The Antecubital Fossa: Ways Dick Cheney Can Kill You

Monday, February 20, 2006

Ways Dick Cheney Can Kill You

I notice that drinking while hunting without the proper permit, disregarding safe hunting practice, and then blasting some guy in the face didn't make it onto the list - though that might count as just 'shooting'. And lo and behold, the victim's just oozing sympathy for poor ol' Crashcart. But isn't it interesting what nobody's been talking about, this past week?

"There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the President, but also includes the Vice President." -- Dick Cheney, 2/15/06

"Federal law states that it is a felony for officials to disclose the contents of classified documents to persons who aren't authorized to receive them. ... Cheney would have first had to request that George Tenet authorize Agency declassification. There is no record that such permission was ever sought or obtained." -- Reality

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Management said...: Full transcript of Cheney interview

(CNN) -- The following is a transcript released by Vice President Dick Cheney's office of his interview by Fox News' Brit Hume conducted Wednesday. It was Cheney's first public comment since accidentally shooting and wounding a friend during a hunting trip on Sunday.

Question: Mr. Vice President, how is Mr. Whittington?

Cheney: Well, the good news is he's doing very well today. I talked to him yesterday after they discovered the heart problem, but it appears now to have been pretty well resolved and the reporting today is very good.

Question: How did you feel when you heard about that?

Cheney: Well, it's a great relief. But I won't be, obviously, totally at ease until he's home. He's going to be in the hospital, apparently, for a few more days, and the problem, obviously, is that there's always the possibility of complications in somebody who is 78, 79 years old. But he's a great man, he's in great shape, good friend, and our thoughts and prayers go out to he and his family.

Question: How long have you known him?

Cheney: I first met him in Vail, Colorado, when I worked for Gerry Ford about 30 years ago, and it was the first time I'd ever hunted with him.

Question: Would you describe him as a close friend, friendly acquaintance, what --

Cheney: No, an acquaintance.

Question: Tell me what happened?

Cheney: Well, basically, we were hunting quail late in the day --

Question: Describe the setting.

Cheney: It's in south Texas, wide-open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. But it's wild quail. It's some of the best quail hunting anyplace in the country. I've gone there, to the Armstrong ranch, for years. The Armstrongs have been friends for over 30 years. And a group of us had hunted all day on Saturday --

Question: How many?

Cheney: Oh, probably 10 people. We weren't all together, but about 10 guests at the ranch. There were three of us who had gotten out of the vehicle and walked up on a covey of quail that had been pointed by the dogs. Covey is flushed, we've shot, and each of us got a bird. Harry couldn't find his, it had gone down in some deep cover, and so he went off to look for it. The other hunter and I then turned and walked about a hundred yards in another direction --

Question: Away from him?

Cheney: Away from him -- where another covey had been spotted by an outrider. I was on the far right --

Question: There was just two of you then?

Cheney: Just two of us at that point. The guide or outrider between us, and of course, there's this entourage behind us, all the cars and so forth that follow me around when I'm out there -- but 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. Didn't know he was there --

Question: You had pulled the trigger and you saw him?

Cheney: Well, I saw him fall, basically. It had happened so fast.

Question: What was he wearing?

Cheney: He was dressed in orange, he was dressed properly, but he was also -- there was a little bit of a gully there, so he was down a little ways before land level, although I could see the upper part of his body when -- I didn't see it at the time I shot, until after I'd fired. And the sun was directly behind him -- that affected the vision, too, I'm sure.

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

Question: Then what?

Cheney: Well, we went over to him, obviously, right away --

Question: How far away from you was he?

Cheney: I'm guessing about 30 yards, which was a good thing. If he'd been closer, obviously, the damage from the shot would have been greater.

Question: Now, is it clear that -- he had caught part of the shot, is that right?

Cheney: -- part of the shot. He was struck in the right side of his face, his neck and his upper torso on the right side of his body.

Question: And you -- and I take it, you missed the bird.

Cheney: I have no idea. I mean, you focused on the bird, but as soon as I fired and saw Harry there, everything else went out of my mind. I don't know whether the bird went down, or didn't.

Question: So did you run over to him or --

Cheney: Ran over to him and --

Question: And what did you see? He's lying there --

Cheney: He was laying there on his back, obviously bleeding. You could see where the shot had struck him. And one of the fortunate things was that I've always got a medical team, in effect, covering me wherever I go. I had a physician's assistant with me that day. Within a minute or two he was on the scene administering first-aid. And --

Question: And Mr. Whittington was conscious, unconscious, what?

Cheney: He was conscious --

Question: What did you say?

Cheney: Well, I said, "Harry, I had no idea you were there." And --

Question: What did he say?

Cheney: He didn't respond. He was -- he was breathing, conscious at that point, but he didn't -- he was, I'm sure, stunned, obviously, still trying to figure out what had happened to him. The doc was fantastic --

Question: What did you think when you saw the injuries? How serious did they appear to you to be?

Cheney: I had no idea how serious it was going to be. I mean, it could have been extraordinarily serious. You just don't know at that moment. You know he's been struck, that there's a lot of shot that had hit him. But you don't know -- you think about his eyes. Fortunately, he was wearing hunting glasses, and that protected his eyes. You -- you just don't know. And the key thing, as I say, initially, was that the physician's assistant was right there. We also had an ambulance at the ranch, because one always follows me around wherever I go. And they were able to get the ambulance there, and within about 30 minutes we had him on his way to the hospital.

Question: And what did you do then? Did you get up and did you go with him, or did you go to the hospital?

Cheney: No, I had -- I told my physician's assistant to go with him, but the ambulance is crowded and they didn't need another body in there. And so we loaded up and went back to ranch headquarters, basically. By then, it's about 7:00 p.m. at night. And Harry --

Question: Did you have a sense then of how he was doing?

Cheney: Well, we're getting reports, but they were confusing. Early reports are always wrong. The initial reports that came back from the ambulance were that he was doing well, his eyes were open. They got him into the emergency room at Kingsville --

Question: His eyes were open when you found him, then, right?

Cheney: Yes. One eye was open. But they got him in the emergency room in the small hospital at Kingsville, checked him out further there, then lifted him by helicopter from there into Corpus Christi, which has a big city hospital and all of the equipment.

Question: So by now what time is it?

Cheney: I don't have an exact time line, although he got there sometime that evening, 8:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m.

Question: So this is several hours after the incident?

Cheney: Well, I would say he was in Kingsville in the emergency room probably within, oh, less than an hour after they left the ranch.

Question: Now, you're a seasoned hunter --

Cheney: I am, well, for the last 12, 15 years.

Question: Right, and so you know all the procedures and how to maintain the proper line and distance between you and other hunters, and all that. So how, in your judgment, did this happen? Who -- what caused this? What was the responsibility here?

Cheney: Well, ultimately, I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry. And you can talk about all of the other conditions that existed at the time, but that's the bottom line. And there's no -- it was not Harry's fault. You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. And I say that is something I'll never forget.

Question: Now, what about this -- it was said you were hunting out of vehicles. Was that because you have to have the vehicles, or was that because that's your -- the way you chose to hunt that day?

Cheney: No, the way -- this is a big ranch, about 50,000 acres. You cover a lot of territory on a quail hunt. Birds are oftentimes -- you're looking for coveys. And these are wild quail, they're not pen-raised. And you hunt them -- basically, you have people out on horseback, what we call outriders, who are looking for the quail. And when they spot them, they've got radios, you'll go over, and say, get down and flush the quail. So you need --

Question: So you could be a distance of miles from where you spot quail until the next place you may find them?

Cheney: Well, usually you'll be, you know, maybe a few hundred yards. Might be farther than that; could be a quarter of a mile.

Question: Does that kind of hunting only go forward on foot, or is it mostly --

Cheney: No, you always -- in that part of the country, you always are on vehicles, until you get up to where the covey is. Then you get off -- there will be dogs down, put down; the dogs will point to covey. And then you walk up on the covey. And as the covey flushes, that's when you shoot.

Question: Was anybody drinking in this party?

Cheney: No. You don't hunt with people who drink. That's not a good idea. We had --

Question: So he wasn't, and you weren't?

Cheney: Correct. We'd taken a break at lunch -- go down under an old -- ancient oak tree there on the place, and have a barbecue. I had a beer at lunch. After lunch we take a break, go back to ranch headquarters. Then we took about an hourlong tour of the ranch, with a ranch hand driving the vehicle, looking at game. We didn't go back into the field to hunt quail until about, oh, sometime after 3:00 p.m.

The five of us who were in that party were together all afternoon. Nobody was drinking, nobody was under the influence.

Question: Now, what thought did you give, then, to how -- you must have known that this was -- whether it was a matter of state, or not, was news. What thought did you give that evening to how this news should be transmitted?

Cheney: Well, my first reaction, Brit, was not to think: I need to call the press. My first reaction is: My friend, Harry, has been shot and we've got to take care of him. That evening there were other considerations. We wanted to make sure his family was taken care of. His wife was on the ranch. She wasn't with us when it happened, but we got her hooked up with the ambulance on the way to the hospital with Harry. He has grown children; we wanted to make sure they were notified, so they didn't hear on television that their father had been shot. And that was important, too.

But we also didn't know what the outcome here was going to be. We didn't know for sure what kind of shape Harry was in. We had preliminary reports, but they wanted to do a CAT scan, for example, to see how -- whether or not there was any internal damage, whether or not any vital organ had been penetrated by any of the shot. We did not know until Sunday morning that we could be confident that everything was probably going to be OK.

