It wasn't a traditional heart attack — no artery was blocked. In fact, the 78-year-old Whittington's doctors called his arteries healthy, and he felt no pain or other symptoms.

What apparently happened: Doctors noticed an irregular heartbeat Tuesday morning and took Whittington in for an exam called a cardiac catheterization, threading a wire up from the groin to see an image of exactly what was going on inside his heart.

One of the pellets from the 28-gauge shotgun that Cheney had fired had migrated to the heart, either touching or embedding into the heart muscle near its top chambers, called the atria. That irritated those chambers to cause the irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation.

But doctors also spotted inflammation — which always occurs when something foreign invades the body — that was causing a temporary block in blood flow, by touching or pushing the heart, explained Dr. David Blanchard, chief of emergency care at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial.

That's what he termed a "silent heart attack."

A pellet striking the heart can cause those problems, but it's not normally thought of as a heart attack, said Dr. Samin Sharma, chief of interventional cardiology at New York's Mt. Sinai Medical Center.

"What probably happened is the pellet hit the heart and the heart released some enzymes" associated with a heart attack, he said. "It usually has a very good prognosis. ... It's not as significant as a heart attack."

Anti-inflammatory drugs will soothe the inflammation, and the pellet should scar over in time, he said.

Digging it out could cause more damage, specialists agreed.

Removal probably would be necessary only if the pellet had penetrated a heart chamber, something Whittington's doctors said didn't happen, added Dr. Soumitra Eachempati, a trauma surgeon at New York Presbyterian/Weil Cornell Hospital.

As for the atrial fibrillation, it's not immediately dangerous but must be treated because if left uncontrolled, it can spur blood clots. Most cases can be corrected with medication. Hospital officials didn't say Tuesday whether Whittington's heart was beating normally again, or if he was being medicated.

Until Tuesday's complications, physicians had said Whittington had been progressing well after being struck by birdshot in Saturday's hunting incident — and that they were not concerned about the six to 200 pieces of birdshot that might still be lodged in his body.

Whittington was about 30 yards away from Cheney when shot.

"At this distance he's peppered with lot of small holes," said Dr. J. Wayne Meredith of the Wake Forest School of Medicine, who has seen similar injuries.

A report filed with Texas Parks and Wildlife said the vice president was using size 7 1/2 shot. A three-quarter ounce load of that size shot would normally contain more than 250 pellets. Each pellet is about the size of a small letter "o" in newspaper print.

Birdshot is usually made with steel or lead, but even lead pellets left in the body wouldn't pose a danger of lead poisoning, said Dr. Renae Stafford, a trauma surgeon at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Medicine.

"People speak of lead poisoning, but in reality it's not something we see," agreed Dr. Maurizio A. Miglietta of the New York University School of Medicine.

CBS News reported that private signals were being sent that the matter has been handled badly and Cheney needs to come out and say something.

On Saturday Cheney accidentally shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old lawyer, while on a quail hunt in Texas. The news wasn't made public until Sunday, and all this week the White House has been peppered with questions about how slowly the information was made known.

Doctors announced Tuesday that a birdshot pellet is in or touching Whittington's heart and that he had a mild heart attack.

Cheney's office issued a written statement saying the Vice President had called Whittington on Tuesday, wished him well and asked if there was anything he could do.

Cheney's office said Monday he hadn't realized he was lacking the proper stamp and has since sent a $7 check to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

"I don't know how they missed it," said Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Mayfield. A statement from Cheney's office said his staff had asked for applicable permits and would "take whatever steps are needed to comply with applicable rules."

Cheney has not commented publicly about the accident, which took place on the 50,000-acre Armstrong Ranch in Kenedy County on Saturday afternoon.

The incident dominated cable TV, radio and talk shows Monday and provoked heated exchanges between the White House press corps and Bush press secretary Scott McClellan on the nearly 24-hour delay in disclosing the accidental shooting.

McClellan said Cheney's first priority - and that of the White House - was to ensure that Whittington got proper medical care, though he had no ready explanation for why that precluded public disclosure.

