Bush says Cheney handled accident ‘just fine’

Sun in his eyes
He said Whittington was dressed properly in blaze orange and the upper part of his body was visible, but that he was standing in a gully with the sun behind him, which affected his view.

“I saw him fall, basically. It had happened so fast,” Cheney said. “He was struck in the right side of his face, his neck and his upper torso on the right side of his body.”

“I take it you missed the bird?” Hume asked.

“I have no idea,” Cheney said. “I mean, you focused on the bird, but as soon as I fired and saw Harry there, everything else went out of my mind.”

He said Whittington was conscious and breathing but stunned silent.

“I ran over to him,” Cheney said. “He was laying there on his back, obviously, bleeding. You could see where the shot struck him.

“I said, ‘Harry, I had no idea you were there.’ He didn’t respond,” Cheney said.

A beer at lunch
Cheney said he had had a beer at lunch that day but nobody was drinking when they went back out to hunt a couple hours later. Law enforcement officials have ruled out alcohol as a factor.

Cheney said he still believes it was the right decision to allow ranch owner Katharine Armstrong to disclose the accident to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times the day after the accident.

“We really didn’t know until Sunday morning that Harry was probably going to be OK, that it looked like there hadn’t been any serious damage to any vital organ,” he said. “And that’s when we began the process of notifying the press.”

Armstrong has suggested that Whittington was at fault in the shooting because, she said, he failed to announce himself as he returned to the hunting line after breaking off to retrieve a downed bird. But Cheney, who has been hunting for at least 12 years, said in no uncertain terms that Whittington was not at fault.

“You can talk about all of the other conditions that exist at the time, but that’s the bottom line and — it was not Harry’s fault,” he said.

Whittington was in stable condition Thursday at a Texas hospital, two days after doctors said one of the pellets traveled to his heart and he had what they called “a mild heart attack.”

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