Question: When did the family -- when had the family been informed? About what time?

Cheney: Well, his wife -- his wife knew as he was leaving the ranch --

Question: Right, what about his children?

Cheney: I didn't make the calls to his children, so I don't know exactly when those contacts were made. One of his daughters had made it to the hospital by the next day when I visited. But one of the things I'd learned over the years was first reports are often wrong and you need to really wait and nail it down. And there was enough variation in the reports we were getting from the hospital, and so forth -- a couple of people who had been guests at the ranch went up to the hospital that evening; one of them was a doctor, so he obviously had some professional capabilities in terms of being able to relay messages. But we really didn't know until Sunday morning that Harry was probably going to be OK, that it looked like there hadn't been any serious damage to any vital organ. And that's when we began the process of notifying the press.

Question: Well, what -- you must have recognized, though, with all your experience in Washington, that this was going to be a big story.

Cheney: Well, true, it was unprecedented. I've been in the business for a long time and never seen a situation quite like this. We've had experiences where the president has been shot; we've never had a situation where the vice president shot somebody.

Question: Not since Aaron Burr.

Cheney: Not since Aaron Burr --

Question: Different circumstances.

Cheney: Different circumstances.

Question: Well, did it occur to you that sooner was -- I mean, the one thing that we've all kind of learned over the last several decades is that if something like this happens, as a rule sooner is better.

Cheney: Well, if it's accurate. If it's accurate. And this is a complicated story.

Question: But there were some things you knew. I mean, you knew the man had been shot, you knew he was injured, you knew he was in the hospital, and you knew you'd shot him.

Cheney: Correct.

Question: And you knew certainly by sometime that evening that the relevant members of his family had been called. I realize you didn't know the outcome, and you could argue that you don't know the outcome today, really, finally.

Cheney: As we saw, if we'd put out a report Saturday night on what we heard then -- one report came in that said, superficial injuries. If we'd gone with a statement at that point, we'd have been wrong. And it was also important, I thought, to get the story out as accurately as possible, and this is a complicated story that, frankly, most reporters would never have dealt with before, so --

Question: Had you discussed this with colleagues in the White House, with the president, and so on?

Cheney: I did not. The White House was notified, but I did not discuss it directly, myself. I talked to Andy Card, I guess it was Sunday morning.

Question: Not until Sunday morning? Was that the first conversation you'd had with anybody in the -- at the White House?

Cheney: Yes.

Question: And did you discuss this with Karl Rove at any time, as has been reported?

Cheney: No, Karl talks to -- I don't recall talking to Karl. Karl did talk with Katharine Armstrong, who is a good mutual friend to both of us. Karl hunts at the Armstrong, as well --

Question: Say that again?

Cheney: I said Karl has hunted at the Armstrong, as well, and we're both good friends of the Armstrongs and of Katharine Armstrong. And Katharine suggested, and I agreed, that she would go make the announcement, that is that she'd put the story out. And I thought that made good sense for several reasons. First of all, she was an eyewitness. She'd seen the whole thing. Secondly, she'd grown up on the ranch, she'd hunted there all of her life. Third, she was the immediate past head of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the game control commission in the State of Texas, an acknowledged expert in all of this.

And she wanted to go to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, which is the local newspaper, covers that area, to reporters she knew. And 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.

Question: What do you think now?

Cheney: Well, I still do. I still think that the accuracy was enormously important. I had no press person with me, I didn't have any press people with me. I was there on a private weekend with friends on a private ranch. In terms of who I would contact to have somebody who would understand what we're even talking about, the first person that we talked with at one point, when Katharine first called the desk to get hold of a reporter, didn't know the difference between a bullet and a shotgun -- a rifle bullet and a shotgun. And there are a lot of basic important parts of the story that required some degree of understanding. And so we were confident that Katharine was the right one, especially because she was an eyewitness and she could speak authoritatively on it. She probably knew better than I did what had happened, since I'd only seen one piece of it.

Question: By the next morning, had you spoken again to Mr. Whittington?

Cheney: The next morning I talked to his wife. And then I went to the hospital in Corpus Christi and visited with him.

Question: When was that?

Cheney: Oh, it was shortly after noon on Sunday.

Question: Now, by that time had the word gone out to the newspaper?

Cheney: I believe it had. I can't remember what time Katharine actually talked to the reporter. She had trouble that morning actually finding a reporter. But they finally got connected with the reporter, and that's when the story then went out.

Question: Now, it strikes me that you must have known that this was going to be a national story --

Cheney: Oh, sure.

Question: -- and it does raise the question of whether you couldn't have headed off this beltway firestorm if you had put out the word to the national media, as well as to the local newspaper so that it could post it on its Web site. I mean, in retrospect, wouldn't that have been the wise course --

Cheney: Well, who is going to do that? Are they going to take my word for what happened? There is obviously --

Question: Well, obviously, you could have put the statement out in the name of whoever you wanted. You could put it out in the name of Mrs. Armstrong, if you wanted to. Obviously, that's -- she's the one who made the statement.

Cheney: Exactly. That's what we did. We went with Mrs. Armstrong. We had -- she's the one who put out the statement. And she was the most credible one to do it because she was a witness. It wasn't me in terms of saying, here's what happened, it was --

Question: Right, understood. Now, the suspicion grows in some quarters that you -- that this was an attempt to minimize it, by having it first appear in a little paper and appear like a little hunting incident down in a remote corner of Texas.

Cheney: There wasn't any way this was going to be minimized, Brit; but it was important that it be accurate. I do think what I've experienced over the years here in Washington is as the media outlets have proliferated, speed has become sort of a driving force, lots of time at the expense of accuracy. And I wanted to make sure we got it as accurate as possible, and I think Katharine was an excellent choice. I don't know who you could get better as the basic source for the story than the witness who saw the whole thing.

Question: When did you first speak to -- if you spoke to Andy Card at, what, midday, you said, on Sunday?

Cheney: Sometime Sunday morning.

Question: And what about -- when did you first -- when, if ever, have you discussed it with the president?

Cheney: I talked to him about it yesterday, or Monday -- first on Monday, and then on Tuesday, too.

Question: There is reporting to the effect that some in the White House feel you kind of -- well, look at what Scott McClellan went through the last couple days. There's some sense -- and perhaps not unfairly so -- that you kind of hung him out to dry. How do you feel about that?

Cheney: Well, Scott does a great job and it's a tough job. It's especially a tough job under these conditions and circumstances. I had a bit of the feeling that the press corps was upset because, to some extent, it was about them -- they didn't like the idea that we called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times instead of The New York Times. But it strikes me that the Corpus Christi Caller-Times is just as valid a news outlet as The New York Times is, especially for covering a major story in South Texas.

Question: Well, perhaps so, but isn't there an institution here present at the White House that has long-established itself as the vehicle through which White House news gets out, and that's the pool?

Cheney: I had no press person with me, no coverage with me, no White House reporters with me. I'm comfortable with the way we did it, obviously. You can disagree with that, and some of the White House press corps clearly do. But, no, I've got nothing but good things to say about Scott McClellan and Dan Bartlett. They've got a tough job to do and they do it well. They urged us to get the story out. The decision about how it got out, basically, was my responsibility.

Question: That was your call.

Cheney: That was my call.

Question: All the way.

Cheney: All the way. It was recommended to me -- Katharine Armstrong wanted to do it, as she said, and I concurred in that; I thought it made good sense.

Question: Now, you're talking to me today -- this is, what, Wednesday?

Cheney: Wednesday.

Question: What about just coming out yourself Monday/Tuesday -- how come?

Cheney: Well, part of it obviously has to do with the status of Harry Whittington. And it's a difficult subject to talk about, frankly, Brit. But most especially I've been very concerned about him and focused on him and feel more comfortable coming out today because of the fact that his circumstances have improved, he's gotten by what was a potential crisis yesterday, with respect to the developments concerning his heart. I think this decision we made, that this was the right way to do it.

Question: Describe if you can your conversations with him, what you've said to him and the attitude he's shown toward you in the aftermath of this.

Cheney: He's been fantastic. He's a gentleman in every respect. He oftentimes expressed more concern about me than about himself. He's been in good spirits, unfailingly cheerful --

Question: What did he say about that? You said, "expressed concern" about you -- what did he say?

Cheney: Well, when I first saw him in the hospital, for example, he said, look, he said, I don't want this to create problems for you. He literally was more concerned about me and the impact on me than he was on the fact that he'd been shot. He's a -- I guess I'd describe him as a true Texas gentleman, a very successful attorney, successful businessman in Austin; a gentleman in every respect of the word. And he's been superb.

Question: For you, personally, how would you -- you said this was one of the worst days of your life. How so?

Cheney: What happened to my friend as a result of my actions, it's part of this sudden, you know, in less than a second, less time than it takes to tell, going from what is a very happy, pleasant day with great friends in a beautiful part of the country, doing something I love -- to, my gosh, I've shot my friend. I've never experienced anything quite like that before.

Question: Will it affect your attitude toward this pastime you so love in the future?

Cheney: I can't say that. You know, we canceled the Sunday hunt. I said, look I'm not -- we were scheduled to go out again on Sunday and I said I'm not going to go on Sunday, I want to focus on Harry. I'll have to think about it.

Question: Some organizations have said they hoped you would find a less violent pastime.

Cheney: Well, it's brought me great pleasure over the years. I love the people that I've hunted with and do hunt with; love the outdoors, it's part of my heritage, growing up in Wyoming. It's part of who I am. But as I say, the season is ending, I'm going to let some time pass over it and think about the future.

