Vice President Dick Cheney, center, accepts a rifle from National Rifle Association President Kayne Robinson, right, and NRA Vice President Wayne R. LaPierre, after concluding his keynote address to the 133rd annuanl NRA convention in this April 17, 2004 file photo in Pittsburgh.Time Magazine has got some interesting details regarding Cheney's hunting accident. From Time.com:
The Vice President was the press strategist, and Karl Rove was the investigative reporter. Vice President Cheney overruled the advice of several members of the White House staff and insisted on sticking to a plan for releasing information about his hunting accident that resulted in a 20-hour, overnight delay in public confirmation of the startling incident, according to several Republican sources.
"This is either a cover-up story or an incompetence story," said a top Republican who is close to the White House and has rarely been critical of the Administration in the past five years. "Karl was constrained, as was the entire communications operation, because the Vice President had arranged for how this was to come out."
Cheney arranged for how this information was to come out--NOT the White House! According to Time:
Cheney insisted on carrying out a strategy he had worked out with the ranch owner, Katharine Armstrong, in which she was to call a trusted reporter at the local paper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, to disclose the news. Caller-Times Managing Editor Shane Fitzgerald told TIME that the newspaper had done its usual nightly checks with local law enforcement agents on Saturday and had been told nothing was going on. Armstrong started leaving messages at the newspaper at 8 a.m., reached a reporter by 11 a.m. and the newspaper posted its story on the Web at 1:48 p.m. local time Sunday. At 3:34 p.m. Eastern Time, The Associated Press finally flashed the news: "Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a hunting trip in Texas." Fitzgerald said he is "mystified" about the chain of events and that the public should have been notified much earlier, even if the shooter had been some random guy. Even on Monday, the newspaper struggled to get a copy of the accident report. "I think it has become a bigger deal than Mr. Cheney and/or the White House anticipated," the editor said.
So instead of going through the White House press, Cheney decided to work out a story with Armstrong, then have Armstrong call a small-town newspaper to disclose the news. What the heck was Cheney thinking of? Did he expect this story to stay contained in the Corpus Christie city limits? Did Cheney even realize there is a news service called The Associated Press, where newspapers will send their stories out through the AP wire, to get published in other newspapers across the country? Even more, did Cheney expect that the American public would raise questions of why he is directly handling the press releases of his own hunting accident?
Can you say cover-up?
What we have here is a vice president who has gathered extraordinary power onto himself, who is probably the most powerful vice-president in our nation's history. And with this power, Cheney has become answerable to no-one--not the press, not the American public, and certainly not the president! And Cheney has now show this disdain for being accountable to no-one, to be answerable to no-one, with his own insistence on handling this press release of the accident himself, rather than allowing it to go through the White House press office. Do you really think President Bush is going to ream him for this colossal screw-up? Of course not. And Cheney knows that. This man will do as he pleases, because he can. And there is no-one who can stop him.
When you can gain power of this magnitude, the power corrupts.
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