Mary Matalin: First Cheney Statement for Press Did Not Admit He Was Shooter
By E&P Staff
Published: February 19, 2006 11:55 AM ET
mediainfo.com
( Looks like at first, Cheney was hoping he'd be able to cover the thing up completely! Cheney and Teddy, brothers in booze..)
NEW YORK Even as the Sunday morning televison talk shows featured blistering attacks on the press for going overboard in its critical coverage of the Cheney shooting incident last week, further revelations guaranteed that the story would have legs.
Newsweek and Time magazines both put the vice president on their covers this week with lengthy, if not especially fresh, accounts of the shooting of Harry Whittington inside. Most major newspapers rehashed the episode in their Sunday papers. Cheney aide Mary Matalin accused NBC reporter David Gregory of going on a "jihad" gainst the vice president.
Buried in the Time cover story, however, was one brain-teaser that could fuel more speculation, as it contradicts earlier explanations that Cheney wanted to get the full story out, he was just a bit tardy about it. The passage reads:
"At about 8 a.m. Sunday, a Cheney aide called strategist Mary Matalin, who regularly advises the Vice President. The aide read her a statement about the accident that Cheney had considered releasing before he decided to encourage Armstrong to go to the (Corpus Christi) Caller-Times.
"But the statement 'didn't say much of anything,' Matalin says—not even that Cheney was the shooter. Matalin then spoke with a second aide and with Cheney's family and heard different versions of what had happened in the shooting. She decided no statement should be released amid the confusion. Matalin spoke with Cheney, and, she says, they agreed that 'a fuller accounting, with an eyewitness,' would be preferable."
Time also reports a poll showing that almost two-thirds of Americans (65%) think Cheney should have taken immediate responsibility for the shooting incident. His approval rating stands at 29%; President Bush's approval rating is 40%. |
