q: Now, is it clear that — he had caught part of the shot, is that right?
A: Part of the shot. He was struck in the right side of his face, his neck and his upper torso on the right side of his body.
Q: And you — and I take it, you missed the bird?
A: I have no idea. I mean, you focused on the bird, but as soon as I fired and saw Harry there, everything else went out of my mind. I don't know whether the bird went down or didn't.
Q: So did you run over to him or ...
A: Ran over to him and ...
Q: And what did you see? He's lying there.
A: He was laying there on his back, obviously bleeding. You could see where the shot had struck him. And one of the fortunate things was that I've always got a medical team, in effect, covering me wherever I go. I had a physician's assistant with me that day. Within a minute or two he was on the scene administering first aid.
Q: And Mr. Whittington was conscious, unconscious, what?
A: He was conscious.
Q: What did you say?
A: Well, I said, "Harry, I had no idea you were there."
Q: What did he say?
A: He didn't respond. He was — he was breathing, conscious at that point, but he didn't — he was, I'm sure, stunned, obviously, still trying to figure out what had happened to him. The doc was fantastic.
Q: What did you think when you saw the injuries? How serious did they appear to you to be?
A: I had no idea how serious it was going to be. I mean, it could have been extraordinarily serious. You just don't know at that moment. You know he's been struck, that there's a lot of shot that had hit him. But you don't know — you think about his eyes. Fortunately, he was wearing hunting glasses, and that protected his eyes. You, you just don't know. And the key thing, as I say, initially, was that the physician's assistant was right there. We also had an ambulance at the ranch, because one always follows me around wherever I go. And they were able to get the ambulance there and within about 30 minutes we had him on his way to the hospital.
Q: What did you do then? Did you get up and did you go with him, or did you go to the hospital?
A: No, I had told my physician's assistant to go with him, but the ambulance is crowded and they didn't need another body in there. And so we loaded up and went back to ranch headquarters, basically. By then, it's about 7:00 p.m. at night. Okay, and now the questions, namely:
If the sun was indeed directly behind Mr. Whittington, meaning he was backlit (something like this), and also standing waist deep in a gully, how could Mr. Cheney even have seen him fall? Heard him groan or cry out, maybe, but to swing around, see nothing because of the backlighting, but then to see Whittington fall? Sounds strange to me...
If Cheney now admits that he had "a beer" at lunchtime, presumably at around noon or later, and that he was back in the hunt by 3 p.m., and that Mr. Whittington was shot after 5 p.m., four or five hours after his purported one-beer lunch, why does the official incident report from the Texas Parks and Wildlife division definitively state that alcohol was not a factor in the shooting? How can officials have concluded that when Cheney wasn't interviewed by sheriffs until the following morning, when any alcohol in his system will have long since been pissed away...? Apparently it takes about an hour for a normal liver to metabolize one "unit" of alcohol, just under the equivalent of a single 125 ml glass of wine or a 330 ml bottle of beer (1.5 units each). So theoretically, if Cheney did just have one cold one, he should have been alright. But we only have his word to go by that he only drank one beer, and that he wasn't impaired, since local sheriffs deputies were not allowed to interview Mr. Cheney until Sunday morning.
[BTW we know of the admission about drinking from the transcript released by the White house, but you won't see the admission on Fox, which didn't air the clip of Cheney admitting to having that beer. Instead, Hume relayed the information himself during his set-up between segments, as Media Matters puts it, "thus sparing Cheney the embarrassment of the public seeing him acknowledge that he was drinking before he shot a man in the face -- and depriving the public of the opportunity to assess his credibility as he talked about the matter." And as MM states, the "fair and balanced network" also failed to run the Cheney drink clip on their web-site...]
