HUNTING TRUTHS – The Trouble with Harry
by Michael Hammerschlag
One could hear the whoosh of the media juggernaut,
swollen by lust and outrage at years of dissembling,
as it deflated watching Republican stalwart
Harry Whittington gave his Oscar-worthy checkout
speech, dressed to the nines, apologizing
to Dick Cheney for getting in the way of
his shotgun. Game, set, match. “The story
is now over. He comes out looking like a
million bucks… and the story ends with that”,
crowed conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer
on Fox All Stars. “The Vice President made a terrible mistake
in that he shot the guy when there wasn’t
much news,” opined moral authority Robert
Novak on Hannity+Colmes. “It really has.. run it’s course.”
But even a cursory examination of the shooting shows appalling misstatements, a shoddy investigation, and serious doubts about the official version of events, most barely covered by the major media who have turned away en masse.
While the press obsessed over the delay in
reporting the story, the more important issue
was the delay and complete breakdown in the
investigation- first a 14½ hour delay in
taking any statement, the ranch turning away deputy Captain Kirk (I kid you not)
at 5:40pm and waiting till 8am for the Veep
to explain events to authorities- long enough,
says Alan Dershowitz for alcohol to totally clear the system.
In the Brit Hume interview, Cheney admits
to having a beer at lunch. "I did ask the hospital spokeswoman
Sunday whether there were any blood alcohol
tests taken," said Times Caller reporter Kathryn Garcia (who broke the story)
in a 15th interview, "and she laughed and said
she was not aware. Today it was again asked
in a press conference, and they said 'NO COMMENT' this time."
Presumably shooting someone while under the
influence is a serious offense in Texas (where
MADD is based), but if Cheney had understandably
downed a few drinks afterward, that would
have been a valid reason to duck officials.
Doug Thompson claims Secret Service agents
saw him drunk.
The first witness, Katharine Armstrong told
multiple stories that contradicted Cheney’s (“a less than ideal spokesperson”,
says Newsweek). What she was most determined to do was
shift blame to the victim, who “didn’t announce
he was coming”, true, but still outrageous
to anyone who has ever handled a firearm.
It’s always the shooter’s fault- it’s his job “to know where other hunters
were and not shoot in their direction,” says
Sam Cook in a Duluth News Tribune op-ed. Defenders of the realm obediently
repeated the propaganda that Whittington
was at fault, but some conservatives were
outraged. She was firm on alcohol: No one in the hunting party was drinking
alcohol, witness Katharine Armstrong said.
"No, zero, zippo and I don’t drink at all," she said. "No one was drinking."
MSNBC had another statement from Armstrong “There may have been beer available during
a picnic lunch that preceded the incident.
There may be a beer or two in there,"
she said. Willeford also admits to having a glass of wine at the lunch 4-4½
hours earlier- strangely, sister Sarita Armstrong
returns to the sheriff to add an additional
statement that none of the 5 member shooting
group that afternoon “had consumed any alcohol”,
although Cheney and Willeford admit it that
Wednesday. Guess it depends on what the meaning
of “afternoon” is.
“First of all, she (Katharine) was an eye-witness. She'd seen the whole thing,” said Cheney in his Fox interview. But she really wasn’t, being 100 yards away in a car, the length of a football field. A Daily Globe+Mail writer said “She said on Sunday that the birdshot 'knocked him silly, but he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open.' By contrast, Mr. Cheney described Mr. Whittington as ‘laying on the ground, bleeding. He did not respond when spoken to, though he was conscious and breathing.’" But "the first thing that crossed my mind was he had a heart problem," she told the Associated Press, when Secret Service agents raced by her to the accident, so she didn’t know what was happening.
According to Whittington's statement in the
sheriff's report, after he went to find the
birds he shot, Cheney and Willeford took
off to join a second hunting group (with
Armstrong ranch cowboy/guides Michael Hubert
and Oscar Medellin), that had found another
covey of quail. Harry went back to Armstrong's
car, then traveled 100 yards towards the
second group before getting shot. It was
dangerous to have 2 groups that close together, and reckless to break up the group, and
obviously Cheney simply forgot that Harry
had separated, or even where
he was shooting, because to hit Whittington,
he had to be shooting towards the Armstrong car into the setting sun. Even at 100 yards, that “could put an eye
out”, says Austin shotgun shell dealer John
Gill. Indeed, Whittington’s sight was probably
saved by his hunting glasses, since shot
hit inside the bridge of his nose. "Cheney and the other hunter should
have stopped hunting when Whittington broke
out of the line,” says Newsday. "If he'd been in the military, he would
have learned gun safety," snapped Sen.