Question: On another subject, court filings have indicated that Scooter Libby has suggested that his superiors -- unidentified -- authorized the release of some classified information. What do you know about that?

Cheney: It's nothing I can talk about, Brit. This is an issue that's been under investigation for a couple of years. I've cooperated fully, including being interviewed, as well, by a special prosecutor. All of it is now going to trial. Scooter is entitled to the presumption of innocence. He's a great guy. I've worked with him for a long time, have enormous regard for him. I may well be called as a witness at some point in the case and it's, therefore, inappropriate for me to comment on any facet of the case.

Question: Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a vice president has the authority to declassify information?

Cheney: There is an executive order to that effect.

Question: There is.

Cheney: Yes.

Question: Have you done it?

Cheney: Well, I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions. The executive order --

Question: You ever done it unilaterally?

Cheney: I don't want to get into that. There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president.

Question: There have been two leaks, one that pertained to possible facilities in Europe; and another that pertained to this NSA matter. There are officials who have had various characterizations of the degree of damage done by those. How would you characterize the damage done by those two reports?

Cheney: There clearly has been damage done.

Question: Which has been the more harmful, in your view?

Cheney: I don't want to get into just sort of ranking them, then you get into why is one more damaging than the other. One of the problems we have as a government is our inability to keep secrets. And it costs us, in terms of our relationship with other governments, in terms of the willingness of other intelligence services to work with us, in terms of revealing sources and methods. And all of those elements enter into some of these leaks.; 11:16 PM
Management said...: New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Oh, shoot! Veep had no license for quail hunt
BY KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Monday, February 13th, 2006

WASHINGTON - Vice President Cheney had no license to kill - quail, that is.

After the White House reluctantly conceded yesterday that it sat on the blockbuster news that Cheney shot a hunting buddy Saturday, the veep's office revealed he didn't even have the proper $7 stamp on his hunting license to shoot quail in Texas.

"The staff asked for all permits needed, but was not informed of the $7 upland game-bird stamp requirement," Cheney's office said in a statement last night.

Although he was hunting illegally when he blasted Austin millionaire Harry Whittington, Cheney will get off with a warning from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, his office said.

The latest embarrassing disclosure came hours after a pair of angry exchanges between reporters and White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who admitted that top aides and President Bush knew on Saturday night about the accident, but revealed nothing.

Word of the accident only got out the next day after ranch owner Katharine Armstrong disclosed to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times that Cheney had shot Whittington, 78, as he flushed out a covey of quail.

Armstrong said Whittington walked up behind Cheney without announcing he was there and was "peppered pretty good" when Cheney turned to fire at quail.

Whittington was hit with bird shot in the face and upper body and was in stable condition yesterday at Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi. His doctor said some of the pellets would remain lodged in Whittington's body permanently. The doctor said Whittington was hit with "less than 100" pellets.

While Whittington should have announced himself, seasoned hunters said primary responsibility lies with the shooter.

"It's incumbent upon the shooter to assess the situation and make sure it's a safe shot," said Mark Birkhauser, president-elect of the International Hunter Education Association. "Once you squeeze that trigger, you can't bring that shot back."

Team Bush declined to identify the third hunter in the party, U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Pamela Willeford, and defended its decision to say nothing about the shooting on Saturday.

Armstrong suggested to the veep the shooting was going to become news and volunteered to tell the local paper.

"The vice president spoke with Mrs. Katharine Armstrong, and they agreed that she should make that information public," McClellan repeatedly stonewalled.

But having a private citizen contact the press deviated from the White House practice of sending out e-mails to the media. In an off-camera briefing marked with name-calling and loud give-and-take, McClellan was repeatedly asked about the delay and the curious method of getting the information out.

"You're totally ducking and weaving here. We don't care if some ranch owner called the local paper," NBC's David Gregory said.

"David, hold on, the cameras aren't on right now. You can do this later," McClellan shot back.

A red-faced Gregory returned fire, saying, "Don't accuse me of posing for the cameras. Don't be a jerk to me personally. When I'm asking you a serious question you should give me a serious answer instead of jerking us around."

Another reporter dryly asked if it was now standard White House policy to release information through private citizens. The contentious scene was repeated at the afternoon on-camera briefing, though without name-calling.

The shooting is being probed by the local sheriff's office, which did not begin its investigation until a day after the hunting accident happened.

The White House refused to say whether Cheney had ever taken a hunter's safety course. It did disclose that Bush was told about the shooting Saturday night by chief political adviser Karl Rove.

Cheney watchers noted the vice president has a history of sitting on information. Among his best-kept secrets, Cheney:

# Refuses to disclose his taxpayer-funded travel expenses, including the money spent to take him and his friends hunting.

# Still keeps under wraps the names of the corporate energy and utility execs who attended secret meetings of the White House energy task force in 2001.

# Refuses to discuss his alleged role in leaking the identity of CIA spy Valerie Plame.; 11:17 PM
Management said...: Posted on Tue, Feb. 14, 2006

Cheney ignored safe hunting procedures
Bird hunters should use dogs and fewer guns -- and leave car behind
SCOTT DENHAM
Special to the Observer

#

Aspects of Vice President Dick Cheney's quail hunt make ethical hunters and hunter safety instructors cringe.

From reports, we know that this hunting party consisted of three hunters and, thus, three guns. This is highly unusual and generally seen as unsafe. Nearly every hunting preserve I know of here in the Southeast restricts upland bird hunt parties to two guns, for obvious reasons: one hunter takes the left side, one the right side. There is generally a dog and a guide (the dog handler), who is very careful to stay behind the guns after the dogs go on point.

Three-gun bird hunts do happen, but should be avoided. If there are three guns, the hunters have to be especially well aware of each other at all times, which clearly didn't happen when Cheney shot his hunting partner.

Where were the dogs?

Why was the hunter, Harry Whittington, looking for a downed bird? Were there no dogs? A quail hunt without a dog? Absurd. If there were dogs, why not have them go after the dead bird? The main part of the beauty and pleasure of an upland bird hunt is to see the dogs at work, crossing the fields, picking up scent, moving in, going on point, flushing the birds, then retrieving and receiving praise. This seems to have been a strange hunt indeed, at least from what we know from news stories.Reports say the hunters were hunting by car. Too old and feeble to walk? Too lazy? An upland bird hunt by car is an offensive idea to any honest, ethical hunter. This sounds like irresponsible cruising for easy shooting, rather than the time-honored tradition of slowly walking the fields and brush, watching the dogs work, and -- if you're lucky -- finding a covey or two of quail. A real hunt is about engaging with nature, enjoying preserved open spaces, connecting with traditions from the past, and, if the game bag is weighty, going home and cleaning one's take, then cooking it with love for family or friends.

Don't shoot low birds

The idea of hunting from a car is bad. It's dangerous because hunters would be getting in and out, guns pointing every which way, losing track of the wind, the weather, the angle of the sun, the energy level of the dogs. Hunting from a car is, for able-bodied hunters at least, completely antithetical to honest, ethical hunting.

One of the cardinal rules of any bird hunt: Don't shoot low birds. Why? It is more difficult to see birds against the ground than against the sky. It is possible that something besides a bird might be on the ground, and thus in the way; generally this would be the dog. Though it should never happen, a careless, selfish hunter might even swing through with his shotgun and find another hunter in the line of fire, but only if he were following a low bird (though most dedicated bird dog owners would agree it's better to shoot a hunting partner than a good dog!). This happened when Vice President Cheney shot his partner on Saturday evening.

Cheney's hunting party broke several basic rules: too many in the hunt party; no dog, or at least not having the dog retrieve a downed bird; hunting from a vehicle. And Cheney broke some of the most basic rules: shooting at a low bird and not being aware of the placement of his hunting party members.

One report I read stated that Cheney shot Whittington at 5:15 p.m. on Saturday -- way too late to be hunting quail. Good hunters hunt early in the day, when the light is good, the birds are active, and the dogs are fresh. One should generally not be out for quail this late in the day.

Good, safe hunting in N.C.

We in the Piedmont have some of the best bird hunting around, though development has taken a profound toll on open space and Piedmont farmland. Rocky Holmsley runs his modest Rock-Haven Farm as a small hunting preserve in Gaston County with some of the best English Setters and English Pointers in the country. He trains them himself and has several champion lines in his kennels.

This is only one example. There are several dozen private preserves in North Carolina and thousands of acres of public game lands -- the kind of place where there are only two-gun hunts, on foot, with eager, well-trained dogs, knowledgeable guides, good birds and an attitude of safety and respect for tradition, for the dogs, for the environment. No cars, no shooting at low birds, no accidents. And any hunter can take part, not just the elites.

It is unfortunate that upland bird hunting has gotten this kind of bad press because of irresponsible hunting practices by a prominent member of the upper class. Hunting preserves open spaces for use by all; hunting connects younger generations with the land and with traditions; hunting is about conservation. As a hunter and conservationist, I feel misrepresented by Cheney and his ilk. They portray hunting as a sport for the rich, carried out on vast private lands, where pulling the trigger takes priority over everything else.
Scott Denham is professor of German at Davidson College and a member of the Rowan County Wildlife Association. He is an avid hunter and occasionally teaches a course on skeet and trap shooting through Davidson's outdoors education program. Write him at scdenham@davidson.edu.; 11:17 PM
Management said...: Posted on Tue, Feb. 14, 2006

Experts: Cheney violated cardinal rule of hunting
Veep and pal also lacked $7 stamps
By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney apparently broke the No. 1 rule of hunting: Be sure of what you're shooting at.

