capitolhillblue.com
Secret Service agents say Cheney was drunk when he shot lawyer
By DOUG THOMPSON
Feb 22, 2006, 07:35
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Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Dick Cheney when he shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington on a hunting outing two weeks ago say Cheney was "clearly inebriated" at the time of the shooting.
Agents observed several members of the hunting party, including the Vice President, consuming alcohol before and during the hunting expedition, the report notes, and Cheney exhibited "visible signs" of impairment, including slurred speech and erratic actions.
According to those who have talked with the agents and others present at the outing, Cheney was drunk when he gunned down his friend and the day-and-a-half delay in allowing Texas law enforcement officials on the ranch where the shooting occurred gave all members of the hunting party time to sober up.
We talked with a number of administration officials who are privy to inside information on the Vice President's shooting "accident" and all admit Secret Service agents and others say they saw Cheney consume far more than the "one beer' he claimed he drank at lunch earlier that day.
"This was a South Texas hunt," says one White House aide. "Of course there was drinking. There's always drinking. Lots of it."
One agent at the scene has been placed on administrative leave and another requested reassignment this week. A memo reportedly written by one agent has been destroyed, sources said Wednesday afternoon.
Cheney has a long history of alcohol abuse, including two convictions of driving under the influence when he was younger. Doctors tell me that someone like Cheney, who is taking blood thinners because of his history of heart attacks, could get legally drunk now after consuming just one drink.
If Cheney was legally drunk at the time of the shooting, he could be guilty of a felony under Texas law and the shooting, ruled an accident by a compliant Kenedy County Sheriff, would be a prosecutable offense.
But we will never know for sure because the owners of the Armstrong Ranch, where the shooting occurred, barred the sheriff's department from the property on the day of the shooting and Kenedy County Sheriff Ramon Salinas III agreed to wait until the next day to send deputies in to talk to those involved.
Sheriff's Captain Charles Kirk says he went to the Armstrong Ranch immediately after the shooting was reported on Saturday, February 11 but both he and a game warden were not allowed on the 50,000-acre property. He called Salinas who told him to forget about it and return to the station.
"I told him don't worry about it. I'll make a call," Salinas said. The sheriff claims he called another deputy who moonlights at the Armstrong ranch, said he was told it was "just an accident" and made the decision to wait until Sunday to investigate.
"We've known these people for years. They are honest and wouldn't call us, telling us a lie," Salinas said.
Like all elected officials in Kenedy County, Salinas owes his job to the backing and financial support of Katherine Armstrong, owner of the ranch and the county's largest employer.
"The Armstrongs rule Kenedy County like a fiefdom," says a former employee.
Secret Service officials also took possession of all tests on Whittington's blood at the hospitals where he was treated for his wounds. When asked if a blood alcohol test had been performed on Whittington, the doctors who treated him at Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial in Corpus Christi or the hospital in Kingsville refused to answer. One admits privately he was ordered by the Secret Service to "never discuss the case with the press."
It's a sure bet that is a private doctor who treated the victim of Cheney's reckless and drunken actions can't talk to the public then any evidence that shows the Vice President drunk as a skunk will never see the light of day.
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Follow Up for the Boo Birds:
capitolhillblue.com
Yeah, we could be making all this stuff up
By DOUG THOMPSON
Feb 23, 2006, 00:06
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Whenever we get a story ahead of other news outlets the naysayers crank up to full crescendo and accuse us a variety of transgressions - usually revolving around the claim that we "made the whole thing up."
A lot of that came over the electronic transom and dominated the partisan bulletin boards Wednesday with our report that secret service agents said Vice President Dick Cheney was drunk when he gunned down friend and lawyer Harry Whittington in a hunting "accident" last week.
It wasn't a story we went looking for. A friend who works in the Bush administration tipped us on the report late last week and I started making phone calls. By late Tuesday, I had all I needed to go with the story: three sources that said a Secret Service Agent filed a report claiming Cheney had consumed several drinks and "appeared inebriated" while hunting on the Armstrong Ranch on February 11.
In light of other events that we and others had already documented on that day, the report made sense: A day-and-a-half delay in reporting the shooting to the press; the refusal by owners of the Armstrong ranch to allow the Kenedy County chief deputy on the property on the day the "accident" occurred and the strange decision by the county sheriff to not interview witnesses until the next day.
Running with the story brought the usual chorus of boo-birds, the armchair commandos who dominate the partisan bulletin boards, claiming that I sit up here in my mountaintop home and just make these things up.
In reality, I could be doing just that. But why should I? The bizarre antics of the Bush administration provide far more interesting fodder for stories than anything my imagination could possibly conjure up.
Despite what the naysayers claim, we get it first and get it right. We reported on Bush's temper tantrums a full year before it appeared in Newsweek. We revealed Bush's executive order allowing the National Security Agency on June 7, 2004 -- 18 months before the New York Times printed the story. Last week we revealed President Bush ordered Vice President Cheney to go public about his hunting "accident." Time got around to it a few days later. I have no doubt that more information about Cheney's drinking will surface down the line and confirm what we reported Wednesday.
We're human and we do make mistakes, but when we do we admit them, which is a lot more than most media outlets ever do.
So possible motive could I have to subject myself, and this web site, to the barrage of abuse that comes from the prickly partisans whenever I raise the curtain of corruption on their favorite sons?
Some say it's because I'm a liberal, which shows what little they know. How many liberals are card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association or worked for conservative members of Congress like Manuel Lujan Jr. or the 1984 Reagan-Bush re-election campaign?
Others claim the stories are drunken hallucinations, which might make sense if I weren't a recovering alcoholic who hasn't had a drink since June 6, 1994. Still others say it's drugs. Yeah, Tylenol arthritis pain formula, Zestril hypertension medication and Johnson & Johnson baby aspirin are real mood-altering drugs.
And still others claim I'm a bitter, lonely old man living out his final days lashing out at others. I could let my wife answer that one, or the student photographers I mentor or the young people I work with on various projects. I'm too busy with a full, enjoyable life to come up with an answer myself.
Frankly, I don't give a damn what the naysayers think. I've served my country more than once to preserve democracy and try and make this nation a better place to live. I've worked within the political system in Washington and tried to change it for the better from the inside. While others talked about change, I worked with real lovers of America to make it happen. While others talked about doing, we did.
Others talk about truth as if it were some divine providence of a political party or philosophical organization. Truth is non-partisan. It crosses party lines and follows no philosophical path.
We piss off partisans from both sides because we follow the truth wherever it leads. We don't give a damn who gets mad or who gets exposed. We don't apply different rules to different parties and all are held to the same standards.
Those who don't like it can kiss my ass. We will keep doing it the way we always have and there ain't a damn thing any of them can do to stop us.
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LOL
Orca |
