A lot of times people joke about Cheney being the “real president” or the “shadow president” but yesterday’s White House press conference makes this startlingly clear.
A lot of people have been focusing on how long it took to notify the press about Cheney shooting a man in the face, or why he let the property owner be the one to release the story. Those are interesting angles to pursue, but what I want to focus on is how long it took Bush and Bush’s people to learn about the event.
Reconstructing what happened is that Cheney was in a “hunting” party with 2-4 other civilians, the lawyer he shot (Whittington), the property owner (Armstrong) and hunter #3. The only other people present were Cheney’s Secret Service (USSS) detail and perhaps one or two of Cheney’s staff (medical). Whittington does whatever he did and Cheney shoots him.
The USSS called in a helicopter from Corpus Christi hospital to airlift Whittington. What happened after that is the first question.
How long did it take for the White House’s Situation Room to learn of the event?
McClellan says he was informed “late” Saturday night which he later clarifies to mean 5:00-6:00am or so.
McClellan is not only the official spokesperson for the White House, he’s also in charge of the President’s press office. McClellan clearly states he was woken up and then later learned at 5:00am or 6:00am that it was Cheney who was the shooter. Therefore McClellan himself did not know the key details about the incident until 12 hours after it happened.
The reason they wake up McClellan in cases like this is because it’s normal that the press would be calling for statements about what happened. McClellan’s job is to coordinate the official press releases and statements so they can go out on the wire. 4:00am is mid to late morning in Europe and the afternoon in Asia so there’s always media somewhere “awake” and interested in running the story, not to mention the 24-hour news channels in America like CNN.
McClellan stonewalled a barrage of questions on when Bush himself was informed. Earlier McClellan says that he himself didn’t learn until 5:00am at the earliest. McClellan also said that he had been notified by the “Situation Room” which is obviously up and running 24 hours a day.
Here is the key part of the press conference:
Q Scott, it’s getting very confusing to try to figure out who knew what when, and why, you know, once Mr. Whittington’s immediate medical needs were being addressed, it sounds like everything just shut down. Was there no staff member with the Vice President —
MR. McCLELLAN: No, actually, as I pointed out, there was information that was coming into people back here, all the way at 3:00 a.m. in the morning and beyond. So additional information was coming to light from what occurred down in the Corpus Christi area of Texas.
What “additional information” had to come to light? This wasn’t some complex event. A very small group of people were shooting animals. Cheney blasted one of the people in his group and the guy was flown to the hospital. McClellan said that Card knew between 7:00pm-8:00pm (at least 90 minutes after it happened) that there had been “an incident” but it wasn’t until 3:00am at the earliest that they were told Cheney was the shooter.
The reason the “additional information” was delayed had to be Whittington’s medical condition. Despite all the casual comments from Armstrong when she spoke to the press, this guy Whittington was actually admitted into the intensive care unit of the hospital. He was shot in the face at fairly close range by Cheney, not “peppered” by some peripheral shot.
Once the helicopter arrived to take Whittington to the hospital, it looks like Cheney decided to clamp down on the incident and do some damage control. Obviously he had to have had one guy (probably USSS) inside the hospital to monitor Whittington’s condition. But where did Cheney and the others go? They didn’t fly to Washington, that’s for sure.
My guess is they holed up at Armstrong’s residence, since she is a long-term GOP insider. They probably sat there getting updates about Whittington until very late at night, when they felt confident he would live. They coordinated the story about how it was Whittington’s fault for sneaking up behind Cheney etc. It was then and only then that they called the Situation Room to tell them that Cheney was the shooter, which informed McClellan, Rove and Card, who then told Bush whenever he woke up.
Cheney had full control over the small group who was there during the shooting. The fact that none of them called the Situation Room with the full details until at least 6 hours after the shooting is extremely disturbing, especially since it would seem normal that the USSS with Cheney would relay this information to other USSS agents who would then get this information to the Situation Room.
After the White House knew, look what happened
So by 5:00am on Sunday morning, McClellan, Card and Rove all know exactly what happened. Looking at McClellan’s statements, it seems like he wanted to immediately issue a press release. Why not? It was just an “accident”, the guy was going to be ok, and it’s normal procedure to inform the press of such events. Yet that’s not what happened at all.
McClellan admits several times that Cheney was adamant that his office would be the one to release the information. He then decided that Armstrong would tell the press around 11:00am, which is about 19 hours after the incident occurred. A lot of people ask why did she call a long-time friend at a local paper. The obvious guess would be to make sure that she was quoted exactly the way she wanted. The incident was also reported after the big morning television talk shows had aired.
So here are McClellan and his boys with this bit of press information and they don’t write any statements, they don’t page their favorite reporters and they don’t have anything to do. They’re running around the Situation Room with this “hot” information and yet don’t have anything to do because they’re told Cheney and his people will handle it.