He said Bush aide Karl Rove told the president about 8 p.m. Saturday that Cheney had shot someone, and McClellan learned that night from the White House Situation Room "that there had been a hunting accident, and that is was a member of the vice president's hunting party." More details emerged in a 6 a.m. Sunday call from aides, and McClellan said he urged the vice president's office to get the news out "as quickly as possible."

Kenedy County Sheriff Ramon Salinas III said he knew about the incident Saturday evening and decided then not interview witnesses based on information from others that the shooting was accidental.

Bush said nothing about it when he passed reporters at church Sunday morning, and no one from the White House staff discussed it with the national media until that afternoon, nearly 24 hours later.

"The vice president thought that Mrs. Armstrong should be the first one to go out there and provide that information to the public, which she did. She reached out early Sunday morning" to the local newspaper in Corpus Christi, McClellan said.

Joel Goldstein, an authority on the vice presidency and a law professor at St. Louis University, said the incident is ready-made for late-night comics, noting that apart from the famous duel in which Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, "you don't think about the vice president going around shooting people."

That alone can hurt both Cheney and the administration, he said, adding, "This is just going to make him more of a lightning rod-slash-laughingstock."

But the real damage, he said, comes from the delay in revealing the incident. The benefit of avoiding mention on the Sunday morning's talk shows, he said, was far outweighed by the fact that it fuels perceptions of a vice president "obsessed with secrecy."

He cited the Cheney-led energy task force, the "time spent in undisclosed locations," the vice president's role in the domestic wiretapping policy and the fact that his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, has been implicated in leaking the name of a CIA officer to discredit her husband.

On Monday, the third hunter in Cheney's hunting party said that she believes Cheney was not at fault.

"We really thought he (Whittington) was way back behind us," said Pamela Willeford, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland since October 2003.

She was on a brief vacation visiting her husband, Dr. George Willeford, III, a gastroenterologist in Austin. Dr. Willeford was also hunting at the Armstrong ranch but in a different field at the time of the shooting about a mile away.

She said Whittington was perhaps 90 feet away when the vice president shot him, as he was tracking a quail that had flown up and dipped back down, and only she, Cheney and Whittington were hunting at the time.

Two others were waiting in a car nearby - Katharine Armstrong and Serita Hixon - in keeping with a safety rule that limits the number of hunters to three at a time, she said.

"The three of us were out of the vehicle hitting a covey," she said. "Harry Whittington dropped back to pick up a bird he'd shot. The vice president and I moved on to shoot another covey and unbeknownst to us Harry had picked up a bird and caught up with us. He had walked up and we didn't realize that he had caught up with us," she said.

"He was back behind us and we turned off to the left to shoot another covey ... The bird came up and was going back down and you know how you swing on it, with your gun, following a bird," she said.

Mrs. Willeford said she'd hunted once before with Cheney and would do so again.

"Absolutely," Mrs. Willeford said. "He's a great shot. He's very safety conscious. This is something that unfortunately was a bad accident and when you're with a group like that, he's safe or safer than all the rest of us."

She said she was surprised at the hubbub stemming from the delay in putting out word of the incident.

"The focus was on Mr. Whittington and his well being. There was no intention not to share the pertinent info at the proper time," she said, adding that Cheney never consulted with her over how the handle the incident.

Armstrong said she made the decision to inform the Corpus Christi Caller-Times about the accident on Sunday. Armstrong and her mother, Anne Armstrong, were too occupied with tending to Whittington and worrying about his condition to make it public on Saturday, she said.

She said she spoke to Cheney on Sunday and he agreed with her decision.

"I said, `Mommy, this important news. This needs to get out,'" Katharine Armstrong said. "We ran it by the vice president and he was very mindful of his role as a guest. He said something along the lines of, `You all do whatever you are comfortable with.'"

Cheney stayed at the Armstrong Ranch on Saturday night.

"We had dinner and went to bed," Katharine Armstrong said. "We were all very worried about Harry. That was the main thing on our mind."

Sally (Whittington) May said her father does not recall a lot of the incident, nor was he involved in how or if information about the incident was released: "He didn't know at the time if he was going to the hospital or the mortuary."

The doctors were back around Monday morning. They have mostly been concerned with injuries to his throat.

She said her dad is back to joking.