Cheney wounded fellow hunter Harry Whittington in the face, neck and chest Saturday, apparently because he didn't see Whittington approaching as he fired on a covey of quail in Texas.

As it turns out, Cheney and Whittington also lacked $7 upland game-bird hunting stamps and were cited by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for violating the law.

Cheney had a $125 nonresident hunting license, his office said last night in a statement, and has sent a $7 check to cover the cost of the stamp.

Hunting-safety experts interviewed yesterday agreed it would have been a good idea for Whittington to announce himself - something he apparently didn't do, according to a witness. But they said the shooter is responsible for knowing his surroundings and avoiding hitting other people.

"We always stress to anybody that before you make any kind of a shot, it's incumbent upon the shooter to assess the situation and make sure it's a safe shot," said Mark Birkhauser of the International Hunter Education Association.

Cheney has not commented publicly about the accident. He ducked reporters, leaving an Oval Office meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan before the press entered.

President Bush, who yesterday ignored questions about the incident, was told about Cheney's involvement in the accident shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday - not long after it occurred - but the White House did not disclose the accident until Sunday afternoon, and then only in response to press questions. Press secretary Scott McClellan said he didn't know know until Sunday morning that Cheney had shot someone.

Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where the shooting occurred, said she told Cheney on Sunday morning that she was going to inform the local paper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. She said he agreed, and the newspaper reported it on its Web site Sunday afternoon.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said that about an hour after Whittington was shot, the head of the Secret Service's local office called the Kenedy County sheriff to report the accident. "They made arrangements at the sheriff's request to have deputies come out and interview the vice president the following morning at 8 a.m. and that indeed did happen," Zahren said.

Gilbert San Miguel, chief deputy sheriff for Kenedy County, said his department's investigation had found that alcohol was not a factor in the accident.

The National Rifle Association, a close ally of the White House, would not comment on who was to blame.

Whittington, 78, of Austin, a prominent Republican lawyer in Texas, was in stable condition at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial and was moved yesterday from intensive care to a "step-down unit."

Whittington was hit with as many as 200 birdshot pellets but suffered largely superficial wounds, according to Dr. David Blanchard, who briefed reporters in Corpus Christi yesterday.

Blanchard said Whittington is "doing extremely well" and was "talking, alert and in good humor."

He said doctors removed some of the pellets. "If they are not life-threatening, you leave them be," he said, declining to say whether Whittington had had surgery.

He said the wounds - on Whittington's face, neck and upper torso - look like chicken pox.

Both McClellan and Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said the delay in disclosing the accident resulted from making sure that Whittington was getting proper medical care.

Armstrong said the accident occurred as Whittington was retrieving a bird he had shot in the tall grasses on her property. Cheney and another hunter, identified yesterday as Pamela Willeford, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, moved on to another covey of quail - Armstrong said it was about 100-150 yards away - and Cheney fired on a bird just as Whittington was rejoining them. She said Whittington was in tall grass and thick brush about 30 yards away, which made it difficult for Cheney to see him, although both wore bright orange safety vests.

"Typically when you are coming back to a line, you would say 'I'm coming up,' or whatever," she said. "It was completely unbeknownst to the vice president or the other shooter that Mr. Whittington was coming back up."

Duane Harvey, president of the Wisconsin Hunter Education Instructors Association, said if Whittington had made his presence known "that would have been a polite thing to do."

But, he added, "it's still the fault upon the shooter to identify his target and what is beyond it."; 11:18 PM
Management said...: Outed CIA officer was working on Iran, intelligence sources say
02/13/2006 @ 10:25 am
Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna

IranThe unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.
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According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program.

While many have speculated that Plame was involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation black market, specifically the proliferation activities of Pakistan's nuclear "father," A.Q. Khan, intelligence sources say that her team provided only minimal support in that area, focusing almost entirely on Iran.

Plame declined to comment through her husband, Joseph Wilson.

Valerie Plame first became a household name when her identity was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. The column came only a week after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written an op-ed for the New York Times asserting that White House officials twisted pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Her outing was seen as political retaliation for Wilson's criticism of the Administration's claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program.

Her case has drawn international attention and resulted in the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements. Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is leading the probe, is still pursuing Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Advisor to President Bush, Karl Rove. His investigation remains open.

The damages

Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame's work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.

Plame's team, they added, would have come in contact with A.Q. Khan's network in the course of her work on Iran.

While Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA's Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation, sources say.

Intelligence sources familiar with the damage assessment say that what is called a "counter intelligence assessment to agency operations" was conducted on the orders of the CIA's then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operations, James Pavitt.

Former CIA counterintelligence officer Larry Johnson believes that such an assessment would have had to be done for the CIA to have referred the case to the Justice Department.

"An exposure like that required an immediate operational and counter intelligence damage assessment," Johnson said. "That was done. The results were written up but not in a form for submission to anyone outside of CIA."

One former counterintelligence official described the CIA's reasons for not seeking Congressional assistance on the matter as follows: "[The CIA Leadership] made a conscious decision not to do a formal inquiry because they knew it might become public," the source said. "They referred it [to the Justice Department] instead because they believed a criminal investigation was needed."

The source described the findings of the assessment as showing "significant damage to operational equities."

Another counterintelligence official, also wishing to remain anonymous due to the nature of the subject matter, described "operational equities" as including both people and agency operations that involve the "cover mechanism," "front companies," and other CIA officers and assets.

Three intelligence officers confirmed that other CIA non-official cover officers were compromised, but did not indicate the number of people operating under non-official cover that were affected or the way in which these individuals were impaired. None of the sources would say whether there were American or foreign casualties as a result of the leak.

Several intelligence officials described the damage in terms of how long it would take for the agency to recover. According to their own assessment, the CIA would be impaired for up to "ten years" in its capacity to adequately monitor nuclear proliferation on the level of efficiency and accuracy it had prior to the White House leak of Plame Wilson's identity.

A.Q. Khan

While Plame's work did not specifically focus on the A.Q. Khan ring, named after Pakistani scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the network and its impact on nuclear proliferation and the region should not be minimized, primarily because the Khan network was the major supplier of WMD technology for Iran.

Dr. Khan instituted the proliferation market during the 1980s and supplied many countries in the Middle East and elsewhere with uranium enrichment technology, including Libya, Iran and North Korea. Enriched uranium is used to make weaponized nuclear devices.

The United States forced the Pakistan government to dismiss Khan for his proliferation activities in March of 2001, but he remains largely free and acts as an adviser to the Pakistani government.

According to intelligence expert John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, U.S. officials were not aware of the extent of the proliferation until around the time of Khan's dismissal.

"It slowly dawned on them that the collaboration between Pakistan, North Korea and Iran was an ongoing and serious problem," Pike said. "It was starting to sink in on them that it was one program doing business in three locations and that anything one of these countries had they all had."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistan became the United States' chief regional ally in the war on terror.

The revelation that Iran was the focal point of Plame's work raises new questions as to possible other motivating factors in the White House's decision to reveal the identity of a CIA officer working on tracking a WMD supply network to Iran, particularly when the very topic of Iran's possible WMD capability is of such concern to the Administration.; 11:19 PM
Management said...: Cheney 'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war. Later, after the war began in 2003, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.

Libby testified to the grand jury that he had been authorized to share parts of the NIE with journalists in the summer of 2003 as part of an effort to rebut charges then being made by former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make a public case for war.

Wilson had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to investigate allegations that the African nation of Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon. Despite the fact that Wilson reported back that the information was most likely baseless, it was still used in the President's 2003 State of the Union speech to make the case for war.

But besides sharing details of the NIE with reporters during the effort to rebut Wilson, Libby is also accused of telling journalists that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, had worked for the CIA. Libby and other Bush administration officials believed that if Plame played a role in the selection of her husband for the Niger mission, that fact might discredit him.

A federal grand jury indicted Libby on October 28, 2005, on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice, alleging that he concealed his role in leaking information about Plame to the media. He resigned his positions as chief of staff and national security adviser to Cheney the same day. Libby has never claimed that Cheney encouraged him to disclose information about Plame to the media.

In a January 23 letter, related to discovery issues for Libby's upcoming trial, Fitzgerald wrote to Libby's attorneys: "Mr. Libby testified in the grand jury that he had contact with reporters in which he disclosed the content of the National Intelligence Estimate ("NIE") … in the course of his interaction with reporters in June and July 2003.… We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors."

Although it is not known if Cheney had told the special prosecutor that he had authorized Libby to leak classified information to reporters, Dan Richman, a professor of law at Fordham University and a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, said, "One certainly would not expect Libby, as part of his defense, to claim some sort of clear authorization from Cheney where none existed, because that would clearly risk the government's calling Cheney to rebut that claim."

The public correspondence does not mention the identities of the "superiors" who authorized the leaking of the classified information, but people with firsthand knowledge of the matter identified one of them as Cheney. Libby also testified that he worked closely with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in deciding what information to leak to the press to build public support for the war, and later, postwar, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence.

In the correspondence, Fitzgerald also asserted that Libby testified that he had met with then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, with the "purpose" of intending "to transmit information" to her "concerning the NIE."

That particular meeting has been key to Fitzgerald's investigation because the special prosecutor alleges that Libby lied both to the FBI and to his federal grand jury by saying that he had not discussed Plame with Miller on that date, when in fact he did tell her of Plame's work for the CIA.

In an account of her grand jury testimony, Miller has written that Libby discussed the NIE with her: "Mr. Libby also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002 … which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium." Portions of the NIE were later declassified, but the material in it related to Niger was still classified at the time.

