White House under fire over Cheney shooting

WASHINGTON - President Bush knew Saturday evening that Vice President Dick Cheney had accidentally shot a hunting companion, but the information wasn’t made public until the next day by a private citizen, the White House acknowledged Monday.

In a contentious media briefing, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Cheney’s staff was focused on making sure that the shooting victim, Texas attorney Harry Whittington, was receiving adequate medical care after the shooting on the private Armstrong Ranch in south Texas. Whittington and Cheney were hunting quail together.

Cheney apparently did not see Whittington and the vice president accidentally hit him in the face, neck and chest with bird shot, according to accounts of the accident.

Whittington was in stable condition at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial and was moved from intensive care to a “step-down unit” on Monday. Doctors decided to leave several birdshot pellets lodged in his skin rather than try to remove them.

Victim bouncing back
In cases like Whittington’s, it’s better to leave them there than to try to extract them, said David Blanchard, Christus Spohn chief of emergency care. He put the number of remaining pellets at “more than I can count on the fingers of my hand, but less than 100.”

Peter Banko, the hospital’s administrator, said some pellets had been removed but gave no number.

Blanchard said Whittington was “awake, alert, in good humor, (and) has made a few jokes.”

“In all likelihood, he will continue the rest of his long life and his longevity with those pellets remaining in place,” he said.

White House chief of staff Andrew Card told Bush about Cheney’s involvement in the shotgun accident on Saturday night.

McClellan was informed that night that someone in the Cheney hunting party was involved, but he didn’t know that Cheney was the shooter until the next morning, he said.

McClellan said that when he learned, around 6 a.m. Sunday, he urged the vice president’s office to get the information out “as quickly as possible.”

News came from ranch owner
Ranch owner Katharine Armstrong said no one discussed notifying the public of the accident Saturday because they were so consumed with making sure Whittington was OK. She said the family realized in the morning that it would be a story and decided to call the local newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. She said she then discussed the news coverage with Cheney for the first time.

“I said, Mr. Vice President, this is going to be public, and I’m comfortable going to the hometown newspaper,” she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “And he said ‘you go ahead and do whatever you are comfortable doing.’ ”

McClellan said, “The vice president thought that Mrs. Armstrong should be the first one to go out there and provide that information to the public, which she did. She reached out early Sunday morning to do so.”

The White House did not inform the national media of the accident, but the vice president’s office confirmed the story after journalists called to ask about the report on the Caller-Times Web site nearly 24 hours after the shooting.

Contentious exchange
On Monday, McClellan faced a combative press corps asking why the delay in disclosure took place and asking why it was announced by a private citizen rather than the White House or Cheney's office.

“That's one way to provide information to the public,” McClellan said.

“I think you can always look back at these issues and look at how to do a better job,” he added.

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