When Dick Cheney accidentally blasted his friend with a shotgun on Satuday afternoon, he decided to let Katharine Armstong handle the issue of how or whether to disclose than an incident had taken place on her property. Or, at least, that is what we were initially led to believe. The Washington Post reported:
It was Armstrong’s decision to alert the news media. Cheney’s office made no public announcement, deciding to defer to Armstrong because the incident had taken place on her property. Armstrong called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and when a reporter from the paper called the White House, the vice president’s office confirmed the account.
Cheney has since changed his version of events. He now admits that he signed off on the decision to have Ms. Armstrong leak the news to a local paper because “I thought that made good sense because you can get as accurate a story as possible from somebody who knows and understands hunting. Then it would immediately go up to the wires and be posted on the Web site, which is the way it went out. I thought that was the right call. I still do.”
So how accurate was Ms. Armstrong?
Here are some of her initial accounts to news authorities.
To the Associated Press via the Washington Post’s Shailagh Murray and Peter Baker:
According to Armstrong’s account, she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail. Whittington shot a bird and as he went to retrieve it, Cheney and the third hunter discovered a second covey.
Whittington “came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn’t signal them or indicate to them or announce himself,” Armstrong said, according to the Associated Press.
Cheney’s office referred other reporters to Armstrong for a witness account, but after speaking to some members of the media yesterday afternoon, Armstrong stopped returning phone calls.
She told reporters that the small shotgun pellets “broke the skin” and that the blast “knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn’t get in his eyes or anything like that.”
“Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been,” she said. “The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came.”
On February 13th, Susan Page of USA Today reported on her conversation with Katherine Armstrong.
Such hunting accidents aren’t rare, Armstrong said, but there are few shootings on record by presidents or vice presidents. Vice President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. In some ways, Cheney’s accident is more reminiscent of occasions when President Ford drove golf balls into a crowd, beaning bystanders.
“These things happen,” Armstrong said, expressing exasperation with reporters who seemed to know nothing about hunting. “It’s a shotgun, not a rifle,” she said, “and it’s a spray of pellets … not bullets.”
She also told Page that Whittington was sitting up in bed and would probably leave the hospital that day (Monday).
This is what she told Anne Kornblut of the New York Times:
‘This all happened pretty quickly,” Ms. Armstrong said in a telephone interview from her ranch. Mr. Whittington, she said, ”did not announce — which would be protocol — ‘Hey, it’s me, I’m coming up,’ ” she said.
”He didn’t do what he was supposed to do,” she added, referring to Mr. Whittington. ”So when a bird flushed and the vice president swung in to shoot it, Harry was where the bird was.”
Mr. Whittington was ”sprayed — peppered, is what we call it — on his right side, on part of his face, neck, shoulder and rib cage,” she said, noting that she, too, had been sprayed on her leg in a hunting accident.
”A shotgun sprays a bunch of little bitty pellets; it’s not a bullet involved,” Ms. Armstrong said. She said she believed that Mr. Cheney was shooting a 28-gauge shotgun and added that guests typically bring their own firearms.
She told the Houston Chronicle:
Armstrong, who witnessed the accident from a nearby vehicle, said Whittington was knocked down by the bird-shot pellets, breaking the skin in several places.
“It stunned him. He’ll be sore. But he was immediately talking and that was the great thing,” said Armstrong, who stressed none of the pellets struck his eyes or any vital parts. “The vice president had an excellent medical detail and they were over him so fast.”
This is what happened. The man was badly hurt and initially unresponsive. He had over two hundred small wounds, including deep wounds in his chest that had penetrated through his winter clothing and lodged near his heart. He was medivaced out by helicopter and no one wanted to make an announcement until it was determined he would live. Once they were confident that Whittington would live, they spread word that it was Whittington’s fault, that he was knocked silly, but it was no big deal. He was peppered and bruised. He was doing fine, sitting up, and would leave the hospital shortly.
So, Cheney had Armstrong lie for him. End of story.