Libby, through a spokesperson, declined to comment, and the vice president, through a spokesperson, also declined to comment for this story.

The new disclosure that Libby has claimed that the vice president and others in the White House had authorized him to release information to make the case to go to war, and later to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence, is significant for several reasons. First, it significantly adds to a mounting body of information that Cheney played a central and personal role in directing efforts to counter claims by Wilson and other administration critics that the Bush administration had misused intelligence information to go to war with Iraq.

Second, it raises additional questions about Libby's motives in concealing his role in leaking Plame's name to the press, if he was in fact more broadly authorized by Cheney and others to rebut former Ambassador Wilson's charges. The federal grand jury indictment of Libby alleges that he had lied to the FBI and the federal grand jury by claiming that when he provided information to reporters about Plame's CIA employment, he was only passing along what he understood to be unverified gossip that he had heard from other journalists.

Instead, the indictment charges that Libby had in fact learned of Plame's CIA status from at least four government officials, Cheney among them, and from classified documents. Indeed, much of Libby's earliest and most detailed information regarding Plame's CIA employment came directly from the vice president, according to information in Libby's grand jury indictment. "On or about June 12, 2003," the indictment stated, "Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division."

Libby testified that Cheney told him about Plame "in an off sort of, curiosity sort of, fashion," according to other information recently unsealed in federal court. Not long after that date, Libby, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and a third administration official began to tell reporters that Plame had worked at the CIA, and that she had been responsible for sending her husband to Niger.

Finally, the new information indicates that Libby is likely to pursue a defense during his trial that he was broadly "authorized" by Cheney and other "superiors" to defend the Bush administration in making the case to go to war. Libby does not, however, appear to be claiming that he was acting specifically on Cheney's behalf in disclosing information about Plame to the press.

Libby's legal strategy in asserting that Cheney and other Bush administration officials authorized activities related to the underlying allegations of criminal conduct leveled against him, without approving of or encouraging him to engage in the specific misconduct, is reminiscent of the defense strategy used by Oliver North, who was a National Security Council official in the Reagan administration.

North, a Marine lieutenant colonel assigned to the National Security Council, implemented the Reagan administration's efforts to covertly send arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages held in the Middle East, and to covertly fund and provide military assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras at a time when federal law prohibited such activities. Later, it was discovered that North and other Reagan administration officials had diverted funds they had received from the Iranian arms sales to covertly fund the Contras.

If Libby's defense adopts strategies used by North, it might be in part because the strategies largely worked for North and in part because Libby's defense team has quietly retained John D. Cline, who was a defense attorney for North. Cline, a San-Francisco partner at the Jones Day law firm, has specialized in the use of classified information in defending clients charged with wrongdoing in national security cases.

Among his detractors, Cline is what is known as a "graymail" specialist-an attorney who, critics say, purposely makes onerous demands on the federal government to disclose classified information in the course of defending his clients, in an effort to force the government to dismiss the charges. Although Cline declined to be interviewed for this story, he has said that the use of classified information is necessary in assuring that defendants are accorded due process and receive fair trials.

In the Libby case, Cline has frustrated prosecutors by demanding, as part of pretrial discovery, more than 10 months of the President's Daily Brief, or PDBs, the president's morning intelligence briefing. The reports are among the most highly classified documents in government, not only because they often contain sensitive intelligence and methods, but also because they indicate what the president and policy makers consider to be the most pressing national security threats. In the past, the Bush administration has defied bipartisan requests from the Intelligence committees in Congress to turn over PDBs for review.

After Cline demanded the PDBs, Fitzgerald wrote to him on January 9 that the prosecutor's office has only "received a very discrete amount of material relating to PDBs" and "never requested copies of PDBs" themselves, in part because "they are extraordinarily sensitive documents which are usually highly classified." Moreover, Fitzgerald wrote, only a relatively small number of PDB pages included reference to Wilson's trip to Niger.

But Cline has insisted that it is imperative for his client's defense to be able to review the PDBs because part of Libby's defense is that he may have had a faulty memory regarding conversations he had with government officials and reporters regarding Plame, in that he had so many other pressing issues to consider every day as chief of staff and national security adviser to the vice president.

In a January 31 court filing, attorneys for Libby argued: "Mr. Libby will show that, in the constant rush of more pressing matters, any errors he made in FBI interviews or grand jury testimony, months after the conversations, were the result of confusion, mistake, faulty memory, rather than a willful intent to deceive."

In the North case, the Iran-Contra independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, was forced to dismiss many of the central charges against North, including the most serious ones-that North defrauded taxpayers by diverting proceeds from arms sales to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contras-because intelligence agencies and the Reagan administration refused to declassify documents necessary for a trial on those charges.

Walsh and many of his deputies believed that the Reagan Justice Department refused to declassify documents necessary to try North because officials were personally sympathetic to him. A North trial would also have politically embarrassed the Reagan administration, and a North conviction might have led to charges against higher officials.

In court filings, Walsh said that much of what intelligence agencies and the Reagan administration had refused to declassify had long before been published in the media or made public in some other way.

"It was a backdoor way of shutting us down," said one former Iran-Contra prosecutor, who spoke only on the condition that his name not be used, because his current position as a private attorney requires frequent dealings with attorneys who were on the other side of the North case at the time. "It was a cover-up by means of an administrative action, and it was an effective cover-up at that."

The former prosecutor added: "The intelligence agencies do not declassify things on the pretext that they are protecting state secrets, but the truth is that we were investigating and prosecuting their own. The same was true for the Reagan administration. Cline was particularly adept at working the system."

Is it possible that a prosecution of Libby might be impeded or even derailed entirely by the refusal of the Bush White House or its Justice Department to declassify information that might be necessary to try Libby? "Under the current statute, it may well be the attorney general's call-or whomever he designates-to ultimately decide what should be declassified, and what might not be, in the Libby case," said Michael Bromwich, a former associate Iran-Contra independent counsel and a former Justice Department inspector general.

William Treanor, the dean of Fordham University's Law School, and also a former associate Iran-contra special counsel, said that it is less likely that the Bush administration would challenge Fitzgerald as former administrations did with special prosecutors. Walsh, dealing with the Reagan and elder Bush administrations, and Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, dealing with the Clinton administration, often alleged that political appointees in the Justice Department worked purposely to undermine their investigations.

"Walsh and Starr were not appointed by an attorney general," Treanor said, noting that Walsh, Starr, and earlier special prosecutors had been appointed by a three-judge federal panel instead of by the Justice Department. Currently, he pointed out, special prosecutors are appointed by the attorney general or their designate.

"With Walsh or Starr, the president and his supporters could more easily argue that a prosecutor was overzealous or irresponsible, because there had been a three-judge panel that appointed him," Treanor said. "With Fitzgerald, you have a prosecutor who was appointed by the deputy attorney general [at the direction of the attorney general]. The administration almost has to stand behind him because this is someone they selected themselves. It is harder to criticize someone you yourself put into play."

There are other reasons why it might prove difficult to undercut Fitzgerald, including outstanding questions about the role that Cheney and others in the Bush administration played in the effort to discredit Wilson, and the fact that Cheney is still the point man in defending the White House's use of prewar intelligence on Iraq.

And the new disclosure, that Libby is alleging that Cheney and other Bush administration officials "authorized" him to disclose classified information as a means to counter charges that the administration misused prewar intelligence, might also make it difficult for this administration to refuse to declassify information for Libby's trial.

But a Libby defense strategy asserting that he released classified information or took other actions as broadly authorized by Cheney might have other advantages, if the North case is any guide. At North's trial, the counts on which the jury acquitted him tended to be those involving actions that appeared to be authorized by superiors. He was found guilty of three felonies on which the evidence indicated that he was acting on his own initiative or for his own financial benefit.

"It was a memorable and powerful moment when North told the jury that he was 'a pawn in a chess game played by giants,'" Treanor said.

The claims by North that his activities had been broadly authorized by higher-ups, including even the president, also worked to his advantage when he was sentenced. Despite the fact that North had been convicted of three felonies and that Iran-Contra prosecutors argued before sentencing that letting North off with "only a slap on the wrist … would send exactly the wrong message … [only] 15 years after Watergate," he was sentenced to only probation, a fine, and community service.

North's trial judge, U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell, took note that the jury had acquitted North of criminal charges mainly where it appeared that his conduct might have been authorized by higher authorities: "Observing that many others involved in the events were escaping without censure or with prosecutorial promises of leniency or immunities, [the jury] used their common sense. And they gave you the benefit of a reasonable doubt."

Explaining his own leniency in sentencing the former NSC aide, Gesell told North: "I do not believe you were a leader at all, but really a low-ranking subordinate to carry out initiatives of a few cynical superiors. You came to be a point man in a very complex power play developed by higher-ups."

Later, North's convictions were overturned on appeal because of concerns that some of the evidence used against him during his trial might have been derived from his testimony before the House-Senate Iran-Contra investigating committee. North had been given immunity for that testimony.

But most outside legal observers say that Libby, because he was himself such a high-ranking official, will most likely face a much more difficult time than North did in arguing that, in some of his activities, he was just carrying out orders from Cheney or other senior White House officials.

"A defendant can make a claim that he is just a victim of Washington politics or doing the bidding for someone else," said Richman, the former prosecutor, "But there may be limits to a jury's sympathy when that defendant himself was so high-ranking. Given Libby's position in the White House, the jury is less likely to view him as a sacrificial lamb than as a sacrificial ram."; 11:19 PM
Management said...: By The Associated PressWed Feb 15, 11:18 PM ET

Transcript of Vice President Dick Cheney's interview Wednesday with Brit Hume of Fox News Channel, as released by the White House. Cheney addresses his shooting Saturday of a hunting companion, 78-year-old Harry Whittington of Austin, Texas, at a ranch owned by Katharine Armstrong about 60 miles south of Corpus Christi, Texas:

Question: Mr. Vice President, how is Mr. Whittington?

