Bush Never Picked Up Phone To Call Cheney, To Console Or Offer Counsel...

[...] Back at Cheney's lodgings at the ranch--guest quarters called Uncle Tom's House--there was no discussion of a public statement. The White House was at first informed in surprisingly cryptic and cursory fashion--the Situation Room was told of an unspecified shooting accident in the vice president's hunting party. It took a phone call from presidential counselor Karl Rove to Katharine Armstrong ("Karl's one of my closest friends in life," she told NEWSWEEK) to sort out what had happened and report back to President Bush--that the vice president was the shooter and that Whittington had been wounded, though apparently not fatally. That night, according to a senior White House official who refused to be identified discussing a sensitive matter, Cheney did not speak to either Bush or the White House staff or his own press people. He did speak with David Addington, his chief of staff and former lawyer who is a strong proponent of executive power and secrecy.

A gate to the Armstrong Ranch, where Cheney accidentally shot Whittington on Feb. 11Cheney's aides would later say that he wanted to be absolutely sure of the facts before going public, and Whittington's condition remained a little uncertain. At first, the wounds were deemed to be minor, but on Sunday morning the hospital was reporting that some of the tiny birdshot had penetrated his body in potentially dangerous ways. In Washington, White House staffers were quietly urging Cheney's staff to somehow go public with the shooting. But Bush never picked up the phone to call Cheney, either to console or to offer counsel.

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