While E&P was first to raise the question Sunday afternoon, Frank James, reporter in the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau, put his how spin on it later in the day, asking, "How is it that Vice President Cheney can shoot a man, albeit accidentally, on Saturday during a hunting trip and the American public not be informed of it until today?" Indeed, others raised questions as well. "There was no immediate reason given as to why the incident wasn't reported until Sunday," The Dallas Morning News observed. "The sheriff's office in Kenedy County did not respond to phone calls Sunday." The president, who was at the White House over the weekend, was informed about the incident in Texas after it happened Saturday by Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and was updated on Sunday, press secretary Scott McClellan said. But neither the White House nor the vice president's staff announced the shooting.
It was decision of the owner of the property where the shooting took place to alert the news media, The Washington Post reported last Sunday. Cheney's office made no public announcement. The property owner called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, "and when a reporter from the paper called the White House, the vice president's office confirmed the account," the Post revealed. Then the property owner "stopped returning phone calls" from the media. The delay in announcing the shooting "will likely be the main question asked of the White House about the apparent accidental shooting of a 78-year-old man during a Texas hunting trip by the vice president," the Tribune's James wrote on the Washington bureau's blog at the newspaper's site.
The man was a fellow hunter, the wealthy Austin lawyer Harry Whittington. "When a vice president of the U.S. shoots a man under any circumstance," James noted, "that is extremely relevant information. What might be the excuse to justify not immediately making the incident public? "The vice president is well-known for preferring to operate in secret....Some secrecy, especially when it comes to the executing the duties of president or vice president, is understandable and expected by Americans. "But when the vice president's office, or the White House, delays in reporting a shooting like Saturday's to the public via the media, it needlessly raises suspicions and questions of trust. And it may just further the impression held by many, rightly or wrongly, that the White House doesn't place the highest premium on keeping the public fully and immediately informed."
In another bit of intrigue, The New York Times reported late Sunday that Whittington was commissioner of the state's Funeral Service Commission. In 1999, George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, named Whittington to head the Commission, which licenses and regulates funeral directors and embalmers in the state. "When he was named," The Times revealed, "a former executive director of the commission, Eliza May, was suing the state, saying that she had been fired because she investigated a funeral home chain that was owned by a friend of Mr. Bush. "The suit was settled in 2001, but the details were not disclosed."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001995719
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