One year ago Mr. Cheney shot Mr. Whittington in the face on the Armstrong estate.

Cheney's hunting host lobbied White House

Ranch owner who divulged accident earned $160,000 for work in 2004

By Aram Roston
NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 4:17 p.m. ET Feb 15, 2006

Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the ranch where Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a hunting partner, is a registered lobbyist who has been paid to lobby the White House, according to records.

Armstrong told NBC News in a telephone interview that she has never directly lobbied Cheney as far as she remembers.

"Never!" she said. And she says she does not remember directly lobbying the president himself either.

SNIP...

‘No comment’ on blood test

At a news conference Wednesday outside Whittington’s hospital in Corpus Christi, reporters asked hospital officials whether Whittington’s blood-alcohol level had been tested. The officials responded with a "no comment."

In a recorded, on-the-record phone call with NBC News, Armstrong said that beer may have been available at lunch that day. "If someone wants to help themselves to a beer," she said, "they may, but I did not see anyone do that," Armstrong says. She says she was not sure if there were beers in the coolers but wasn't ready to rule it out: "There may be a beer or two in there, but remember not everyone in the party was shooting," she told NBC News.

SNIP...

Armstrong was paid $160,000 in 2004 by the powerful legal firm Baker Botts to lobby the White House, according to records she filed with the U.S. Senate as required by lobbying disclosure rules. The records indicate she was paid the money after she "communicated with the White House on behalf of Baker Botts clients."

Won't reveal client's name

In a phone interview, she told NBC News that in return for the money in one case, she set up a meeting at the White House for a Baker Botts client, although she said she felt she could not release the client’s name.

CONTINUED...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11349649/

As Cheney Victim Suffers Heart Attack, Questions Raised About Secrecy and Cronyism

DemocracyNow.org

EXCERPT...

AMY GOODMAN: But the idea that the only thing we know about actually what happened, obviously, is being filtered through the White House or the owner of the ranch, Katharine Armstrong.

ROBERT BRYCE: Exactly. And Katharine Armstrong has every reason to try and protect Cheney, not Whittington. You know, and the other part that really sticks in my mind on this whole thing is, you know, that Katharine Armstrong is part of the Republican political aristocracy here in Texas. And NBC just reported last night that Katharine Armstrong has, in fact, lobbied the White House. She was paid $160,000 and was doing that legal -- that lobby work for Baker Botts.

Well, you know, the other part that really is amazing here is just how small the world of Dick Cheney and Baker Botts and Halliburton is. Baker Botts is a very powerful Texas law firm. James A. Baker III is Of Counsel to the firm. It was founded by his great-grandfather. Baker Botts represents Halliburton. Baker Botts’s lawyer William Jeffress also represents “Scooter” Libby in the criminal charges in Plamegate scandal. Baker Botts is, you know, perhaps the law firm with the closest ties to the Bush administration, and here is Katharine Armstrong hosting Cheney and having lobbied the White House directly on behalf of Baker Botts. The part that’s the most, I think, is the most stunning is Armstrong nor Baker Botts will disclose for whom she was lobbying the White House for Baker Botts.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Katharine Armstrong and her business partner also – or her business partner represents Lockheed Martin?

ROBERT BRYCE: Karen Johnson is her business partner, and she has apparently very close ties to Karl Rove. She lobbies for Lockheed Martin and has a number of other lobby contracts. You know, she has -- her profile has grown, particularly here in the last couple of years, because of her associations with Rove, but also just her close ties to the administration more generally.

If I can just jump back to Armstrong real briefly, the other connection with Rove here is that Armstrong's parents, Anne Armstrong and the late Tobin Armstrong were the people who originally backed Rove as a political consultant back in the early 1980s. When Karl Rove started Rove & Company, the capital that he needed to start that business came from the Armstrongs. Further, Rove now has an office in the White House. The office that he occupies used to be occupied by Anne Armstrong. She was a leading figure in the Nixon White House, and so she had an office in the Nixon White House and was one of the people, in fact, allegedly, who helped to convince Nixon to resign after the Watergate scandal.

So, you know, the Armstrong Republican connection here in Texas are long and deep. And the fact that this is happening on the Armstrong ranch, where Rove has hunted many times and big shot Republicans have been hunting for years is, I think, just another indicator of this Republican elite, you know, political elite that exists here in Texas, and hunting is what they do when they want to get together.

