15.2.06

A beer at lunch under an old oak tree


For the archives (developing story). I am saving the clippings in the comments section.

Publicadas por Andrés Hax a la/s 2/15/2006

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Andrés Hax dijo...

February 16, 2006
Silence Broken as Cheney Points Only to Himself
By DAVID E. SANGER and ANNE E. KORNBLUT
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 —Vice President Dick Cheney broke a four-day silence on Wednesday about his accidental shooting of a hunting partner, saying he took full responsibility for the incident while vigorously defending his decision to delay releasing news about it until the next day.

"Ultimately, I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry," Mr. Cheney said, appearing a bit shaken in a hastily arranged interview on Fox News to provide his version of events in a just-the-facts monotone.

Mr. Cheney's decision to submit to an interview was an effort to contain the political fallout and to try to end an episode that has knocked the entire White House off stride.

But it did not obscure the tensions that have riven the administration since the accident on Saturday, and in a sign of disagreement at the very top, the White House signaled that President Bush wished that Mr. Cheney had made the news public more quickly.

Answering questions from Brit Hume, Mr. Cheney said that he consumed "a beer at lunch" on Saturday under an old oak tree, but that the accident occurred hours later, and "nobody was under the influence" of alcohol. He said no one had intended to blame the hunting partner, Harry M. Whittington, for being in the line of fire after coming up unannounced about 30 yards from Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Whittington was described as being in stable condition after a minor heart attack on Tuesday in Corpus Christi, Tex.

Mr. Cheney turned from a tone of regret — "It was one of the worst days of my life" — to one of defiance when questioned about the way he chose to disclose the shooting.

Mr. Cheney said that he delayed making the news public because "this was a complicated story" and that he would do so again. It was more important to contact members of Mr. Whittington's family, he said, than to get the story out to the public immediately.

Hours before Mr. Cheney taped the interview, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, suggested to reporters on Air Force One that Mr. Bush believed that the matter should have been handled differently. Mr. McClellan said that when he said, as he first did on Monday, that "you can always look back at these issues and work to do better," he was "speaking on behalf of the White House and the president."

It was a rare hint of a split between the president, who prizes loyalty and discretion, and the vice president, who has always tried to exert his considerable influence behind the scenes. Mr. Cheney arranged to be interviewed by Mr. Hume, a journalist with whom the vice president has long felt comfortable. His approach to the interview was to deal with the accident as he might deal with a policy decision that turned out badly and to accept responsibility as a way of moving on.

"You can talk about all of the other conditions that existed at the time, but that's the bottom line, and there's no — it's not Harry's fault," Mr. Cheney said under polite but persistent questioning. "You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."

Asked why the White House had made no announcement of the incident, even though it maintains instant communications with Mr. Cheney's entourage and has a multi-million dollar press operation, Mr. Cheney said that he had "no press person" with him. So he agreed that the ranch owner should put out the story, figuring that wire services would pick it up and disseminate it.

He suggested that the outcry about his failure to release the news, and then just to a local newspaper, reflected the unhappiness of the White House press corps that they were left out of the first reports.

"They didn't like the idea that we called The Corpus Christi Caller-Times instead of The New York Times," Mr. Cheney said. "But it strikes me that The Corpus Christi Caller-Times is just as valid a news outlet as The New York Times is, especially for covering a major story in south Texas."

By Mr. Cheney's account, he realized that Mr. Whittington was standing off to the side and in the line of fire just as he squeezed the trigger. A bird was flushed out of the brush, Mr. Cheney said, and he recalled swinging to his right to follow it.

"I turned and shot at the bird and at that second saw Harry standing there," Mr. Cheney said. "I didn't know he was there."

"You had pulled the trigger and you saw him?" Mr. Hume asked.

"Well, I saw him fall, basically," Mr. Cheney said. "It had happened so fast."

Asked to explain how the accident occurred, the vice president said Mr. Whittington, dressed in orange hunting gear and wearing protective glasses, had been standing in a slight gully with the setting sun directly behind him. "That affected the vision, too, I'm sure," Mr. Cheney said.

After Mr. Whittington fell, Mr. Cheney rushed over and found him on his back, conscious but bleeding and stunned, with one eye open.

"I said, 'Harry, I had no idea you were there,' " Mr. Cheney recalled. "He didn't respond. The image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there's Harry falling."

When asked whether anyone in the group had been drinking, Mr. Cheney said: "No, you don't hunt with people who drink. That's not a good idea."

A few moments later, he said that at a lunch barbecue several hours before the accident he had a beer. He did not say whether his partners also consumed alcohol. Hunting resume at 3 p.m. he said.

"The five of us who were in that party were together all afternoon," he added. "Nobody was drinking. Nobody was under the influence."

"Shooting Safety Rules" of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department warn, "Don't drink alcohol or take drugs before or while handling firearms or bow and arrows."

They do not specify how much time should pass before handling arms, but note that "alcohol and drugs impair normal physical and mental body functions and must not be used before or while handling firearms or archery equipment."

In agreeing to the interview, Mr. Cheney clearly sought to end days of turmoil surrounding the shooting. Even Republicans had been critical of him. Torie Clark, a Pentagon spokeswoman in Mr. Bush's first term, said on CNN, "Letting your friend alert the local Texas newspaper as to what happened does not suffice, in terms of getting out the bad news."

Mr. Cheney suggested in the interview that he had been advised by Mr. McClellan and Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush's counselor and longtime communications adviser, to disclose what had happened more broadly and more quickly.

"I've got nothing but good things to say about Scott McClellan and Dan Bartlett," Mr. Cheney said, after days in which Mr. McClellan was pummeled by the press corps. "They urged us to get the story out. The decision about how it got out, basically, was my responsibility."

Until Mr. Cheney acknowledged having had a beer at lunch, members of the hunting party had been adamant that no alcohol was involved. Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the ranch, had said in interviews that Dr Pepper was served at lunch and that no one was drinking. In interviews with The Times and other papers, Ms. Armstrong heavily implied that no alcohol was served at all.

"No, zero, zippo, and I don't drink at all," she said in an interview published on Monday in The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the paper she initially called. "No one was drinking."

The administration faced more questions about why the White House Situation Room, when told of the accident by a member of Mr. Cheney's entourage on Saturday evening, was not told that Mr. Cheney fired the shot. The report was passed to Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, and he called Mr. Bush, Mr. McClellan has said.

The White House declined to respond to repeated requests on Wednesday to speak to Mr. Card about what he was initially told, and how decisions about releasing the news were made.

http://nytimes.com/2006/02/16/politics/16cheney.html?ei=5094&en=c06043633959da6e&hp=&ex=1140152400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

febrero 15, 2006

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