[Correction: in the original post I incorrectly identified the owner of the ranch as Anne Armstrong. The correct name is Katherine Armstrong, the daughter of Tobin and Anne Armstrong, who are described by the anti-corruption group Texans for Public Justice here, including this fine quote: “We go out when the dew is still on the grass, and then hunt until we shoot our limit,” Tobin [Armstrong, Anne's husband] said in 2000 of his ranch outings with Dick Cheney. “Then we pick a fine spot and have a wild game picnic lunch...” )]
Why was the ranch owner, Mrs. Armstrong, "the perfect person" to disclose the shooting? (And why didn't Brit Hume ask the vice president whether he felt he had an obligation to inform the president, and the American people -- both of whom being his employers) of what happened, preferably sooner than late Sunday or Monday... And why did Cheney assume the media would believe her, but not believe his story? Was there something odd about the story he would have told had he told it on Saturday or Sunday?
Speaking of Mrs. Armstrong, where was she standing when she supposedly witnessed the shooting? Near to Mr. Cheney in the more open field, or "90 feet away," where he says his "friend/acquaintance" Mr. Whittington was standing, waist deep in a gully?
If Mr. Cheney could see Mr. Whittington fall in that gully, how was he unable to see him standing there in the first place?
If Mr. Cheney was indeed 30 yards/90 feet from Mr. Whittington when he shot him, how were so many bullets able to penetrate not only the victim's skin and heart muscle, but also his thick hunting vest, jacket and clothing? Given the spray involved in dispersing those BBs, doesn't it sound odd that so many shots broke Mr. Whittington's skin? I think most medical experts have concluded at this point, that these cannot have been mere glancing blows of pellet spray. Mr. Whittington was shot in the heart, among other places, and shot at closer range than 30 feet... (the P&W official checked the box marked "10 to 50 yards.")
On the other hand, some issues that have swirled around this case have been cleared up. Originally, it was asked why heney's entourage chose to take Mr. Whittington to a hospital in Kingsville, Texas, rather than to a presumably larger, better equipped one in Corpus Christie? Up to now we've assumed that Corpus Christie is in fact closer to the Armstrong Ranch. But this map of the area, which is very close to the Mexican border, seems to prove otherwise.
 (Click here for a larger map)
Kingsville is closer, and the veep states that Mr. Whittington was later flown to the larger hospital in Corpus Christie. Still, the question remains, could the Cheney team have decided it would be easier to control information at that smaller facility? I guess we'll never know... And then there's this wierd timeline -- the shooting at sometime after 5:00 p.m., then this four-hour chain of events: And the key thing, as I say, initially, was that the physician's assistant was right there. We also had an ambulance at the ranch, because one always follows me around wherever I go. And they were able to get the ambulance there and within about 30 minutes we had him on his way to the hospital.
Q: What did you do then? Did you get up and did you go with him, or did you go to the hospital?
A: No, I had told my physician's assistant to go with him, but the ambulance is crowded and they didn't need another body in there. And so we loaded up and went back to ranch headquarters, basically. By then, it's about 7:00 p.m. at night.
Q: Did you have a sense then of how he was doing?
A: Well, we're getting reports, but they were confusing. Early reports are always wrong. The initial reports that came back from the ambulance were that he was doing well, his eyes were open. They got him into the emergency room at Kingsville.
Q: His eyes were open when you found him, then, right?
A: Yes. One eye was open. But they got him in the emergency room in the small hospital at Kingsville, checked him out further there, then lifted him by helicopter from there into Corpus Christi, which has a big city hospital and all of the equipment.
Q: So by now what time is it?
A: I don't have an exact time line, although he got there sometime that evening, 8:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m.
Q: So this is several hours after the incident?
A: Well, I would say he was in Kingsville in the emergency room probably within, oh, less than an hour after they left the ranch. Maybe the vice president is just confused because he's so traumatized, although you'd think after four days he'd have his story down... Then again, he's got to be stressed, knowing that things could go quickly downhill for him if Mr. Whittington dies...
Do I think thre's some grand conspiracy here? No. But it does look a lot like someone was trying to keep this story form getting out, by doing minimal disclosure only to a friend in the local Texas media. And I think it's looking more and more like Cheney fudged both the timeline and the distance he was from the victim. Third, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that in fact Cheney and his party had more than just that one beer...
Of course, that's all speculation at this point, but speculation the veep himself has invited by waiting so long to come forward --and then by coming forward in such an Old Soviet way -- just to their Pravda.
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