Journalists On Shooting Story List Unanswered Questions

By Joe Strupp

Published: February 15, 2006 2:05 PM ET
NEW YORK For several days, the lag in news emerging about a shooting incident involving Vice President Dick Cheney has dominated media coverage of the episode. But based on interviews with E&P this morning, journalists covering or directing the story are becoming increasingly interested in the actual chain of events in the field, and at the White House, on the night of the shooting, when the vice president wounded his hunting companion, Harry Whittington.

For reporters and editors, from Texas to Washington, D.C., the details of the shooting itself and the immediate aftermath are the top unknowns, they say. As news staffers continue to pursue the story, many contend that the lack of detail is so vast that offering a clear picture of events is nearly impossible.

"The whole chronology of the accident, what occurred," Leonard Downie, Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post, said when asked what details he would like to know. "There is a lot that we don't know yet. We have to find out."

Specifically, those who spoke with E&P Wednesday cited details ranging from how far Cheney was standing from the victim (less than the 30 yards as claimed?) to why law enforcement investigators were turned away from the ranch Saturday night. "I would love to have a videotape of exactly what happened," said Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, which has three reporters on the story. "It is a real reporting challenge because it is after the fact. There is not much of a record. The vice president left the state without so much as a statement. How is that?"

George Hager, White House editor for USA Today, also sought specifics on who turned away whom at the ranch. He noted that many simple details become more interesting to reporters when they are withheld. "That is a journalist's nature," he said.

More: http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002033468

wire-taps, the economy...

As creepy as Cheney is, as glad as I am to see the Reps squirming, and as true as it is that no ordinary person would have been able to wait a day to deal with something like this, it does seem like a tempest in a teapot to some extent.

I mean, it's not the grassy knoll, now is it? Just stupidity and very poor judgment. :shrug:

Although if the guy dies, that would be a very weird situation.

it's a crime if he was intoxicated at the time.

more lenient?

don't mind me, I like to play Devil's Advocate.

when they came out to talk to the shooter if it were any one other than big time Dick?

but would they assume that an accident of this type was anything else? I don't know what the procedure is for hunting accidents of this type.

But the question is, anyone else in this circumstance would be investigated to establish if there was negligence of some kind - if the parties were intoxicated, if hunting laws weren't followed, etc.

If you had a car accident and sent the other person to the ICU, don't you think the cops would want to have a talk with you?

traffic accident. They would get your story, the story of any witnesses and if they suspected intoxication they would test you.

the clear intention to "manage" the story in unusual ways (leaking it through a tiny local newspaper, etc.), and Cheney's obsessive repetition of certain phrases and themes* in the Faux interview, all point to something seriously bad being covered up. It's true, that these tendencies--to lie, to coverup--are second nature with Cheney, so POSSIBLY he has just cast suspicion on the event by the way he has handled it. We just don't know yet. But I think it's quite reasonable, with this bunch of gangsters, to presume the worst and work from there (blackmail, extortion, attempted murder?). When you think of what-all is at stake in various current Bush junta/Republican scandals--and their history of lying, spying, stolen elections, thievery and mass murder--I would not take anything like this lightly--or give them any benefit of the doubt.

*(His most obsessive phrase/theme--he repeats it eight times--was his desire that the story they put out be "accurate." His second most obsessive phrase/theme--repeated four times--was that Katherine Armstrong was an "eyewitness" to the whole event.)

He was drunk.

Shooting someone when your drunk has got to be a misdemeanor if not a felony no matter what state your in.

anyway, if what this poster says is true in this case, he wouldn't even appear to be drinking very much to others in the party.

This is a quote from liberalnurse from another thread on this topic:

"It is my guess that Cheney is in the latent stage of chronic alcoholism. This means it would not require a quantity to cause a black out...Just 2 beers is enough to be in a black out. I posted about this issue a few minutes ago where he has a long standing history of documented DUI's. This gives us a general time line of when he activated his disease....and the progression only stops if drinking stops. If someone was sober for say 20 years....no disease issues typically surface...but if they pick-up and drink again, it is like they never stopped drinking, ever...the disease is chronic and progressive.
So, for Cheney, whom I do not believe ever found sobriety, may only drink 2 alcoholic beverages and be snookered and in a black out." (liberalnurse)

had a beer at lunch. (Where there's smoke, there's fire?) And a soused party (or Cheney) could well be the reason for the secrecy and delay. There's a good circumstantial case for it.

But I still think that the basic facts of the shooting--how the Secret Service let Whittington disappear, and then get that close to Cheney at an unseen location with a shotgun, how far apart they were, who the "eyewtinesses" were (if any besides the two), and other such questions--remain unanswered, and are important, drinking or no drinking.

there are many unanswered questions about this sordid little episode. I just thought it important to underline the point about alcohol lapses, because so many people dont know that a longterm alcoholic doesn't have to drink much --by other people's standards-- to have a blank-out. So it is easy for others to miss the connection and Cheney gets by with saying 'I only had a beer or two.' I am familiar with alcohol studies and I thought liberalnurse was very accurate on this point.