Answer: Well, the good news is he's doing very well today. I talked to him yesterday after they discovered the heart problem, but it appears now to have been pretty well resolved and the reporting today is very good.

Q: How did you feel when you heard about that?

A: Well, it's a great relief. But I won't be, obviously, totally at ease until he's home. He's going to be in the hospital, apparently, for a few more days, and the problem, obviously, is that there's always the possibility of complications in somebody who is 78-79 years old. But he's a great man, he's in great shape, good friend, and our thoughts and prayers go out to he and his family.

Q: How long have you known him?

A: I first met him in Vail, Colorado, when I worked for Jerry Ford about 30 years ago, and it was the first time I'd ever hunted with him.

Q: Would you describe him as a close friend, friendly acquaintance, what?

A: No, an acquaintance.

Q: Tell me what happened?

A: Well, basically, we were hunting quail late in the day ...

Q: Describe the setting.

A: It's in south Texas, wide open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. But it's wild quail. It's some of the best quail hunting anyplace in the country. I've gone there, to the Armstrong ranch, for years. The Armstrongs have been friends for over 30 years. And a group of us had hunted all day on Saturday ...

Q: How many?

A: Oh, probably 10 people. We weren't all together, but about 10 guests at the ranch. There were three of us who had gotten out of the vehicle and walked up on a covey of quail that had been pointed by the dogs. The covey is flushed, we've shot, and each of us got a bird. Harry couldn't find his. It had gone down in some deep cover and so he went off to look for it. The other hunter and I then turned and walked about a hundred yards in another direction ...

Q: Away from him?

A: Away from him — where another covey had been spotted by an outrider. I was on the far right ...

Q: There was just two of you then?

A: Just two of us at that point. The guide or outrider between us, and of course, there's this entourage behind us, all the cars and so forth that follow me around when I'm out there. 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. Didn't know he was there ...

Q: You had pulled the trigger and you saw him?

A: Well, I saw him fall, basically. It had happened so fast.

Q: What was he wearing?

A: He was dressed in orange, he was dressed properly, but he was also ... There was a little bit of a gully there, so he was down a little ways before land level, although I could see the upper part of his body when ... I didn't see it at the time I shot, until after I'd fired. And the sun was directly behind him — that affected the vision, too, I'm sure.

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

Q: Then what?

A: Well, we went over to him, obviously, right away ...

Q: How far away from you was he?

A: I'm guessing about 30 yards, which was a good thing. If he'd been closer, obviously, the damage from the shot would have been greater.

Q: Now, is it clear that — he had caught part of the shot, is that right?

A: Part of the shot. He was struck in the right side of his face, his neck and his upper torso on the right side of his body.

Q: And you — and I take it, you missed the bird?

A: I have no idea. I mean, you focused on the bird, but as soon as I fired and saw Harry there, everything else went out of my mind. I don't know whether the bird went down or didn't.

Q: So did you run over to him or ...

A: Ran over to him and ...

Q: And what did you see? He's lying there.

A: He was laying there on his back, obviously bleeding. You could see where the shot had struck him. And one of the fortunate things was that I've always got a medical team, in effect, covering me wherever I go. I had a physician's assistant with me that day. Within a minute or two he was on the scene administering first aid.

Q: And Mr. Whittington was conscious, unconscious, what?

A: He was conscious.

Q: What did you say?

A: Well, I said, "Harry, I had no idea you were there."

Q: What did he say?

A: He didn't respond. He was — he was breathing, conscious at that point, but he didn't — he was, I'm sure, stunned, obviously, still trying to figure out what had happened to him. The doc was fantastic.

Q: What did you think when you saw the injuries? How serious did they appear to you to be?

A: I had no idea how serious it was going to be. I mean, it could have been extraordinarily serious. You just don't know at that moment. You know he's been struck, that there's a lot of shot that had hit him. But you don't know — you think about his eyes. Fortunately, he was wearing hunting glasses, and that protected his eyes. You, you just don't know. And the key thing, as I say, initially, was that the physician's assistant was right there. We also had an ambulance at the ranch, because one always follows me around wherever I go. And they were able to get the ambulance there and within about 30 minutes we had him on his way to the hospital.

Q: What did you do then? Did you get up and did you go with him, or did you go to the hospital?

A: No, I had told my physician's assistant to go with him, but the ambulance is crowded and they didn't need another body in there. And so we loaded up and went back to ranch headquarters, basically. By then, it's about 7:00 p.m. at night.

Q: Did you have a sense then of how he was doing?

A: Well, we're getting reports, but they were confusing. Early reports are always wrong. The initial reports that came back from the ambulance were that he was doing well, his eyes were open. They got him into the emergency room at Kingsville.

Q: His eyes were open when you found him, then, right?

A: Yes. One eye was open. But they got him in the emergency room in the small hospital at Kingsville, checked him out further there, then lifted him by helicopter from there into Corpus Christi, which has a big city hospital and all of the equipment.

Q: So by now what time is it?

A: I don't have an exact time line, although he got there sometime that evening, 8:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m.

Q: So this is several hours after the incident?

A: Well, I would say he was in Kingsville in the emergency room probably within, oh, less than an hour after they left the ranch.

Q: Now, you're a seasoned hunter.

A: I am, well, for the last 12, 15 years.

Q: Right, and so you know all the procedures and how to maintain the proper line and distance between you and other hunters, and all that. So how, in your judgment, did this happen? Who, what caused this? What was the responsibility here?

A: Well, ultimately, I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry. And you can talk about all of the other conditions that existed at the time, but that's the bottom line. And there's no — it was not Harry's fault. You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. And I say that is something I'll never forget.

Q: Now, what about this? It was said you were hunting out of vehicles. Was that because you have to have the vehicles, or was that because that's your — the way you chose to hunt that day?

A: No, the way — this is a big ranch, about 50,000 acres. You cover a lot of territory on a quail hunt. Birds are oftentimes — you're looking for coveys. And these are wild quail, they're not pen-raised. And you hunt them — basically, you have people out on horseback, what we call outriders, who are looking for the quail. And when they spot them, they've got radios, you'll go over, and say, get down and flush the quail. So you need ...

Q: So you could be a distance of miles from where you spot quail until the next place you may find them?

A: Well, usually you'll be, you know, maybe a few hundred yards. Might be farther than that; could be a quarter of a mile.

Q: Does that kind of hunting only go forward on foot, or is it mostly ...

A: No, you always — in that part of the country, you always are on vehicles, until you get up to where the covey is. Then you get off — there will be dogs down, put down; the dogs will point to covey. And then you walk up on the covey. And as the covey flushes, that's when you shoot.

Q: Was anybody drinking in this party?

A: No. You don't hunt with people who drink. That's not a good idea. We had ...

Q: So he wasn't, and you weren't?

A: Correct. We'd taken a break at lunch — go down under an old — ancient oak tree there on the place, and have a barbecue. I had a beer at lunch. After lunch we take a break, go back to ranch headquarters. Then we took about an hourlong tour of ranch, with a ranch hand driving the vehicle, looking at game. We didn't go back into the field to hunt quail until about, oh, sometime after 3:00 p.m. The five of us who were in that party were together all afternoon. Nobody was drinking, nobody was under the influence.

Q: Now, what thought did you give, then, to how — you must have known that this was — whether it was a matter of state, or not, was news. What thought did you give that evening to how this news should be transmitted?

A: Well, my first reaction, Brit, was not to think: I need to call the press. My first reaction is: My friend, Harry, has been shot and we've got to take care of him. That evening there were other considerations. We wanted to make sure his family was taken care of. His wife was on the ranch. She wasn't with us when it happened, but we got her hooked up with the ambulance on the way to the hospital with Harry. He has grown children; we wanted to make sure they were notified, so they didn't hear on television that their father had been shot. And that was important, too.

But we also didn't know what the outcome here was going to be. We didn't know for sure what kind of shape Harry was in. We had preliminary reports, but they wanted to do a CAT scan, for example, to see how — whether or not there was any internal damage, whether or not any vital organ had been penetrated by any of the shot. We did not know until Sunday morning that we could be confident that everything was probably going to be OK.

Q: When did the family — when had the family been informed? About what time?

A: Well, his wife — his wife knew as he was leaving the ranch ...

Q: Right, what about his children?

A: I didn't make the calls to his children, so I don't know exactly when those contacts were made. One of his daughters had made it to the hospital by the next day when I visited. But one of the things I'd learned over the years was first reports are often wrong and you need to really wait and nail it down. And there was enough variation in the reports we were getting from the hospital, and so forth — a couple of people who had been guests at the ranch went up to the hospital that evening; one of them was a doctor, so he obviously had some professional capabilities in terms of being able to relay messages. But we really didn't know until Sunday morning that Harry was probably going to be OK, that it looked like there hadn't been any serious damage to any vital organ. And that's when we began the process of notifying the press.

Q: Well, what — you must have recognized, though, with all your experience in Washington, that this was going to be a big story.

A: Well, true, it was unprecedented. I've been in the business for a long time and never seen a situation quite like this. We've had experiences where the President has been shot; we've never had a situation where the Vice President shot somebody.

Q: Not since Aaron Burr.

