Cheney accepts responsibility for shooting in Fox interview

WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney today accepted full blame for shooting a fellow hunter and defended his decision to not publicly disclose the accident until the following day. He called it "one of the worst days of my life."

"I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry," Cheney told Fox News Channel in his first public comments since the shooting Saturday in south Texas.

Cheney described seeing 78-year-old Harry Whittington fall to the ground after he pulled the trigger while aiming at a covey of quail.

"The image of him falling is something I'll never ever be able to get out of my mind," Cheney said. "I fired, and there's Harry falling. It was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life at that moment."

Cheney was soft-spoken and somber during the interview with Fox's Brit Hume.

"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. "You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."

Texas officials said the shooting was an accident and no charges have been brought against the vice president.

A report that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department issued Monday said Whittington was retrieving a downed bird and stepped out of the hunting line he was sharing with Cheney.

"Another covey was flushed and Cheney swung on a bird and fired, striking Whittington in the face, neck and chest at approximately 30 yards," the report said.

Cheney said he fortunately always has a medical team with him, and members of that team responded to Whittington immediately after the accident.

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

He said he has no idea if he hit a bird because he was completely focused on Whittington.

"I said, 'Harry, I had no idea you were there.' He didn't respond," Cheney said.

Whittington was reported doing well at a Texas hospital today after doctors said that a pellet entered his heart and that he had what they called caused "a mild heart attack."

One pellet from Cheney's shotgun — just under one-tenth of an inch in diameter — traveled to Whittington's heart. Hospital officials said the Texan had a normal heart rhythm again today afternoon and was sitting up in a chair, eating regular food and planning to do some legal work in his room.

Cheney has been roundly criticized for failing to tell the public about the accident until the next day. He said he thought it made sense to let the owner of the ranch where it happened reveal the accident on the local newspaper's Web site Sunday morning.

"I thought that was the right call," Cheney said. "I still do."

Cheney said he agreed that ranch owner Katharine Armstrong should make the story public, because she was an eyewitness, because she grew up on the ranch and because she is "an acknowledged expert in all of this" as a past head of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. He also agreed with her decision to choose the local newspaper as the way to get the news out.

"I thought that made good sense because you can get as accurate a story as possible from somebody who knew and understood hunting and then it would immediately go up to the wires and be posted on the Web site, which is the way it went out and I thought that was the right call," Cheney said.

"What do you think now?" he was asked.

"I still do," Cheney responded. "The accuracy was enormously important. I had no press person with me."

Whittington was still in intensive care today, but only for personal privacy reasons, said Peter Banko, administrator of Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial.

"He's doing extremely well right now," Banko said. His doctors have said they are highly optimistic about his recovery.

Through hospital officials, Whittington has declined to comment.

"He still kind of wonders what all the hoopla is about," Banko said. He said Whittington sees it as "much ado about nothing."

Cheney was using No. 7 1/2 shot from a 28-gauge shotgun. Shotgun pellets typically are made of steel or lead; the pellets in No. 7 1/2 shot are just under one-tenth of an inch in diameter.

The pellet that traveled to Whittington's heart was either touching or embedded in the heart muscle near the top chambers, called the atria, officials said.

It caused inflammation that pushed on the heart in a way that temporarily blocked blood flow, what the doctors called a "silent heart attack." This is not a traditional heart attack where an artery is blocked, and doctors said that Whittington's arteries were healthy. It invading pellet also irritated the atria and caused an irregular heartbeat.

Cheney's slow, unapologetic public response to the accidental shooting of a 78-year-old Texas attorney turned last weekend's quail-hunting mishap into a political liability for the Bush administration and prompted senior White House officials to press Cheney to address the issue publicly, several prominent Republicans said Tuesday.

It apparently worked. Cheney today taped the interview with Fox to tell his story.

The Republicans said Cheney should have disclosed the shooting Saturday night to avoid even the suggestion of a cover-up and should have offered a public apology for accidentally shooting Harry Whittington, an attorney from Austin. Whittington, 78, was hospitalized Saturday night in Corpus Christi, Texas, and was returned to intensive care Tuesday after suffering a minor heart attack.

"I'm sure that they wish that they had handled it differently. I'm sure they maybe thought that it wasn't so serious, but it has turned out to be," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. "I don't know what their thinking was."

Marlin Fitzwater, a White House spokesman under the first President Bush, said he was "appalled" by the handling of the incident, telling Editor and Publisher magazine that Cheney "ignored his responsibility to the American people."

Robert Michel, a former House Republican leader from Illinois and a longtime friend, said he is mystified that Cheney has not expressed his feelings publicly. "If I read Dick Cheney right, he's got to be just devastated. I guess he's so measured with what he does say personally, but boy, I'd think on something of this nature, you'd let your feelings [be] known."

Cheney has avoided public comment other than to release two short statements. One stated that he would be issued a warning for not paying a $7 hunting fee in Texas; the other, released Tuesday by his office, detailed when he learned of Whittington's worsening condition and said his "thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Whittington and his family."

No evidence has emerged to suggest that the shooting was anything more than a hunting accident, but the spectacle of the vice president wounding a prominent Republican at an exclusive Texas ranch has become the punch line for politicians and comedians alike, and has penetrated popular culture through late-night television.

The aftermath — 42 of 60 questions posed at a White House briefing Tuesday centered on the issue — is an unwelcome interruption at a time when President Bush's approval rating has slipped to 39 percent in the latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll. It reinforces Democratic charges that the administration is incompetent and secretive.

"I think the reason it took the vice president a day to talk about this is part of the secretive nature of this administration," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "The American people are not entitled to know what's going on, in their mind-set."

Bush has allowed Cheney to become perhaps the most powerful vice president in history and has provided him with unparalleled autonomy. He developed the administration's energy policy, largely behind closed doors, and then heavily influenced Iraq policy after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The shooting episode also has raised anew criticism of Cheney's operating style.

A former House member, White House chief of staff and corporate executive, he is dismissive of the national press and unfazed by criticism and unflattering publicity. Bush is believed to have picked Cheney as vice president in large part because of his lack of political ambitions and ability to keep confidences.

With no political future at stake, he seems indifferent to public perceptions of him. He prefers not to talk with reporters, favoring red-meat speeches before friendly audiences or call-in chats to conservative talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity.

Former Sen. Alan Simpson, a fellow Wyoming Republican who hunts with Cheney, said the vice president decided during the 1991 Gulf War when he was defense secretary that journalists ask "stupid questions" and distort things, and so he probably sees no need to explain himself publicly.

"Whatever he does," Simpson said, "Dick will do it his own way, because whatever he does, it will be the subject of ridicule."

Cheney has steered clear of journalists this week, slipping out of White House meetings at which they might be present, and taking hallways at the Capitol that avoided waiting cameras during a lunchtime visit Tuesday.

Mary Matalin, a Cheney adviser who has helped him deal with the shooting fallout, rejected suggestions that the handling of the incident would result in political damage. "We have a history replete with evidence to the contrary," she said. "Every time we've had predictions of monumental liability, it never occurred."

But Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in California who was a congressional fellow for Cheney, warns against drawing conclusions from this case.

"I've filled a number of political staff jobs," he said, "and never once did I have a discussion about what do we do if the boss shoots somebody."

Compiled from The Washington Post, Gannett News Service, Knight Ridder Newspapers and The Dallas Morning News.