But agreed--there is more to this than meets the eye and I would be the last to jump to easy conclusions. My suspicions about this bunch of criminals in power run too deep. I can think of at least 5 other things they might have been trying to cover up (and I'm sure my imagination pales in comparison to what they are capable of). Cheney's interview was interesting to me in his odd detachment, as though he was an observer. I think that's also an indicator of something fishy about this.

Yes the fact of such a concerted cover-up effort speaks volumes. Lies beget lies. The plot thickens. I think we will know more. I'm not folding my antennae this soon... :)

This, to me, is possibly the key question: How is it that the Secret Service, who were present and whose job it was to protect the V-P, permitted an old guy with a shotgun in his hand to wander away from the group, to an unseen location, and then move some one hundred yards back toward Cheney and "surprise" him? Something is wrong here.

They had a bunch of old guys--possibly drinking or drunk (which Cheney denies)--playing at being "hunters" (shooting at quail who had been spotted for them by outriders on horseback with radios), and they let one of this party (drinking or not) stray off, get out of sight, and then get back close enough to Cheney to be gravely wounded, still without being seen? Doesn't the Secret Service count heads, for godssakes? ESPECIALLY in a V-P party that is ARMED? Surely there must have been Secret Service detailed to keep an eye on each of the people in the party, and to be especially alert in an armed vacation party. According to Cheney, Whittington was no bosom buddy. He was a mere "acqaintance." He made that very explicit in the Faux interview. But even if he WAS a bosom buddy, firearms are firearms, and anything can happen. So, how could this shooting have happened the way it is being told? Surely the Secret Service has standard procedures to prevent this very thing.

Normally when you're hunting game birds like this the hunters form a line on one side of the field and move across in unison flushing the birds as they go. Since Cheney has an entourage of several people with him or at least nearby, one would logically assume that they would be bringing up the rear. Why then are they claiming he turned around and fired his shot behind him where they had already been and where presumably his guards and other attendees would be? It makes absolutely no sense.

why do I have this picture of the SS not being very on top of this--maybe having a little time out themselves while the old dudes amused themselves popping shots at low-flying birds on a heavily guarded
ranch. Maybe they dropped back for awhile. But one would assume they still know what happened.

I have been rethinking how they acted Saturday night and now think they were hoping to be able to cover up the entire episode. When they realized that Whittington's condition would require the Corpus Christi hospital, they were faced with the need to get their stories straight and start notifying. They may have also started to realize that there were too many people working on the ranch to totally keep a lid on it. (Initially, the White House was not informed that Cheney was the shooter.)

(When considering their actions, I consider how a group of teenagers act when they are trying to hide something from authorities and parents. Initial optimism minimizes the severity of the situation. This over-confidence inspires actions in a panic that make things worse. Then a sobering realization that things can not be completely hidden leads to efforts to sanitize the narrative in an attempt to limit the scope of the problem. When they tell the story, they admit some slightly incriminating details to explain their behavior with the hope of continuing to hide things much worse.)

When the deputy arrived at the ranch to followup on the ambulance call, the Border Patrol agent guarding the gate was unaware of any problem and turned him away. There were no official reports of the shooting for quite a while because the Sheriff had been contacted at his home and probably deferred to the Secret Service and the Armstrongs. A guest on Sunday at lunch, related that they did not talk about the shooting.

From the NYT/IHT story today, it appears that the other spouses were on the ranch, so I doubt that was what they were hiding. (Still curious where Lynne Cheney was. Interestingly, some early reports had her with Dick at the Sunday hospital visit of Whittington, but later ones removed that. There might have been confusion because of the mention of Whittington's wife.) They even encourage speculation in this area by not their reluctance to identify the other shooter, etc.

They tried to hide that Cheney had been drinking at lunch, sending various surrogates to spin (Matalin). Since this was the first thing I thought of when I heard of the accident, lots of reporters in Texas were certainly crawling all other this aspect. Cheney has now admitted to having "a beer" at lunch, knowing that staff would have seen him and eventually someone would talk about it. Armstrong has also said that Cheney had a cocktail immediately after the ambulance left (which would have invalidated any later alcohol tests).

The early limited cover story might have worked if Whittington's condition had not worsened. Lots about hunting licenses and stamps (Oops, I'm guilty of missing one. Sorry, here is $7.), speculation about hunting weekends with mysterious "other" women, and late night jokes might have run their course in a day or two, to be replaced by something else. But the blizzard delayed other news being reported, and just then Whittington had his heart problem.

from the word go. Right, like your teenager analogy, the cover-up seems lame and only provokes further curiosity. I still have a problem believing that a hunter with a 30-year history would have such an accident without extenuating circumstances.

Welcome to DU BTW.