A reporter even says “it also sounds as though your suggestions about how to handle this were disregarded by the Vice President’s Office” to which McClellan makes no substantative reply.
Why is all of this so important?
It’s important because it shows just how little disregard Cheney has for informing Bush’s people or for following their advice. A reporter asked McClellan point blank if Cheney himself had phoned Bush and McClellan refused to answer and instead called on another reporter, which strongly suggests that Cheney did not in fact call Bush.
Even if there are no shady details about this incident – if everyone was sober and had hunting licenses and it was a complete accident – how is it possible that Cheney kept the White House in the dark so long about this?
We’ve all been raised to think of the Vice President’s office as subordinate to the President’s office. We’re used to Vice Presidents being ceremonial in nature, a sort of “stand by” in case something happens to the President, but not a job with any real power.
Since the first day Cheney came into power, he has radically changed all of that. There is ample evidence that Cheney went directly to the DIA, the CIA, the NSA and other intelligence agencies and demanded they begin feeding him intelligence data, including on those he considered political enemies.
It was Cheney who held the still-secret Energy Taskforce meetings to coordinate policy with corporate bigwigs like Enron’s Kenneth Lay. Remember 9/11? Bush was in a Florida classroom reading a book about goats. What was Cheney doing though? He was sitting in the White House. After the incident began, he was in the Situation Room handling the country’s response while Bush flew around for a few hours in Air Force 1. Secretary of Transporation Norman Mineta was in the Situation Room with Cheney as 9/11 unfolded, including during the time before Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
The Office of Special Plans, which slanted all the intelligence to make Iraq look dangerous, was run by Rumsfeld and Cheney. It was Cheney who got “Scooter” Libby to coordinate the hit campaign on Joseph Wilson and leak the information about his wife Valerie Plame.
Stephen Cambone, who has been the architect of much evil in the administration, served under Cheney when Cheney was Defense Secretary. Cambone is the one who set up the Secret Access Programs (SAPs) which led to the torture at Abu Ghraib.
It was also Cheney’s man named David Addington who was one of the principle people who pushed the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel to formulate the legal justifications on which torture was authorized. Cheney then later went on the Senate floor and pushed for an exemption for CIA agents to torture people.
Have you ever heard of Cardinal Richeliu? From his wikipedia entry:
The Cardinal de Richelieu was often known by the title of the King’s “Chief Minister.” As a result, he is sometimes considered to be the world’s first Prime Minister. He sought to consolidate royal power and crush domestic factions. By restraining the power of the nobility, he transformed France into a strongly centralised state.
Sounds about right for Cheney, whose holds the real power behind Bush’s “unitary executive” monarchy-like presidency.
Ever heard of Vladimiro Montesinos? He was the “Richelieu” to Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori. From wikipedia:
Montesinos also took care of Fujimori’s political opponents. Evidence shows he supervised a death squad known as the Grupo Colina, part of the National Intelligence Service, which was thought to have been responsible for the La Cantuta massacre, in which nine students and a professor disappeared from La Cantuta university on July 18, 1992. Four officers who were tortured after plotting a coup d’état against Fujimori in November 1992 stated that Montesinos took an active part in torturing them.
On March 16, 1998, former Peruvian Army Intelligence Agent Luisa Zanatta accused Montesinos of ordering illegal wiretaps of leading politicians and journalists.
McClellan stated several times that no press people were traveling with Cheney. If he hadn’t shot Whittington, would anyone have even known he was down in Texas on a canned hunt?
Cheney operates independently, without press coverage, and it’s now clear that he is the one who dictated when and how both the White House would learn of his shooting incident as well as when and how the press would learn about it.
If you ever needed proof that the Vice President is not subordinate to the President, this is it.
As he neared his death, Cardinal Richelieu faced a plot that threatened to remove him from power. The cardinal had introduced a young man named Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, marquis de Cinq-Mars to Louis XIII’s court. The Cardinal had been a friend of Cinq-Mars’ father. More importantly, Richelieu hoped that Cinq-Mars would become Louis’ favourite, so that he could indirectly exercise greater influence over the monarch’s decisions. Cinq-Mars had become the royal favourite by 1639, but, contrary to Cardinal Richelieu’s belief, he was not easy to control. The young marquis realised that Richelieu would not permit him to gain political power. In 1641, he participated in the comte de Soissons’ failed conspiracy against Richelieu, but was not discovered. Next year, he schemed with leading nobles (including the King’s brother, the duc d’Orléans) to raise a rebellion; he also signed a secret agreement with the King of Spain, who promised to aid the rebels. Richelieu’s spy service, however, discovered the plot, and the Cardinal received a copy of the treaty. Cinq-Mars was promptly arrested and executed; although Louis approved the use of capital punishment, he grew more distant from Richelieu as a result.
At least Richelieu was a major patron of the arts…
This is cross-posted from Flogging the Simian
Peace
