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Edited on Wed Feb-15-06 10:36 PM by Peace Patriot
Several things struck me about it. First, that this was a very rehearsed story. Of course, he had four days to cobble it together and get it down pat, with his good bud Katherine Armstrong having been chosen to pave the newspath on the details. Cheney keeps repeating the rehearsed parts of the press coverage story over and over. They are: 1) that Armstrong was an "eyewitness" (he repeats it four times) and thus the best person to contact the press; 2) that his sole concern, re the press, was that the story that went out was "accurate" (he repeats this eight times); and 3) that it was a "complicated" story (repeated twice) and thus not likely to be gotten right by the press corps (i.e., need for the story to be managed).
Also, the Faux reporter quite obviously "leads" him on some parts of his tale (puts words in his mouth--I don't know from what script). Some of these are: a) that Whittington caught "part of the shot"; b) that Cheney "ran over to him" immediately; and c) the Aaron Burr reference and that these were "different circumstances" (than the Burr shooting).
The Faux reporter dwells on the press coverage aspect of the story at length--and just lets the details of the shooting go by in the first part of the interview. So it's difficult to determine how rehearsed those details were. They move on too quickly to the press coverage. I'll get to those details in a moment. They are geometric in their precision. I imagine they mapped it all out at the ranch, or on AF-2, to make sure the tale would hold up. But first...
Another thing he wanted to emphasize (repeated twice) was that it was "wild quail"--though set up by spotters on horses with radios, with the "hunters" in vehicles--but his point was that it wasn't pen-raised quail. A Texas manhood thing, I guess.
He gives a lot of excuses for the long delay in contacting the press, and for the way they contacted the press--which was that his good bud Katherine Armstrong called the tiny local newspaper, couldn't get a reporter right away, at first had trouble making the newspaper contact understand the details (like the difference between "rifle bullet" and "a shotgun"), and it finally went up on that small paper's web site.
He also had many excuses for not going public himself until today. These excuses ranged from his great concern for his friend, his concern about Whittington's family and how they would find out about it, his great concern for the "accuracy" of reports, and his distrust of the Washington press corps. He even says, at one point that, "I had a bit of the feeling that the press corps was upset because, to some extent, it (the shooting?) was about them (the Washington press corps)." (--my notes in parenthesis). What could he mean? That he had "fired one" at the Washington press corps (not just at Whittington) by by-passing them in favor of the tiny Corpus Christi newspaper, because he was certain that they would get it wrong (be disobedient to VP press dictates?), and would not take his word for what happened--would disbelieve him and question him? And here the Armstrong "witness" thing comes in again. He says, "And she was the most credible one to do it (notify the press) because she was a witness. It wasn't me in terms of saying, here's what happened...".
Nice little inside look at Cheney's paranoia and duplicity, that. He doesn't think anyone will believe HIM. Wonder why. That mean old "liberal media."
Anyway, so we have three things here that he is likely lying about, in some fashion (based on his repetitions--memorized phrases and words?): that Armstrong was an eyewitness (how he put it is, she saw the whole thing, and he only saw "part of it")(--what he meant by this is unexplained, and there is no followup); that he wanted the story to be "accurate" (likely, in truth, what they have put out is a cover story, and they needed time to put it together); and that the story was too "complicated" for the press corps to understand (likely this means that there were many complications in putting together a believable story and getting everyone's story straight, with one of those complications undoubtedly being Whittington, who was in ICU, and what he would agree to*).
*This item of what may be the real story stands out to me. Whittington was in surgery, in ICU, unconscious much of the time, while they were trying to put the story together, and thus was unavailable to be bullied, bribed, threatened, cozened, or whatever they were up to, with him, to get his part of the story to fit with the other parts of the story. This undoubtedly was the reason for the delay in releasing any information, and the long delay in Cheney speaking to the press. He had to make sure that Whittington would back him up, if Whittington survived. And what I'm saying here puts the lie to almost everything Cheney says in the interview. But I'd bet money that my speculation is much closer to the truth than anything Cheney said.
Cheney's response is most effusive--and suspicious--when he talks about Whittington's attitude toward being shot.
