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Date Posted: 09:26:12 02/18/06 Sat
Author: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. (Scooter The Cooter)
Subject: Big Dick Cheney's Off The Record
In reply to: Gaylord Facher 's message, "Cheer up, sleepy Jean Dick Cheney's Dirty Dream" on 09:22:10 02/18/06 Sat

February 17, 2006


It's a scandal any way you look at it



JOHN BRUMMETT




"Mr. Whittington's interview collaborated Vice President Cheney's statement."

There's your scandal right there.

That's not to say other scandals won't emerge regarding the vice president's shooting that 78-year-old man in the face and neck and chest, then having dinner and going to bed.

But this collaboration between the shooter and the shootee represents an outrageous affront, either to criminal justice or the English language.

From the aforementioned excerpt from the Kenedy County sheriff's press statement in Corpus Christi, we must logically reach one of these conclusions:

• The 78-year-old victim, apparently interviewed in his hospital bed between stays in intensive care, worked with Cheney on his statement to authorities - collaborated, that is - essentially asking feebly as he winced from pellets that had penetrated assorted sensitive spots, "Mr. Vice President, what do you want me to say?"

• Or, the Kenedy County sheriff's office doesn't know the difference between one's having "collaborated" and one's having "corroborated."

A police agency must never allow witnesses to collaborate, even if one of them runs the country, starts wars, taps phones and generally scares you half to death.

That'd be a scandal. That's why on TV they always put suspected perpetrators in different rooms.

And a sheriff not knowing the difference between collaborate and corroborate - that'd be a scandal, too

To collaborate is to cooperate on a joint project, often with an official agency and sometimes with an enemy. Corroborate is a word frequently used in police and legal work that means to give evidence that supports another's independently given evidence.

I suppose there are two other possibilities. It could be that the sheriff's office committed a Freudian slip prompted by the vice president's grim manner and the victim's overly obliging one. Or it could be that the sheriff knows the language perfectly well and was trying to tell everyone subtly what really had gone on. A wink-wink deal, in other words.

But you're wanting me to be serious. Fine. We can be fairly sure what happened. Cheney was interviewed. Whittington was interviewed separately. Their versions pretty much meshed. Cheney was trying to shoot quail. He didn't know Whittington had come up on his right. Stuff happens.

That is to say the versions were corroborative, not collaborative. It is to say the sheriff mangled the language, joining a large and, sadly, ever-growing club.

The fellow in county government who once said he wanted a pay raise to apply backward - to be "radioactive" - is a member. There was the radio reporter explaining the other day that a person was in "abstentia." Another member of the club is the state legislator who dared his colleagues to take a bold action by asking if the legislators had the "begonias."

I believe the legislator was attempting to make a racy, vulgar anatomical reference having to do with nerve. I did not take him for a gardener and I do not know why begonias would be considered nervier than, say, azaleas.

Larry Bird is a member, too. The basketball superstar who now is general manager of the Indiana Pacers was asked on television Sunday about losing the services of Ron Artest, the fellow who went into the stands to brawl with fans last season.

"You hate to lose a player of that statue," Bird said.

If the guy was no more mobile than that, I'm not sure why a basketball team's general manager would hate to lose him. Maybe it had to do with height. Some statues, like the one of liberty, stand rather tall.

Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com.

















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Posted on Fri, Feb. 17, 2006
CIA LEAK CASECheney faces bigger problemBy RON FOURNIERAssociated PressWASHINGTON - It's not Dick Cheney's hunting mishap that worries Republicans. It's his other scandal -- the CIA leak case and the threat it poses to the vice president.
Republican activists acknowledge that the accidental shooting of Cheney's friend is the talk of mainstream America and has made the vice president the butt of jokes. But they do not expect political fallout from the shooting or the clumsy way in which it was disclosed.
''It's hard to believe that anybody can make Dick Cheney a sympathetic figure,'' said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. ``That's what the media has done.''
Republicans say they are pleasantly surprised that the intense media coverage of the hunting accident has shifted attention from the case of I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff. Libby is accused of misleading investigators about who leaked the identify of a CIA official.
In documents released two weeks ago, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said he understood that Libby's superiors authorized him to disclose to the media details of a secret report that is central to the investigation. What does Cheney know? ''It's nothing I can talk about,'' he told Fox News on Wednesday. ``I may well be called as a witness.''
That's the scandal to watch, Republicans said.
The hunting accident ''really has gotten Scooter Libby out of the press,'' said Deb Gullett, a GOP activist from Phoenix, who is chief of staff to the city's mayor. ``But it will come back.''
Fellow Republicans said growing antiwar sentiment and President Bush's warrantless spying program are bigger problems for the GOP.
But for now, the focus is on the Cheney's hunting accident.
''The image of him falling is something I'll never ever be able to get out of my mind,'' Cheney told Fox News about accidentally shooting 78-year-old lawyer Harry Whittington in Texas on Saturday.
Even some Democrats weren't sure whether the latest Cheney controversy was good or bad for the White House.
''The bad news is he's talking about shooting a man, blaming the victim and covering it up,'' said Democratic consultant Jim Jordan. The White House initially suggested Whittington was at fault for putting himself in range of Cheney's rifle.
''The good news is he's not talking about his indicted chief of staff or ordering the leaking of classified information,'' Jordan said.

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