So Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face. But that’s not the whole story. What I thought was an interesting schadenfreuden tidbit about a man we love to hate has turned into a dramatic story about how this presidential administration communicates.
From what we know now, at around 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Dick Cheney accidentally shot Harry Whittington with his 28-gauge shotgun loaded with birdshot.
Whittington unknowingly stood up in the line of fire when retrieving the quail he had just killed. The birdshot got him in the face, neck and torso. Tuesday morning Whittington suffered a minor heart attack as a result of a piece of birdshot becoming lodged in his heart.
The initial “Cheney’s got a gun” slant on the story was actually pretty funny. The blogosohere and late-night shows were all atwitter with the story about the very man who told colleague Patrick Leahy to “go fuck yourself” and then defended it later on Fox News as something that “badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue.”
But even so, someone likened the situation to Cheney accidentally backing over the paperboy and breaking his leg. It’s a sad story.
Nobody wants to hurt his or her friends. Cheney must be feeling incredible guilt right now. On some level, we all kind of sympathize with him.
So why isn’t that the story? From an administration famous for its spin, I would expect to see headlines such as “A devastated vice president sits near wounded friend’s side” or “Tragic hunting accident leaves Dick Cheney in state of guilt-stricken remorse.”
Instead, the administration largely ignored the fact that anything happened at all.
At the time of my deadline, Cheney’s office had issued two statements since the incident. One issued on the 13th is about a hunting fee technicality, and one issued on the 14th is about Whittington’s condition. Neither statement make note of the fact that Mr. Cheney shot Mr. Whittington. In fact, there are no statements from the administration at all announcing the matter. The nation learned about the incident by what it seems is the only way we get any real information out of the administration these days, by a leak.
According to Scott McClellan in a press conference Monday, Dick Cheney decided to get the information out Sunday morning by way of Katherine Armstrong, the owner of the ranch where the hunting party was taking place. She gave her eyewitness account to the local media. The national media, including the White House Press corps, heard about the incident that way.
So what was going on? We’ve got Scott McClellan, who claims he didn’t know Cheney was the shooter until Sunday morning, saying that the vice president’s office had designated an eyewitness to give a verbal statement to the press. We’ve got said eyewitness claiming she went to the press on her own. We also have absolutely no information about the incident coming from the administration that is unprovoked by the press.
Furthermore, McClellan’s timeline about the incident made no sense at all. He claimed that he initially heard there had been an accident with
Cheney’s hunting party Saturday evening, but didn’t find out that it was Cheney who had done the shooting until Sunday morning. Who goes to bed with that kind of information? An accident possibly involving guns and definitely involving the vice president I would say warrants a follow-up call. For all he knew Cheney could have been shot. McClellan claims information was trickling in as late as 3 a.m.
Sunday. I understand how information about Whittington’s condition would need constant updates, but the fact that Cheney was the shooter is a fact that will never change, and should have been in the initial report.
The most interesting part of the convoluted timeline McClellan provided was that Karl Rove spoke with Katherine Armstrong Saturday evening, and indicated that it was
after that that the president learned Cheney was the shooter. Why is Bush’s brain talking to Cheney’s hunting pal? Shouldn’t the Secret Service be doing the communicating?
We live in the information age.
Reporters have cell phones and Blackberries, as do administration officials. I’m sure the ranch has a landline. The White House
Communications Agency, which also serves the vice president, is the most well connected entity in the world. There is no excuse for an incident like this to be undercommunicated.
Unless, of course, they didn’t want to communicate it. With a story as juicy as this one, it makes no sense that the White House would not want to control it, unless it was trying to control it so that it didn’t become a story at all.
I hope that Mr. Whittington recovers completely. I hope maybe this story increases awareness about hunting safety. I hope one day we’ll know what really went on last weekend.

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