A: Not since Aaron Burr ...

Q: Different circumstances.

A: Different circumstances.

Q: Well, did it occur to you that sooner was — I mean, the one thing that we've all kind of learned over the last several decades is that if something like this happens, as a rule sooner is better.

A: Well, if it's accurate. If it's accurate. And this is a complicated story.

Q: But there were some things you knew. I mean, you knew the man had been shot, you knew he was injured, you knew he was in the hospital, and you knew you'd shot him.

A: Correct.

Q: And you knew certainly by sometime that evening that the relevant members of his family had been called. I realize you didn't know the outcome, and you could argue that you don't know the outcome today, really, finally.

A: As we saw, if we'd put out a report Saturday night on what we heard then — one report came in that said, superficial injuries. If we'd gone with a statement at that point, we'd have been wrong. And it was also important, I thought, to get the story out as accurately as possible, and this is a complicated story that, frankly, most reporters would never have dealt with before, so ...

Q: Had you discussed this with colleagues in the White House, with the president, and so on?

A: I did not. The White House was notified, but I did not discuss it directly, myself. I talked to Andy Card, I guess it was Sunday morning.

Q: Not until Sunday morning? Was that the first conversation you'd had with anybody in the — at the White House?

A: Yes.

Q: And did you discuss this with Karl Rove at any time, as has been reported?

A: No, Karl talks to — I don't recall talking to Karl. Karl did talk with Katharine Armstrong, who is a good mutual friend to both of us. Karl hunts at the Armstrong, as well ...

Q: Say that again?

A: I said Karl has hunted at the Armstrong, as well, and we're both good friends of the Armstrongs and of Katharine Armstrong. And Katharine suggested, and I agreed, that she would go make the announcement, that is that she'd put the story out. And I thought that made good sense for several reasons. First of all, she was an eyewitness. She'd seen the whole thing. Secondly, she'd grown up on the ranch, she'd hunted there all of her life. Third, she was the immediate past head of the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department, the game control commission in the state of Texas, an acknowledged expert in all of this.

And she wanted to go to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, which is the local newspaper, covers that area, to reporters she knew. And 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.

Q: What do you think now?

A: Well, I still do. I still think that the accuracy was enormously important. I had no press person with me, I didn't have any press people with me. I was there on a private weekend with friends on a private ranch. In terms of who I would contact to have somebody who would understand what we're even talking about, the first person that we talked with at one point, when Katharine first called the desk to get hold of a reporter, didn't know the difference between a bullet and a shotgun — a rifle bullet and a shotgun. And there are a lot of basic important parts of the story that required some degree of understanding. And so we were confident that Katharine was the right one, especially because she was an eyewitness and she could speak authoritatively on it. She probably knew better than I did what had happened since I'd only seen one piece of it.

Q: By the next morning, had you spoken again to Mr. Whittington?

A: The next morning I talked to his wife. And then I went to the hospital in Corpus Christi and visited with him.

Q: When was that?

A: Oh, it was shortly after noon on Sunday.

Q: Now, by that time had the word gone out to the newspaper?

A: I believe it had. I can't remember what time Katharine actually talked to the reporter. She had trouble that morning actually finding a reporter. But they finally got connected with the reporter, and that's when the story then went out.

Q: Now, it strikes me that you must have known that this was going to be a national story ...

A: Oh, sure.

Q: And it does raise the question of whether you couldn't have headed off this Beltway firestorm if you had put out the word to the national media, as well as to the local newspaper so that it could post it on its Web site. I mean, in retrospect, wouldn't that have been the wise course ...

A: Well, who is going to do that? Are they going to take my word for what happened? There is obviously ...

Q: Well, obviously, you could have put the statement out in the name of whoever you wanted. You could put it out in the name of Mrs. Armstrong, if you wanted to. Obviously, that's — she's the one who made the statement.

A: Exactly. That's what we did. We went with Mrs. Armstrong. We had — she's the one who put out the statement. And she was the most credible one to do it because she was a witness. It wasn't me in terms of saying, here's what happened, it was ...

Q: Right, understood. Now, the suspicion grows in some quarters that you — that this was an attempt to minimize it, by having it first appear in a little paper and appear like a little hunting incident down in a remote corner of Texas.

A: There wasn't any way this was going to be minimized, Brit; but it was important that it be accurate. I do think what I've experienced over the years here in Washington is as the media outlets have proliferated, speed has become sort of a driving force, lots of time at the expense of accuracy. And I wanted to make sure we got it as accurate as possible, and I think Katharine was an excellent choice. I don't know who you could get better as the basic source for the story than the witness who saw the whole thing.

Q: When did you first speak to — if you spoke to Andy Card at, what, midday, you said, on Sunday?

A: Sometime Sunday morning.

Q: And what about — when did you first — when, if ever, have you discussed it with the President?

A: I talked to him about it yesterday, or Monday — first on Monday, and then on Tuesday, too.

Q: There is reporting to the effect that some in the White House feel you kind of — well, look at what Scott McClellan went through the last couple days. There's some sense — and perhaps not unfairly so — that you kind of hung him out to dry. How do you feel about that?

A: Well, Scott does a great job and it's a tough job. It's especially a tough job under these conditions and circumstances. I had a bit of the feeling that the press corps was upset because, to some extent, it was about them — they didn't like the idea that we called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times instead of The New York Times. But it strikes me that the Corpus Christi Caller-Times is just as valid a news outlet as The New York Times is, especially for covering a major story in south Texas.

Q: Well, perhaps so, but isn't there an institution here present at the White House that has long established itself as the vehicle through which White House news gets out, and that's the pool?

A: I had no press person with me, no coverage with me, no White House reporters with me. I'm comfortable with the way we did it, obviously. You can disagree with that, and some of the White House press corps clearly do. But, no, I've got nothing but good things to say about Scott McClellan and Dan Bartlett. They've got a tough job to do and they do it well. They urged us to get the story out. The decision about how it got out, basically, was my responsibility.

Q: That was your call.

A: That was my call.

Q: All the way.

A: All the way. It was recommended to me — Katharine Armstrong wanted to do it, as she said, and I concurred in that; I thought it made good sense.

Q: Now, you're talking to me today — this is, what, Wednesday?

A: Wednesday.

Q: What about just coming out yourself Monday/Tuesday — how come?

A: Well, part of it obviously has to do with the status of Harry Whittington. And it's a difficult subject to talk about, frankly, Brit. But most especially I've been very concerned about him and focused on him and feel more comfortable coming out today because of the fact that his circumstances have improved, he's gotten by what was a potential crisis yesterday, with respect to the developments concerning his heart. I think this decision we made, that this was the right way to do it.

Q: Describe if you can your conversations with him, what you've said to him and the attitude he's shown toward you in the aftermath of this.

A: He's been fantastic. He's a gentleman in every respect. He oftentimes expressed more concern about me than about himself. He's been in good spirits, unfailingly cheerful ...

Q: What did he say about that? You said, "expressed concern" about you — what did he say?

A: Well, when I first saw him in the hospital, for example, he said, "Look," he said, "I don't want this to create problems for you." He literally was more concerned about me and the impact on me than he was on the fact that he'd been shot. He's a — I guess I'd describe him as a true Texas gentleman, a very successful attorney, successful businessman in Austin; a gentleman in every respect of the word. And he's been superb.

Q: For you, personally, how would you — you said this was one of the worst days of your life. How so?

A: What happened to my friend as a result of my actions, it's part of this sudden, you know, in less than a second, less time than it takes to tell, going from what is a very happy, pleasant day with great friends in a beautiful part of the country, doing something I love — to, my gosh, I've shot my friend. I've never experienced anything quite like that before.

Q: Will it affect your attitude toward this pastime you so love in the future?

A: I can't say that. You know, we canceled the Sunday hunt. I said, look, I'm not — we were scheduled to go out again on Sunday and I said I'm not going to go on Sunday, I want to focus on Harry. I'll have to think about it.

Q: Some organizations have said they hoped you would find a less violent pastime.

A: Well, it's brought me great pleasure over the years. I love the people that I've hunted with and do hunt with; love the outdoors, it's part of my heritage, growing up in Wyoming. It's part of who I am. But as I say, the season is ending, I'm going to let some time pass over it and think about the future.

Q: On another subject, court filings have indicated that Scooter Libby has suggested that his superiors — unidentified — authorized the release of some classified information. What do you know about that?

A: It's nothing I can talk about, Brit. This is an issue that's been under investigation for a couple of years. I've cooperated fully, including being interviewed, as well, by a special prosecutor. All of it is now going to trial. Scooter is entitled to the presumption of innocence. He's a great guy. I've worked with him for a long time, have enormous regard for him. I may well be called as a witness at some point in the case and it's, therefore, inappropriate for me to comment on any facet of the case.

Q: Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?

A: There is an executive order to that effect.

Q: There is.

A: Yes.

Q: Have you done it?

A: Well, I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions. The executive order ...

Q: You ever done it unilaterally?

A: I don't want to get into that. There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the President, but also includes the Vice President.

Q: There have been two leaks, one that pertained to possible facilities in Europe; and another that pertained to this NSA matter. There are officials who have had various characterizations of the degree of damage done by those. How would you characterize the damage done by those two reports?

A: There clearly has been damage done.

Q: Which has been the more harmful, in your view?

A: I don't want to get into just sort of ranking them, then you get into why is one more damaging than the other. One of the problems we have as a government is our inability to keep secrets. And it costs us, in terms of our relationship with other governments, in terms of the willingness of other intelligence services to work with us, in terms of revealing sources and methods. And all of those elements enter into some of these leaks.