"One of the surgeons said, `We'll get this BB from near the liver, and go ahead and get that other one at the same time.' The surgeon looked at him and said, `that way we'll kill two birds with one stone.' And he said, "I consider that a poor choice of words.'"

Kenedy County investigators on Monday determined that the shooting was an accident after interviewing their last witness and said "there was no alcohol or misconduct on anyone's part."

But questions remained as to why Cheney was not interviewed on Saturday.

Chief Deputy Gilbert San Miguel suggested he always knew where the vice president and the other witnesses were.

"We were always in contact with Secret Service," he said.

Salinas said he decided Saturday night not to send anyone to the ranch and added that he was relying on information from others that it was an accident.

"If I wanted to go in there, we would have gone in there," said Salinas. "If someone called and told me there was a shooting and they didn't think it was an accident, I'd have five or six people on the ranch."

Chief San Miguel returned to the ranch about 8 a.m. Sunday and interviewed Cheney and other witnesses, Salinas said.

"They've cooperated," he said. "They didn't treat us like backdoor law enforcement. They didn't hide anything or try to coerce anybody to say anything."

Cheney "felt kind of bad" about the accident, Chief San Miguel told Sheriff Salinas, but everyone was calm, Sheriff Salinas said.

"It's just another accident," Salinas said. "But of course it' s the vice president. Nobody's perfect."

The other hunters present on Saturday included ranch manager Anne Armstrong; Whittington's wife, Merce; Ambassador Willeford; and her husband, George "Boots" Willeford. Anne Armstrong's two daughters, Katharine Armstrong and Serita Hixon, were there. So was Hixon's husband, Bob.

Whittington shot two birds, which he left to retrieve and put into a truck, Katharine Armstrong said.

As Whittington re-approached the group, he was walking through a low point in the land where they couldn't see him, Ms. Armstrong said.

"The cardinal rule is you stay on line," Katharine Armstrong said.

A Secret Service agent called Salinas on his cell phone "five to 10 minutes" after the shooting occurred, the sheriff said. And San Miguel, the department's chief deputy, went to the scene.

Dr. Blanchard said that the hospital's cardiologists were optimistic that the metallic pellet in Mr. Whittington's heart would not travel farther and that he would be able to function normally. They said they did not consider the other pellets in his body problematic, and they currently have no plans to remove them.

Mr. Cheney's office, in its first official announcement about the incident, released a statement shortly after 2:30 p.m. Eastern time saying that the vice president's "thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Whittington and his family" and that Mr. Cheney had spoken by telephone to Mr. Whittington an hour earlier.

"The vice president wished Mr. Whittington well and asked if there was anything he needed," the statement said. "The vice president said that he stood ready to assist."

The statement added that Mr. Whittington's spirits were "good," but "obviously his situation deserves the careful monitoring that his doctors are providing."

The downturn in Mr. Whittington's health significantly changed the tone of the White House reaction to the hunting accident. In Texas, Carlos Valdez, the district attorney in Kleberg County, said a fatality would immediately spur a new report from the local sheriff and, most likely, a grand jury investigation.

At the White House, Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, began his day unaware of Mr. Whittington's heart attack. After being battered by reporters on Monday for the delay in the White House's providing information about the accident, Mr. McClellan opened his first briefing on Tuesday making light of the incident, as the late-night comics had done.

Mr. McClellan joked that the Texas Longhorns, the N.C.A.A. football champions who were at the White House to meet with the president, would be in their team color, orange, and "the orange that they're wearing is not because they're concerned that the vice president will be there."

Continuing the play on orange, the color hunters wear as a safety precaution to avoid being shot, Mr. McClellan held up his own orange and gray tie. "That's why I'm wearing it," he said, to laughter.

But by the time of Mr. McClellan's noon briefing, when the press secretary was aware of Mr. Whittington's downturn but did not disclose it to reporters, his tone was serious, even as he was at times impatient with the persistent questions about the shooting. "If you want to continue to spend time on that, that's fine," Mr. McClellan said. "We're moving on to the priorities of the American people."

