Democrats in Congress accused Vice President Dick Cheney of a pattern of secrecy, and demanded that he "level" with the public, after keeping mum about accidentally shooting an associate over the weekend. Cheney has been criticized for waiting a day before disclosing a hunting mishap Saturday in which he shot his 78-year-old hunting companion, Harry Whittington, in the neck, chest, and face.
Asked at a press conference for her reaction about how the White House has handled the incident, US Senator Hillary Clinton called the Bush administration's failure to be more forthcoming "troubling."
"A tendency of this administration -- from the top all the way to the bottom -- is to withhold information ... to refuse to be forthcoming about information that is of significance and relevance to the jobs that all of you do, and the interests of the American people," Clinton said.
"Putting it all together, going back years now, there's a pattern and it's a pattern that should be troubling," she said at a press conference calling for a more robust federal response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
The former first lady continued: "The refusal of this administration to level with the American people on matters large and small is very disturbing, because it goes counter to the way our constitutional democracy ... is supposed to work."
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid at a press conference Tuesday said the secretive tendency goes beyond Cheney, pervading the entire Bush White House.
"I think the reason it took the vice president a day to talk about this is part of the secretive nature of this administration," the top Senate Democrat said. "They keep things pretty close to the chest."
"I think it's time the American people heard from the vice president, in a real meeting just like we're having here," said Reid, who called the George W. Bush presidency "the most secretive administration in modern history."
"In the last many, many decades, there's no administration more secretive than this," he said.
Cheney has not commented publicly about the accident, which took place on the 50,000-acre Armstrong Ranch in Texas on Saturday.
Allegations that he is obsessively secretive have dogged Cheney since the early days of the Bush presidency, including his refusal during the administration's first term to reveal the participants on an energy task force he led.
The vice president also has been criticized for a possible role in helping craft the administration's controversial secret domestic wiretapping policy.
Meanwhile, his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, has been implicated in secretly leaking the name of a CIA officer to discredit her husband -- an action some recent news accounts suggest may have been sanctioned by Cheney.
Senator Chuck Schumer said Tuesday the time has come for the vice president to hold a press conference -- which Schumer said would be Cheney's first in some four years -- to clear the air.
"In light of the recent shooting accident and all the questions surrounding his role in the leaking of classified national security information through his Chief of Staff Lewis Libby, there are many questions that Americans have for VP Cheney," Schumer said in a press release.
