By: President Bush was satisfied with Vice President Dick Cheney's account of his Texas hunting accident, but Bush's spokesman declined to say Thursday whether the president felt it should have been revealed earlier.
"I think that the vice president clearly explained the rationale behind that," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, avoiding a direct response to questions about whether Bush felt the shooting accident was publicly disclosed in a timely manner.
The accident happened on Saturday but was not publicly revealed until the next day.
Cheney himself spoke publicly about the accident for the first time Wednesday in an exclusive interview with Fox News Channel. He said he did not see his hunting companion Harry Whittington until just after he fired on a covey of quail and peppered him with bird shot in the face, neck and chest.
"The president's satisfied with what the vice president said yesterday," McClellan said Thursday.
Cheney also defended his decision to keep it from the public until a day after it happened.
The vice president acknowledged that McClellan and Bush adviser Dan Bartlett urged him to release information about the accident quickly. But he said he made the ultimate decision to have the owner of the Texas ranch to reveal it to a local newspaper without any official announcement from the White House.
That decision created a major public relations problem for the White House, with some Republicans even suggesting that it made the situation worse by suggesting the possibility of some sort of cover-up.
Asked whether Bush encouraged Cheney to speak out Wednesday, McClellan said, "Obviously there are internal discussions that we have, and I'll leave those internal."
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