Chuck Hagel.
Both sisters Armstrong say Whittington returned
to look for the bird before approaching the second group,
but Whittington and his guide, Geraldo Medellin,
searching for the bird, say he proceeded
towards Cheney from the car. “Katharine had told him to go and shoot the
second convey. So, at that time, he proceeded
to join the hunters…”, stated the Sheriff’s Report. Within an hour of the shooting, the temperature
outside plunged 20°, as it must have inside
Mr. Cheney.
Then there were the questions about the claimed
90 ft. distance: A test shotgun blast with the same ammunition from 90 feet on
a lifesize human cutout by Corpus Christi Caller-Times photographer George Gongora shows a spread
from the waist to the top of the head, whereas
the filled in damage profile of the Parks-Wildlife accident report shows
impacts from the mouth to mid-chest entirely
on the left side (actually right- they somewhow
inverted the first diagram) in a far more
concentrated pattern. This would indicate
a much closer distance, although many shotguns
have a choke that controls the spread. A
normal spread pattern at 90ft is a 44” circle,
almost 4 ft. Even fully choked, the spread circle
at that distance is 26”, whereas the Parks-Wildlife
drawing of Whittington shows a tight circle
of about 13-14”, meaning Whittington was
shot from a much closer distance.
That 28 gauge 7½ load birdshot shotgun shell
holds only 308 1/11” pellets *(3/4 oz. at 410/oz), so at 200 pellets, Whittington received 2/3 of the blast, very difficult at 90 feet, and only if hit
belly center mostly choked and spread over
half the body. Harry was hit entirely on
the upper right side, but not by a circular
swath- his arm and upper face are almost
untouched. "I don't think it was that
far," says a Dallas hunter. A later
report said he had up to 100 pellets in him,
but frankly having gibberish range like 6-200
is designed to confuse, and the evangelical doctor may be trying to protect Cheney,
Whittington's obvious fervent intent. He
also said, "the number of pellets doesn't matter."
Alex Jones, radical documentarian, also recreated the
incident. He thinks that Mr. Cheney shot
Mr. Whittington at much closer range, though
many have justifiably pilloried his methodology. He claimed a 90 ft. test shot allegedly penetrated
only 3mm into a watermelon (video) and mostly 
didn't penetrate the clothes of a dummy.
Whittington was reportedly wearing at least
3 layers of clothes (orange vest, a shirt and light jacket); the 2.4mm lead pellets had to penetrate those and
his chest to lodge in his heart and liver. A Whidbey Is. Wa. hunter also recreated it with a roast, with a "20 gauge, a step
larger than Cheney’s (with) a shell packed
with 25 percent more shot and powder."
I only put one shirt on 'Chuck Roast.' I
shoot from exactly 30 yards, at which point
the shot has lost half its energy. Result:
Six pellets leave marks on the shirt, but only two enter the roast, and then only
about one-eighth inch. Perhaps the most intensive examination with a 28 gauge Remington at medium choke
with that shot claims that shot at 90ft passes
right through a Cornish game hen, but that
in a test on a pig:dressed in shirt and vest,
"we were surprised to find that virtually
all of the pellets were stopped from penetrating
the pork skin by the fabric of the clothing." One penetrated 1mm. They shot game
hens, turkeys, ballastic gelletin, watermellons
and a pig at many distances.
“It sounds unusual that it would be able
to penetrate the skin so deep,” says Gill.
“Basically, bird shot (7 1/2, for example)
can only be guaranteed to be lethal to a
range of about 15 ft, beyond 30 ft, or so,
the wounds may look severe, but be relatively
superficial due to the lack of penetration
of individual pellets,” says Indiana ballistics analysis firm Athena Research
on their site. However, Dr. Robert McFarlane, a cardiologist and longtime hunter, said
it is plausible for birdshot to penetrate
the skin and reach the heart from the described
distance. “Some pellets have more energy,”
says the Dallas hunter.
Mr. Cheney claimed in the Fox interview that he was swinging the gun to the right: "but the bird flushed and went to my right, off to the west. I turned and shot at the bird, and at that second, saw Harry standing there." The other witnesses confirm this, 4 days later. But the sheriff's report says "there was a single bird that flew behind him and he followed the bird by line of site in a counterclockwise direction" which would be turning to the left. Physics Forum member Edward say that $4-11,000 Italian Perazzi Brescia shotgun "Cheney was using has two barrels with one mounted above the other. (over and under). Some of these guns have an auto safety, some don't. Once the hammer is cocked the trigger can be pulled to a stop and the first barrel will fire. The second barrel cannot fire until a selector switch is moved, the trigger must now be pulled further back to fire the second barrel." The lower first barrel is usually set to shoot in an open spread.
