February 13, 2006

Froomkin:

[ABC's Charlie] Gibson then spoke with Kathryn Garcia, the reporter for the Corpus Christie Caller-Times who first broke the story .

Gibson: "So you're just in on a Sunday and the phone rings, right?"

Garcia: "Yeah. Actually that's kind of how it worked. I was incredibly surprised. I got a phone call from Katharine Armstrong. . . . She was explaining to me what happened, giving me the details, and she kept saying the vice president did this, the vice president did that, we were all hunting. And at the end -- I mean, it's a Sunday morning, it's supposed to be slow at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times -- and . . . I said, are we talking about Vice President Cheney? And she laughed a little bit and said yes, absolutely. And I thought, oh, my God, you're going to have to repeat that story one more time."

Gibson: "She told you, I know, that Mr. Whittington didn't follow protocol, and came up from behind the vice president and didn't sort of announce that he was there, having gone off to fetch a quail. But we've talked to hunters who say there's no protocol like that and the real problem is the shooter has to be aware of where anybody in his hunting party may be. Do you know anything about hunting protocol?"

Garcia: "I don't know that much, I'm not a hunter myself, but I do know a little bit, and I do know you're supposed to look before shooting."

Garcia also described calling the White House.

"I . . . got the switchboard . . . I said, you know, I'm going to need to talk to some sort of public relations office. . . . She said, no, unfortunately it's going to be open on Monday morning. And I said, no, that's not going to work and I tried to be as absolutely dramatic as possible to get the most attention and I said: Vice President Cheney has apparently shot someone accidentally and I need to speak with someone and I need a statement. She got somebody straight away for me. It was very interesting."

Posted by Laura at February 13, 2006 11:15 PM