Okay, we're deep in the trivia of how Shooter handled the release of the story, so, as Nixon would have had it, let's wallow. Mary Matalin, a former counselor to the Shooter before getting out while the getting was good, told the NYT's David Sanger:
"What he did was not an irrational thing," said Mary Matalin, Cheney's former communications adviser, who spoke to him Sunday morning.
"This was a very close friend this happened to. Everyone was shaken up about it.
"When I spoke to him, it was all about Harry, worrying about him," not whether he should get a statement out, or let his hostess on the Armstrong Ranch tell a local newspaper."
The thrust of that version is that Cheney, heartsick over the fate of his "very close friend"--a usage which MSNBC's Keith Olbermann tracked in Cheney's Fox interview to an evolving "friend", "close friend" and "acquaintance"--didn't have time for niggling details like how to tell the nation he shot a guy. Yet the delay, the choice of a local newspaper (which Cheney, in his Fox interview, says was deliberate to avoid the filtering effect of the national media), the choice of the hostess as spokesperson (which Cheney defends as an eyewitness--was she on the hunt? what happened to the third guy in the party?) all suggest not an absence of planning and forethought but an excess of it. James, give her hell.
UPDATE: You don't need Keith to track the devolution of the Cheney-Whittington friendship. From the Fox News transcript (note the lack of ellipsis--Harry goes from close friend to acquaintance in less than half a minute).:
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.
HUME: How long have you known him?
CHENEY: I first met him in Vale, Colorado, when I worked for Gerry Ford about 30 years ago, and it was the first time I'd ever hunted with him.
HUME: Would you describe him as a close friend, friendly acquaintance, what --
CHENEY: No, an acquaintance.
If he'd continued on this path, in ten more seconds, Harry would have been human skeet.