Here's Cheney, in his own words: "He's been fantastic. He's a gentleman in every respect. He oftentimes expressed more concern about me than about himself. He's been in good spirits, unfailingly cheerful...". And, "He literally was more concerned about me and the impact on me than he was on the fact that he'd been shot. He's a -- I guess I'd describe him as a true Texas gentleman, a very successful attorney, successful businessman in Austin; a gentleman in every respect of the word. And he's been superb."
A "true Texas gentleman." Well, these people have forever sullied the name of Texas and any concept of "gentlemanliness" and honor that might have adhered to the name. Mass murderers, massive thieves, liars, fascists, mean SOBs who steal food and medicine and winter heat from little old ladies and sick people and children. That's some standard of behavior. And I can only guess at what really might have gone down between Cheney and Whittington (I'm thinking blackmail, extortion, attempted murder). But what I feel really sure of, in my bones, is that Whittington has NOT been "unfailingly cheerful" about being shot, and that he is NOT "more concerned about" Cheney than about himself. This sounds to me like a complete fabrication--something copied by a PR expert right out of some John Wayne/Ronald Reagan movie about old cowpokes in the old west.
There are a couple of obvious holes in Cheney's story of the actual shooting (at the beginning of the interview). 1) Faux asks him to characterize his relationship with Whittington--"close friend? friendly acquaintance?" etc.--and Cheney answers "No, an acquaintance..."--this simply does not fit with his great concern about his friend, repeatedly expressed elsewhere in the interview. 2) He gives different times--"thirty minutes," and "under an hour"--for how long it took to get Whittington to a hospital. 3) He mentions "the other hunter" who was standing near Cheney when the shooting occurred, and an "outrider" (quail spotter), but doesn't name them (were they questioned? do their stories gel with Cheney's? who are they?)
He seems to have the number "30" on the brain. "30" minutes to get Whittington to a hospital. He met Whittington 30 years ago. He met the Armstrongs 30 years ago. And he was 30 yards from Whittington when he shot him. Maybe a coincidence. Maybe a memory device. Hard to tell.
When he describes the shooting, he's very precise: a bird blushed "off to the west" to his right (convenient--setting sun in Cheney's eyes); he then says "I turned" and shot at the bird (presumably wasn't facing west, at first, but turned west). He says the sun was "directly behind" Whittington, and that "that affected (my) vision, too, I'm sure." He describes Whittington as wearing an orange vest and being properly dressed, but being down in "a little bit of a gully" and Cheney didn't see the upper part of his body until he was already falling from the shot.
And how did Whittington get into that position vis a vis Cheney? To me, that is a major question. Where was the Secret Service when this guy went wandering off on his own, gun in hand, to an unseen location, supposedly to look for a bird he'd shot, and somehow ended up back near Cheney (who says that he and the "other hunter" and the outrider had walked about a hundred yards away from the spot where Whittington was looking for his bird)? How could Whittington have done this without setting off alarm bells in the Secret Service detail? They've got all these old guys--probably drinking or drunk (which Cheney denies)--playing with guns, playing at being "hunters," and one them a mere "acquaintance" of Cheney's (Cheney says it was the first time he hunted with Whittington)--and the Secret Service lets Whittington get out of sight? I just don't buy it.
Very likely this is a totally invented story--and the four days it took for Cheney to appear in a softball interview on Faux News were spent inventing it, and bullying witnesses, possibly including the Secret Service (and Whittington himself), on agreeing to the details or shutting up about it. Cheney had to have someone who was totally in his pocket--Katherine Armstrong--peddle this tale to a tiny newspaper where "she knew the reporters", while they were still inventing the details, so that no one would catch them early in contradictions. The handling of the news story speaks volumes about its "accuracy"--as does Cheney's obsessive dwelling on his purported desire that the story be "accurate." (--accurately twisted; accurately exculpatory; unassailably whitewashed; plausible).
Well, enough of this. I strongly suspect a "can of worms"--a Pandora's box--possibly involving the vast corruption in the Republican Party, lurking beneath this story. I may be wrong. It's possible that Cheney simply can't open his mouth without lying; his first instinct is to lie--and that it did happen the way he tells it, but that he has brought suspicion on himself by overly-managing the story (he says this was entirely his idea, or, rather, that he went along with Armstrong's suggestion for managing it). But I strongly feel, having studied this interview carefully, that something is very seriously amiss with this incident. And we should continue looking deeper at Whittington's Republican and business connections for the answer, and should presume the worst as a premise.
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