Whittington was cavalierly treated throughout,
forced to wait 30-50 minutes for an ambulance
rather than be driven to meet it, and endure
a 30 minute car trip to a small hospital
when there was an air ambulance standing
by, then transferred to a Corpus Christi
hospital, taking another 30-45 minutes; 3 hours to reach a decent ICU at 8:19pm. He left the ICU
only as a PR stunt to make Cheney seem less
liable for what was being portrayed as just
a “humorous accident”, joked about by Scott McLellen. He was a 78 year old shot in the face and neck and heart with up “to 200 2½ mm pellets”, and reported
as stable, which means he wasn’t dying, yet. The day after transferring out of the ICU
on Monday to provide political cover for
Cheney, he had a heart attack.
Kenedy County Sheriff Ramon Salinas III cleared Cheney almost instantly, before any proper investigation, and failed to interview the shooter in time to see if he was drunk or request a breathalizer test. Instead of investigating personally, he accepted hearsay statements from the former Sheriff Ramiro Medellin (a ranch hand living at the Armstrong ranch with brother Geraldo Medellin), and waited till morning to send his deputy, despite a prompting call by the Secret Service that evening. "We've known these people for years. They are honest and wouldn't call us, telling us a lie," Salinas said.
Deputy Gilberto San Miguel Jr. didn't interrogate
4 of the witnesses, waiting 4 days before
requesting affadavits from them, which were
provided by Friday- 6 days after accident
(Cheney and Whittington never provided one).
He failed to tape Whittington's statement
Monday because "his voice was raspy,"
then allowed himself to be ushered out early
by a nurse. The report doesn't nail down
location, position, and direction of travel,
making amorphous statements like "to
the west of me" meaningless, because
of the lack of reference. Whether Secret
Service agents obscured Cheney’s vision or
their very existence, isn’t mentioned except once by Hubert.
The sheriff was admittedly “overwhelmed”
at the media hurricane that engulfed him.
“We made all the requests for all the documents,
but there’s nothing,” said the Caller-Times Nancy Martinez, “there’s no 911 tapes, radio
transmissions, faxes, e-mails, correspondence
between Secret Service” because Salinas said
‘they called me at home’… You go after the
paper trail, and there’s no paper here. The
way they handle it..is the way small communities
do it, which is unheard of to the MSM. It’s
unheard of to us.”
The sheriff claimed he didn’t have to worry
because it was an accident, but any accidental
shooting is negligent by definition. The question of how negligent
may never be answered because of a botched
investigation and consumate lack of media
interest. One sobering realization; with
Cheney's omnipresent Secret Service detail,
if Harry had shot Dick, he would have likely been riddled with
far more than a load of birdshot.
The media have been chillingly pliant: MSNBC
purged Armstrong’s comments about “may have been
beer” on their website until Cheney verified
it in his Fox talk, conforming their facts
to imperial utterances. And the story about
the shotgun test was scrubbed off the Cheney
archive page of the Times-Caller website, and their video of it cropped to
show only the upper chest area and face of
the test target, where Whittington was actually
hit, with Gongora helpfully adding that it
was hit by 200 pellets (but on an 4-7 times bigger area!). Really, 200, exactly, just like Whittington?
That must be that “accuracy” that the Vice
President was looking for in delaying the
story.
PS. March 14- Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who won Roe vs Wade, said "gentleman" Harry, now 79, has been seen about town in Austin, where they both live, so is presumably recuperating well. Time says- facial wounds from the bird shot are "almost unnoticeable," says restaurateur Bob Woody. "He's back, full force."-
Michael Hammerschlag's commentary and articles
(HAMMERNEWS.com) have appeared in the Seattle Times, Providence Journal, Columbia
Journalism Review, Honolulu Advertiser, Capital Times, MediaChannel; and Moscow News, Tribune, Times, and
Guardian. He broke the first comprehensive story on media mistakes in the 2000 election, and spent 2 years
in Russia as the empire collapsed, and has
covered Presidential campaigns.
SHERIFF’s REPORT PARKS-WILDLIFE ACCIDENT REPORT CHENEY FOX INTERVIEW
WITNESS STATEMENTS
REFERENCES and LINKS
AP Discrepancies in Veep Story- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060218/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney_fact_check
Washington Post Blog Dan Froomkin- Controversies
and Doubts http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/02/16/BL2006021601183.html