hide and seek

And now, the game has officially begun.

What was Dick Cheney trying to hide by waiting 14 hours to speak with Corpus Christi officials about the hunting accident that put 78-year-old Harry Whittington in the hospital?

After four days of hiding out, Cheney has finally agreed to break his silence by speaking to Fox News. The fact that the Veep runs to Fox News first is telling. When taken together, the fact that he’s remained silent for so long, the fact that he refused to speak to law enforcement officials until 8 a.m. the next morning, the fact that story changed repeatedly overnight, and the fact that Cheney will only talk to a friendly audience, adds up to one unavoidable conclusion: Cheney is hiding something.

Fox News, it should be remembered, went on the air Tuesday and criticized mainstream media for focusing too much attention on Harry Whittington and his condition and not enough on how Cheney is feeling -- after all, Neil Cavuto opined, Dick Cheney is a human being, too, and shooting someone can take a great toll on a person. Yeah. Like he would know.

Sticking a catheter in a man to check out the condition of his heart muscle, which is under attack from bird shot, is less important than a penetrating report on Dick Cheney's angst.

The first conclusion has been made again and again, but is best summed up by famed criminal lawyer Alan Dershowitz on The Huffington Post:

“What is the most likely thing to happen during a 14 hour delay that is worth the negative publicity? One possibility is that it takes approximately that period of time for alcohol to dissipate in the body and no longer be subject to accurate testing. It is fairly common for people involved in alcohol-related accidents to delay reporting them until the alcohol has left the body. There is no hard evidence that this is what happened here, but we are entitled to a better explanation. We should be told whether Vice President Cheney's victim had alcohol in his system when he was taken to the hospital. Was there any alcohol at or near the hunting area? Were any in the hunting party carrying flasks (which is apparently common among hunters)? What was Cheney doing just before he went hunting? Did anyone in the hunting party have a drink? We do know that Cheney had two drunk driving convictions when he was in his early 20s, but he has apparently been clean since then.

“There are certainly other explanations for the 14 hour delay, but simply postponing the inevitable publication of a damaging story is not one of them. Nor is the fact that Cheney is, by nature, a secretive man. The burden of proof has now shifted to the Vice President to explain why he made this stupid, or very clever, decision. We're waiting for his explanation.”

NBC Investigative reporter Aram Roston published a report online that included an admission by Katherine Armstrong, the rancher/witness, that there was beer available during lunch. The paragraph with that admission was later scrubbed from the website.

But if you look at what Armstrong has said about the incident, it contradicts. She's tried to pass herself off as a witness when, in fact, she was not. She admitted that the first she knew of what happened was when she saw Secret Service agents running to the scene and told reporters that she thought the Veep had suffered a heart attack. That's not the same thing as witnessing the accident and Harry Whittington getting "peppered pretty good."

Her admission about beer being available over lunch doesn't hold water, either. It's parsing the truth at a high art -- and you must remember that Armstrong is, herself, a GOP politician in the Texas tradition. Ironically, as head of the Texas Parks and Wildlife department that issued the report claiming that alcohol did not play any part in the accident based on no evidence whatsoever -- just anecdotal testimony.

Of course, spinmeisters are busy wrangling some cover for the Veep. Tucker Carlson, for example, was on Scarborough Country announcing that, from his considerable experience as a huntsman, no hunter would dare take beer with them into the field, or touch the amber liquid while carrying a shotgun. That may be true at an Arlington hunt club, but that is laughable on its face. Not even Joe Scarborough was fool-hardy enough to bite on that offering.

Another interesting suggestion also can be found on The Huffington Post, credited to Sirius radio:

“Sirius radio's Alex Bennett just broke a rumor that the delay in reporting the news that Cheney shot an old man in the heart was due to an effort to hide or spin Cheney's female companion.

“Pamela Willeford, ambassador to Switzerland and -- yes -- Liechtenstein, was part of the hunting excursion with Cheney and Whittington. And according to Willeford's account, Cheney and the ambassador were side-by-side when the shooting of Whittington took place.

“The vice president's Secret Service detail had to decide what to do with Willeford by way of perhaps covering up her relationship with Cheney, and thus the delay in reporting the news.

“The rumor goes that Lynn Cheney isn't happy with Cheney's close relationship with Willeford.

“Again, just a rumor.”

So, was Cheney caught drinking? Or was he afraid of being caught in flagrante delicto with his own Lewinsky?

Another source suggests that both Cheney and Whittington had female hunting partners not their wives and that Armstrong claimed to have witnessed the incident when, in fact, she did not -- this from RJ Eskow, who refers to this incident as Cheney's Chappaquiddick.

Here’s the irony.

Bush and Cheney swept their corrupt asses into the White House by promising to bring honor and integrity back to the Executive Branch – and have conducted themselves with neither.

The joke making the rounds the last few days was that when Clinton shot someone, he got impeached – despite the fact that the only thing that happened was a stain on a blue dress. When Cheney shoots someone, REALLY shoots someone, nothing happens.

And now, there’s a real possibility that the vice president is caught with his pants down and his gun going off half-cocked. And the only way to get the truth of this story will be to comb the Web.

More soon.