AMY GOODMAN: Anne Armstrong was a director of Halliburton when the board chose Dick Cheney to be the C.E.O.?

ROBERT BRYCE: She was. And the other thing that I find interesting about her and about the Halliburton connection is that for many years, while she was on the Halliburton board, she was also on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Well, why is that interesting? Well, because the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has access to America's most secret secrets. And there's another connection that exists even today with Halliburton on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and that is that Ray Hunt, who is another -- has close ties to the Bush White House, is also on the -- sits on the board of Halliburton and sits on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board simultaneously, which was the case that Anne Armstrong had for many years. She sat on both the PFIAB and the Halliburton board at the same time.

CONTINUED w/links to audio...

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/15/1436208

What Was Dick Really Hiding?

by emptywheel

EXCERPT...

Katharine Armstrong, Grande-Dame-in-Training

By all appearances Katharine seems to be adopting her mother's mantle as big Republican insider, and incidentally, as the most vocal representative of the Armstrong family. She, like her mother, has benefited from Republican patronage, including the Bush II appointment to the Texas Game and Wildlife Commission. And, like her mother, she is closely involved with the defense contractors that make Republican administrations rich.

But before we talk about her lobbying, I'd like to look at some of the high-level meetings Katharine has attended. Katharine Armstrong has been invited to sleep-overs at the White House. She attended the White House dinner for Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (and apparently sat next to the Prince). This was a public function, though, with everyone from Lynn Swann to Yo-Yo-Ma--they even let Mary Cheney's partner attend! So it's not surprising that the former daughter of the Ambassador to the UK and a close Texas friend would get an invite.

But Katharine's visits with Bush get more interesting when you look at her visits to Crawford. She was invited when Blair visited Bush at the Crawford Ranch in April 2002.

Bush and First Lady Laura Bush hosted Blair and his wife Cherie Saturday night for a dinner of pecan-smoked beef tenderloin and pineapple upside-down cake at the Prairie Chapel Ranch.

Also present were senior aides to both leaders, as well as Jenna Bush, one of the two Bush daughters, and Kathryn, the Blair's infant daughter, and Gale Booth, Mrs. Blair's mother.

Also invited was Katharine Armstrong Idsal, head of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission.

This was the meeting, recall, when Bush and Blair decided to go to war against Iraq.

Downing Street has consistently refused to disclose the date on which Mr Blair promised George Bush that Britain would join the US in an invasion of Iraq. But evidence obtained by the IoS suggests that it was as early as April 2002, when the Prime Minister met President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

A ruling by the Parliamentary Ombudsman, seen by the IoS, says the Government sought advice about the legality of a possible invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2002 as the result of "statements made in a particular press release".

(snip)

The date of the release was 9 April 2002, the day after Mr Blair completed his two-day summit with Mr Bush in Texas. The implication is that immediately after the Downing Street official spokesman had denied that the meeting was a "council of war", the Government was investigating the legality of such a war.

So it appears (unless the "was invited" label suggests she didn't show) that Katharine Armstrong happened to be present the weekend Bush and Blair decided to go to war.

Then, last August, while Cindy Sheehan was camping outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Katharine Armstrong was visiting the ranch again.

"I'm going to have lunch with Secretary of State Rice, talk a little business; Mrs. Bush, talk a little business; we've got a friend from South Texas here, named Katharine Armstrong;

Now, this report appeared on Monday August 22, but Katharine's presence (the article is confusing, because it describes both Katharine Armstrong and Lance Armstrong, by last name, going on bike rides with Bush) is related to be the "Saturday before last" which would make it August 13, 2005. That's curious timing because of three events that happened earlier that week. First, on Monday August 8, Cindy Sheehan was told that she and her supporters might be arrested starting that Thursday, August 11.

Folks speculated at the time that the rumored arrests might be planned in response to two other events that would occur that week, a Thursday meeting with Condi and Rummy (and, according to the picture released by the White House, but not news reports, Dick) and a Friday fundraiser. As the NYT reported that week:

It is not clear how the White House will handle Ms. Sheehan. Mr. Bush usually comes and goes from the ranch by helicopter, but he might have to drive by her on Friday, when he is scheduled to attend a Republican fund-raiser at a ranch just down the road from where Ms. Sheehan is camped out. She will no doubt get another wave of publicity on Thursday, when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice join Mr. Bush at the ranch to discuss the war.

CONTINUED...

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/02/what_was_dick_r.html