Q: Mr. Vice President, thank you very much for doing this.

A: Thank you, Brit.

END; 11:21 PM
Management said...: Yesterday, Cheney claimed in a televised interview that he may on his own authority make public classified documents. This assertion comes in the wake of accusations made in Grand Jury testimony by Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby, that he was “authorized” by his “superiors” to release to Judy Miller and other reporters a classified CIA National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) related to Iraq WMDs issued the previous October.

The Vice President is quoted by AP as stating during an interview on Fox News last night: “There's an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously it focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president.'' See, AP, 02/16/2003, “Cheney Says He Has Power to Declassify Info”

A review of relevant laws, executive orders, and presidential directives reveals that the Vice President has no lawful power to unilaterally declassify CIA documents. Court documents released last week revealed that Dick Cheney stands accused of having told his aide to release a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) ten days before it was declassified by the Agency.

Cheney appears to be referring here to Executive Order 13292, issued March 25, 2003 which gave the Vice President the authority to request the classification of his own documents, and to exempt some of these from release under the Freedom of Information Act. See, E.O 13292, Sec. 3.5 (03/25/2003)

However, there is nothing contained in that Order, or any other law, executive order or presidential directive that gives the Vice President the power to unilaterally de-classify secret agency documents, or to authorize others to do so on his behalf. Such a power by the Vice President simply has never been provided for in any written statute, executive order, presidential directive, or agency regulation. It simply didn’t exist as part of American law until Cheney announced it yesterday.

***

Quite to the contrary. Federal law states that it is a felony for officials to disclose the contents of classified documents to persons who aren’t authorized to receive them. It is a separate offense to disclose the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. If the Vice President desires that his subordinates desire to make such disclosures, Executive Order spells out the precise procedures whereby any official must first request that a document be declassified, and recisely who in the government has the authority to carry out declassification. As before, that authority rests with the head of the “originating” agency, which in this case is the Director of Central Intelligence.

At that time, Cheney would have first had to request that George Tenet authorize Agency declassification. There is no record that such permission was ever sought or obtained. Tenet resigned a year later without explanation.

Since the beginning of the Bush Administration, EOs have been published and posted at the White House website, and are not classified. Additionally, there is a second category of presidential orders, National Security Presidential Directives (NSPDs), the contents of some of which are classified. But even these have been numbered and indexed, and NSPDs issued since February 13, 2001 are posted by the Federation of American Scientists.

A series of EOs spell out the precise procedures whereby any official may request that a classified document may be declassified, and who has the authority to carry out declassification. The Executive Order prescribes a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information. The first one still in effect was issued on April 17, 1995 and took effect on October 14, 1995. E.O. 12958 was amended with E.O. 12972, dated September 18, 1995, E.O. 13142, dated November 19, 1999, and E.O. 13292, dated March 25, 2003.

As before, that authority rests with the head of the “originating” agency, which in this case is the Director of Central Intelligence. While the President may overrule the head of the agency regarding declassification, the matter must first be considered by the CIA Director or his designate. That is clear from the language of the controlling document. In this particular, Executive Order 13292, Sec. 3.5 (03/25/2003) remains the lawful directive for declassification of CIA documents.

PART 3--DECLASSIFICATION AND DOWNGRADING
“Sec. 3.1. Authority for Declassification. (a) Information shall be declassified as soon as it no longer meets the standards for classification under this order.
(b) It is presumed that information that continues to meet the classification requirements under this order requires continued protection. In some exceptional cases, however, the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in these cases the information should be declassified. When such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official. That official will determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure.
SNIP
(c) If the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office determines that information is classified in violation of this order, the Director may require the information to be declassified by the agency that originated the classification. Any such decision by the Director may be appealed to the President through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The information shall remain classified pending a prompt decision on the appeal. “

Definition of terms is essential to a full understand in of what is meant here. As before, these terms contained in the 1995 Order remain operative. Consider the following, and it become clear that Mr. Cheney was not following the law when he told Mr. Libby to reveal the contents of the NIE to Ms. Miller.

(e) "Classification" means the act or process by which information is determined to be classified information.
(f) "Original classification" means an initial determination that information requires, in the interest of national security, protection against unauthorized disclosure.
(g) "Original classification authority" means an individual authorized in writing, either by the President, or by agency heads or other officials designated by the President, to classify information in the first instance.
(h) "Unauthorized disclosure" means a communication or physical transfer of classified information to an unauthorized recipient.
(i) "Agency" means any "Executive agency," as defined in 5 U.S.C. 105, and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.
(j) "Senior agency official" means the official designated by the agency head under section 5.6(c) of this order to direct and administer the agency's program under which information is classified, safeguarded, and declassified.
(k) "Confidential source" means any individual or organization that has provided, or that may reasonably be expected to provide, information to the United States on matters pertaining to the national security with the expectation that the information or relationship, or both, are to be held in confidence.
(l) "Damage to the national security" means harm to the national defense or foreign relations of the United States from the unauthorized disclosure of information, to include the sensitivity, value, and utility of that information “

CONCLUSION

As one should expect with such bureaucratic matters, the law is not in the least bit vague about the steps that government officials are required to take before they can release classified documents to the public. The Vice President is no exception.

In Mr. Cheney’s case, there is no evidence that he requested the Director of Central Intelligence to declassify the NIE before its contents were revealed by his aide, Scooter Libby, to Judy Miller of the New York Times on July 8, 2003. That document was not in fact declassified until ten days later. Dick Cheney and any other official who might have issued such an authorization was thus in violation of law in carrying out that disclosure. There is no murky presidential delegation of powers, as has been suggested by some, that might change that fact.

Therefore, the Vice President should be prosecuted for this.

MARK G. LEVEY, 2006.; 11:27 PM
Management said...: Whittington absolves Cheney after lawyer's hospital release
Vice President gets ovation in first public appearance since shooting
By Lynn Brezosky and Ben Neary, Associated Press
Inside Bay Area
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — His face marked with tiny birdshot wounds, the lawyer shot by Vice President Dick Cheney while quail hunting left a hospital Friday, saying "accidents do and will happen" and apologizing for the trouble the incident had caused the vice president.

"My family and I are deeply sorry for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with," Harry Whittington said, his voice a bit raspy but strong in his first comments since being shot on a South Texas ranch six days earlier.

The Austin attorney spoke fewer than 20 minutes before Cheney made his first public appearance since the shooting, receiving a rousing ovation from legislators in his home state of Wyoming.

"It's a wonderful experience to be greeted by such warmth by the leaders of our great state. It's especially true when you've had a very long week," Cheney told lawmakers in Cheyenne.

"Thankfully, Harry Whittington is on the mend and doing very well."

Whittington, 78, was hit in the face, neck and chest with birdshot Feb. 11. After a shotgun pellet traveled to his heart, he suffered a mild heart attack Tuesday while being treated at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial.

Whittington, who did not answer questions after giving his brief statement, had what appeared to be a line of cuts on his upper right eyelid and scrapes on his neck.

"We all assume certain risks in what we do, in what activities we pursue," Whittington said. "Accidents do and will happen."

He said the past weekend involved "a cloud of misfortune and sadness that is not easy to explain, especially with those who are not familiar with the great sport of quail hunting."

Dr. David Blanchard, the hospital's chief of emergency care, said the attorney was lucky to have survived the shooting.

Whittington was being released Friday because of "his excellent health," Blanchard said, but he added that Whittington wasn't answering questions because "he is not 100 percent."

Whittington did feel well enough to crack a joke.

"I also thank all of you for understanding as best you can that medical attention is very important to someone my age — and you haven't failed to give my age," he said, drawing laughs from reporters.

He also sent his love and respect to Cheney and his family. "We hope that he will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves," Whittington said.

Whittington returned to his home in Austin late Friday afternoon, smiling and waving to reporters through a tinted window before a garage door closed behind the green sport utility vehicle he was in.

"He's very tired. He's had a long, hard trip," said his daughter, Sally May Whittington, who added that the family would have no further comment. "He's happy to be home."

U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Pam Willeford, who accompanied Whittington and Cheney on the hunting trip, was among the visitors at Whittington's house.

Cheney took full blame for the shooting in a Wednesday appearance on Fox News, but his comments Friday were focused on reminiscing about Wyoming politicians, including his own time as the state's sole representative in the U.S. House.

"For better than a decade, I proudly answered to the title, the gentleman from Wyoming,'" Cheney said.

He also recalled the late Gov. Stan Hathaway, who gave Cheney his first job in politics — as an intern in the Wyoming Legislature in 1965, when Cheney was paid $300 for 40 days work.

About a dozen people waited outside the Capitol in subzero temperatures to protest Cheney's appearance. "We're a little embarrassed that he's from our state," said Tony Hayden, of Cheyenne.

But Cheney also had his supporters, including Dan Yoksh, of Cheyenne, who watched Cheney's speech on television at the Cheyenne Regional Airport.

"I think the media has blown things out of proportion," Yoksh said of the accident. "If you go duck hunting out here, you're bound to get shot sometime."

In Texas, the Kenedy County Sheriff's Department closed its investigation in the shooting Thursday without filing any charges. The department's report supported the account of the vice president, who told an investigator he did not see his hunting partner while aiming for a bird.

———

Neary reported from Cheyenne, Wyo. Associated Press Writers Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, Nedra Pickler in Washington and Jennifer Byrd in Cheyenne contributed to this report.; 11:56 PM

The Antecubital Fossa

Monday, February 20, 2006

Ways Dick Cheney Can Kill You

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