Mr. Cheney's aides said he first learned of the change in Mr. Whittington's condition when he arrived at his West Wing office about 7:40 a.m. Tuesday, shortly after doctors in Corpus Christi said that they had picked up an irregular heartbeat from Mr. Whittington on their morning rounds.

Doctors said that the pellet, which they had known since the accident was near Mr. Whittington's heart, had evidently moved into the heart muscle, causing "some quivering" called atrial fibrillation. Mr. Whittington, who was shot by Mr. Cheney on Saturday and moved out of intensive care on Monday, was immediately put back into intensive care.

Mr. Cheney was told, his statement said, that Mr. Whittington would need a cardiac catheterization to determine the condition of his heart. The procedure was performed about 10 a.m. Eastern time. The vice president then continued his schedule for the day, but changed his plans when his chief of staff informed him during a Capitol Hill national security briefing that Mr. Whittington's doctors were about to hold a televised news conference.

Senator Trent Lott, who had teased the vice president about the accident during the briefing, said Mr. Cheney immediately returned to the White House to watch the news conference. "He didn't look like he was having a whole lot of fun," said Mr. Lott, Republican of Mississippi.

Local officials have not considered any charges in the shooting because no one in the hunting party, including the victim, has accused Mr. Cheney of wrongdoing.

"Everybody that I've heard so far has said it was an accident," said Mr. Valdez, who holds an elected position and is a Democrat. "The victim probably told the sheriff's department it was an accident."

Mr. Valdez added, "Now, if the worst happens and the man happens to die, we would take an additional step."

Under the law, even an accidental hunting fatality can result in criminal charges. Mr. Cheney could be charged with negligence, defined as failing to understand the dangers involved and disregarding them, or recklessness, defined as understanding the dangers and disregarding them.

After some initial confusion about what steps the local police had taken to investigate the shooting on Saturday, Secret Service officials said on Tuesday that they had offered to make the vice president available for an interview as quickly as possible but that the local sheriff had agreed to wait until Sunday.

Eric Zahren, a Secret Service spokesman, said the shooting occurred at 5:50 p.m. Central time, slightly later than the White House had said at first. After helping Mr. Whittington into an ambulance, the agents in Mr. Cheney's security detail returned to their command post on the hunting ranch by 6:30 p.m. The Secret Service supervisor in McAllen, Tex., had called the sheriff in Kenedy County to tell him about the shooting by 7 p.m., Mr. Zahren said.

The Secret Service supervisor arranged with the sheriff for Mr. Cheney to be interviewed at the ranch at 10 a.m. Sunday, Mr. Zahren said. But the vice president's office changed the time to 8 a.m.

While there were reports, some from the sheriff himself, that a deputy had been dispatched to the ranch on Saturday night and been turned away, Mr. Zahren said that some local police officers had heard about the shooting on a scanner when an ambulance was sent to pick up Mr. Whittington. They showed up at the ranch unsolicited. Private guards, not Secret Service agents, Mr. Zahren said, turned the police away because they did not know anything had occurred.

The White House first learned of the shooting, Mr. McClellan said Tuesday, when someone from the vice president's party called the Situation Room shortly after the accident occurred. But whoever called — Mr. McClellan would not identify the person — said only that there had been a hunting accident involving the vice president, not that Mr. Cheney had himself shot Mr. Whittington.

The Situation Room staff then passed that information to Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, who contacted President Bush. Mr. Card also called Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff, who called one of the ranch's owners, Katharine Armstrong. Ms. Armstrong told Mr. Rove that the vice president had shot Mr. Whittington, and Mr. Rove then called Mr. Bush about 8 p.m. Eastern time with that news.

When initial reports of Vice President Cheney's hunting accident surfaced I must admit that I thought something seemed amiss. Simply put, the scenario as related by the White House violates all the rules of Bird Hunting 101.

Rule Number One: You don’t rotate out of a limited arc of fire when you’re hunting with three or four other hunters. Reports are that Cheney tracked a quail that had flushed, then he quickly swung around and shot. Unfortunately Mr. Whittington and the bird were in the same place at the same time.

"This all happened pretty quickly," Ms. Armstrong, the owner of the property where Cheney and his buddies had been hunting, said in a telephone interview from her ranch. Mr. Whittington, she said, "did not announce — which would be protocol — 'Hey, it's me, I'm coming up,' " she said.

