Some people think that now that we've gotten an explanation we can just forget that the vice president shot a man.
The rest of you may be interest-ed to know that a lot of real hunters are embarrassed that what these Republican big shots are doing might be confused with our sport. And that, furthermore, Mr. Cheney's explanation doesn't square with the evidence.
These big shots like to network on the Armstrong ranch, all 80 square miles of it, where they ride in jeeps behind guides on horses with a dozen dogs, who actually do the hunting up of the bobwhite quail coveys, each bird containing three bites.
So late Saturday afternoon, Feb. 11, the dogs go on point and the guides radio up the shooters. Playing left end is Pamela Pitzer Willeford, ambassador to Lichten-stein. Playing right end is Harry Whittington, Austin attorney. Playing center is the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney.
Cheney usually wears snakeskin boots and has a Perazzi designer shotgun, which can cost $400,000 (company motto: "Rule the Roost"). He's been a bird hunter since he was chosen by Mrs. Armstrong, among others, to lead Halliburton 11 years ago. In a recent shoot at a game farm, he killed 70 pheasants.
These members of the current ruling class walk up to the pointing dogs, the covey busts, Willeford and Cheney get one, and Whittington, who sounds like he might actually be a hunter with class, hits two birds.
Moments later, according to Willeford, a second covey flies up and Cheney swings to his right and behind him, doesn't see Whittington in flame-orange vest and flame-orange cap and drills him square on, knocking him flat on his back, violating three cardinal rules of bird shooting.
"The vice president," says his friend, former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson, "is a great wing shot."
Everyone converges on the victim. Cheney limps over - he's been relying on a cane lately - and says: "Harry, I had no idea you were there."
Harry doesn't respond.
Hostess and lobbyist Katharine Armstrong comes up from the jeep, 100 yards to the rear. As do the Secret Service and Cheney's medical attendants.
They wrap Harry in blankets to avert shock, load him in the VP's ambulance, three of the party jump in, but not Cheney, and off it goes to Kingsville Hospital.
An aide to the vice president immediately calls the National Security situation room and is patched through to Andrew Card, White House chief of staff, who calls to notify Karl Rove.
Armstrong and Cheney head back to the ranch and get Rove's call.
Local county deputy Capt. Kirk, who heard about the accident on his scanner, is blocked from entering the ranch.
Sheriff Ramon Salinas III calls a former deputy, Romero Medellín, now working on the ranch, and is told it's a minor accident. The Secret Service calls Salinas, and he agrees to interview Cheney the following morning.
The victim arrives at the Kingsville Hospital where physicians take a quick look and immediately air-ambulance him to the trauma center at Corpus Christus Memorial Hospital.
Doctors there know "from the get-go that Whittington has some birdshot near his heart."
Armstrong, Cheney and the remaining guests have a roast beef dinner and, Armstrong says, retire for the night about 11.
At 8 the next morning the Chief Sheriff Deputy, Gilbert San Miguel, is let in the gate, searched and escorted to Cheney, who shakes his hand.
"He was very, very disturbed," San Miguel recalls.
After three tries, after 11 a.m., ranch owner Armstrong reaches a Corpus Christi Caller Times reporter "she trusts" and tells this story:
"Whittington," she says, "was sprayed by itty-bitty pellets" after "he didn't do what he was supposed to do. He failed to announce he was returning to the group." But now, "He's fine, sitting up and laughing."
She says such birdshot sprayings are frequent occurrences. (According to the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department, they happen every year to one in 26,250 license holders.)
The story is out at 1:48 p.m.
Vice presidential spokeswoman Mary Matalin says Mr. Cheney "didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do."
On Monday, Cheney mentions it to the president. On Tuesday, Whittington has a minor heart attack. On Wednesday, the local paper's editor, Libby Avert, says: "We got the quail-hunting accident story the way dedicated journalists have tracked down news for years - through strong, consistent, old-fashioned reporting."
(In other words, they answered the phone.)
While the local paper swallowed the story whole, The New York Times kept choking on the bones. They missed the time of the accident, confused the Armstrong and King ranches, misnamed the first hospital, called a spokesman for the second hospital a doctor when he wasn't, said the pellets were BB size when they were half that, and initially gave the distance between Cheney and Whittington as 30 feet before correcting it to 30 yards.
But they were probably right the first time.
I've been bird hunting for more than 50 years and know a score of hunters, none of whom has ever shot anyone. The best hunter I know is a Coupeville logger named Bobby Bailey. He's made out of the same stuff as Daniel Boone and Sgt. York. "Does this account add up?" I asked him.
He chewed on the question. "A shot from that small of a gauge, that's a three-quarter-ounce load. They don't even make a magnum for it ... passing from the side through the sternum - that's skin, blubber and into the heart muscle ... seems like quite a long stretch.
"But, heck, I don't know. Why don't you hang a roast in a tree and test it?"
So I did. My gun, a 20-gauge, is a step larger than Cheney's and shoots a shell packed with more shot and powder (25 percent more). Based on the weather, Whitting-ton was probably wearing, besides the fluorescent orange vest, a shirt and light jacket.
Again, favoring Cheney, I put only one layer of shirt on Chuck Roast. I shot from exactly 30 yards, at which point the lead has spent half its energy.
Six shot left marks on the shirt, but only two entered the roast, and then only about one-eighth of an inch.
Whittington was hit at least seven times on the face; more pellets hit his shooting glasses with enough force to blacken both eyes; and other shot went into his neck, right shoulder and rib cage. The doctors said that "between seven and 200 birdshots" are in his body.
All the ballistic evidence - penetration, pattern tight-ness and number of shot - strongly argue that the vice president was considerably closer than 30 yards from Harry. More precise testing probably would be conclusive.
But the fourth and most disturbing piece of evidence is that Ambassador Willeford, lobbyist Armstrong and Dick Cheney all say that Harry Whittington came up unexpectedly on the right side of Cheney; which means that unless he came up walking backwards, that the right side of Harry's face would be away from Cheney.
But he was hit on the right side.
So what's the alternative scenario? Maybe Whitting-ton was leaning down to pick up his bird when another bird flushed and Cheney tracked it around and back and somehow mistook poor Harry Whittington for Bob White?
This is what my friend Bailey, who rarely misses the bull's eye, thinks: "He just shot him. The man's never shown normal human compassion. I doubt he cares what happens to anybody else as long as he gets what he's after."
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