It’s not clear whether or not they were using birddogs, but it seems silly to suggest that hunters would yell out their postions while stalking through fields and brush trying to sneak up on their prey. Furthermore, since hunters wear hearing protection, verbal communication is not the most effective form of identification. That’s why hunters wear bright orange vest and hats, all reports indicate this was the case with Cheney and his hunting party.

"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 and Hunter Education Coordinator in New Mexico. "Once you squeeze that trigger, you can't bring that shot back."

The same basic comment is echoed by Duane Harvey, President of the Wisconsin Hunter Education Instructors Association, who 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."

Then comes the delay of Sheriff Ramon Salinas III of Kenedy County access to the Vice President from the time of the shooting at 5:30 p.m. Saturday until an interview at 8 a.m. Sunday morning.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren stated that about an hour after the shooting the local Secret Service office notified the Sheriffs' Department of the shooting and arrangements were made for an interview. Saturday night at least one deputy showed up at the ranch's front gate and asked to speak to Cheney but was turned away by the Secret Service, Zahren said. This sort of delaying tactic is indicative of drunk-driving hit and runs by rich kids allowing the necessary time to sober up, contact your attorney and get your story straight.

Numerous reports stated that Mr. Whittington injuries were not life threatening and that he was in good spirits and cracking jokes. Now the story has become that there are pellets lodged in his heart and he’s now had a heart attack.
No one is saying this shooting was intentional or done with any malice whatsoever, but after you look over the ballistic statistics that we complied from the Tactical Shotgun website it will be all too obvious that the story offered by the White House, that Mr. Whittington was peppered with birdshot from 30 yards away is simply false. Remember these statistics are complied for a much more powerful 12 gauge round versus a dainty 28 gauge, and from a distance of only 3 yards (9ft).

Birdshot

Birdshot is typically a poor choice for deployment as a tactical load, owing primarily to it's poor sectional density. It bleeds velocity and energy quickly and as such has limited effectiveness at close range which rapidly erodes to zero effectiveness as range increases. Ironically, people often choose birdshot because of it's poor sectional density/penetrating capability. This choice is often made in consideration of a densely populated urban or family environment where the shotgun operators are concerned about collateral damage as a result of either building material penetration in the event of missed shots and over penetration in the event of a good, solid hit on target.

The simple truth of the matter is that unless contact distances are involved (5 yards or less), most birdshot lacks the penetrating capability required to inflict meaningful wound trauma. Wounds from birdshot tend to be extremely gruesome, yet shallow. They often shred and destroy a large volume of tissue but don't penetrate deep enough to damage critical cardiovascular or CNS structures required for incapacitation. Clothing can further amplify these poor penetration characteristics.

While increasingly difficult to acquire as a result of being banned for waterfowl hunting, lead BB is likely the smallest shot we would elect to use in a tactical application. This choice would only be made in the densely populated family/urban environment mentioned above, and anyone making this choice would be wisely counciled to have more significant ammunition immediately available in the event that the lead BB does not produce the desired effect.

The only way that birdshot could have possibly penetrated into Whittington's heart, given the minimal force impact capacity of the shot is if he was shot from incredibly close range. This then means that the whole event requires a greater level of scrutiny. If they lied about the distance of the shot, its probably one of many lies.

The delay in reporting the event to the authorities and the delay in the White House's release of the information to the press is more evidence of impropriety.

It seems clear that this is a cover-up in progress. The hospital where Whittington was taken after the shooting is a heavily guarded facility where he is being operated upon and monitored by doctors and surgeons close to the President and Vice President. These highly skilled medical professionals would have known instantly by a simple X-Ray if he had suffered from a shot to the heart. These doctors, loyal to the the Bush-Cheney cabal are clearly colluding to conceal information about Whittington's actual condition for their masters.

[Go to linked story for graphics demonstrating the points of this article]

Cheney is powermad and thinks he should be free to get away with anything. He obviously belives that he and his buddies are above the law. The event very well might have been a stupid, drunken hunting accident but it has now become a multi-tiered cover-up to conceal what really happened.