Cover-up in plain sight: On MSNBC’s Countdown Friday night, Keith Olbermann interviewed Texas defense attorney Charles Parnham who finally said what everyone watching the coverage of Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident has been thinking:

People whose imprudent behavior causes accidents are charged with criminal negligence every day, even in Texas, Parnham said, in so many words. (Transcript here.)

Viewed from the perspective that Cheney was indeed endeavoring to cover up a crime after he shot Harry Whittington last week, his actions — waiting a day to call local authorities in investigate, not notifying the press, etc. — cease to be confusing.

In fact, if you look at the sequence of events after the shooting, every action taken or avoided by the vice president, his hostess Katherine Armstrong and the hunting party appears to have been part of a deliberate effort to avoid future scrutiny:

The Secret Service, which put the time of the shooting at 5:50 p.m., said it had notified Sheriff Ramon Salinas III of Kenedy County by 7 p.m.

Sheriff Salinas said he had dispatched a deputy, and he later issued a news release suggesting that the officer had been turned away at the ranch. The Washington Post on Wednesday quoted Sheriff Salinas as saying that he first learned of the shooting from one of his captains, who had been summoned to escort the ambulance, but that he arrived after the ambulance left and that the Border Patrol agent guarding the gate during Mr. Cheney’s visit knew nothing of any shooting.

Sheriff Salinas did not return repeated calls, and a reporter seeking to resolve the discrepancies was turned away Wednesday by the sheriff’s office in Sarita, which said he was “unavailable.”

Ms. Armstrong said she knew nothing of any attempted visit by a deputy on Saturday night.

Sheriff Salinas and his deputies know who runs thing in Kenedy County. According to Wikipedia, the population of Kenedy County in is 414 — and that is not a typo. The Armstrong family has owned the 50,000 acre ranch there since the 1850s. (The Armstrongs also own the fabled King Ranch in Texas.)

Katherine is a lobbyist with Baker Botts, lobbying firm owned by Bush family consigliere James Baker, but her political connections in Texas run deep:

Katherine is the daughter of Pioneer Tobin Armstrong, an heir to the fabled Armstrong and King Ranch fortunes. Her mother, Anne Armstrong, who is Kay Bailey Hutchison’s best friend, helped launch the senator’s career as Republican National Committee co-chair in 1971.

Pudgy Fingerprints

The administration’s storyline as promulgated in the traditional media is that events were mishandled in Texas that night because Cheney is a rogue politico. We’re told he is the “most powerful vice president ever” — that no one can tell him what to do, not even the president.

Baloney. This thing has Karl Rove’s pudgy fingerprints all over it. It ought to raise suspicions anytime a story put out by this White House doesn’t add up, especially when political power is at stake.

We know Rove called the ranch that night and spoke with Katherine Armstrong, supposedly only to check on the condition of poor Harry Whittington. Based on what happened after the call, we can make a few surmises about what was going on back in Washington.

For example, immediately after the shooting — probably even before the vice president had made it to fallen Harry’s side — the Secret Service called its base at the White House to notify them about the incident.

At the White House, the Secret Service called the office of the chief of staff Andy Card, and then someone called Karl Rove.

The first thing Rove needed was an assessment of Cheney’s vulnerability to prosecution. He needed an expert in Texas law who could be trusted absolutely. Fortunately, he had just such a person on staff: Harriet Miers, the chief White House counsel and former Texas lawyer.

Whether it was Miers or some other expert in Texas jurisprudence, Rove and others quickly gamed out various scenarios. Everyone knew what should happen. Local authorities and federal investigators should be sent in to investigate and the Washington press corps should be notified.

But they must have determined that this course left Cheney vulnerable, especially if the investigators suspected he was under the influence.

Another strategy was chosen: a cover up in plain sight.

The Cover Up

Meanwhile back at the ranch, after the ambulance left, the shooting party returns to the house for an open bar. According to Katherine Armstrong, “the vice president fixed himself a cocktail back at the house.”

Back to the timeline:

Between 8 and 9 p.m., Ms. Armstrong recalled, Karl Rove, the president’s deputy chief of staff, called her “to check on Harry,” who she said was “an old friend of Karl’s.” She said there was no discussion of what President Bush had been told of the shooting and whether he knew that Mr. Cheney had fired the shots.

Ms. Armstrong and her guests insisted that the focus Saturday was solely on Mr. Whittington and that no one talked about whether or how to put out the news of the incident. “I’m telling you, there was no discussion at all, there wasn’t,” she said.

Bullshit, Katherine. No one at the ranch needed to discuss how to deal with the crisis. Karl Rove was handling that for them and would let them know what to do.

(However, I’ll buy that Cheney was crushed. He was in deep shit.)

During the call with Armstrong, Rove outlined the strategy he and others at the White House had concocted: Close everything down until morning. Don’t let local law enforcement in that night. By all means, do not let the national media get wind of the story.

The idea of circumventing the White House press office and releasing the story to the local media has a Rovian feel to it, too. It lets the story out as slowly as possible — the Corpus Christi paper released it on their website Sunday afternoon — and it gives the conspirators plausible deniability later: The story was released, too bad if the liberal media elite don’t like that we gave it to another source.

Profile in Chicanery

Rather than doing what was right, the White House did what was best for themselves and the bungling imperial veep.

They knew Cheney would be criticized for being too secretive and aloof, but they could live with that. And they could live with Chris Matthews and others blathering for five nights in a row about a supposed rift between the president and Cheney.

It’s all just just noise to them. In fact, criticism from the liberal media is a net posiive for them among their sheepul.

Most importantly, their alternative was a criminal investigation that could even lead to a prosecution. And they didn’t need any of that in an election year.

As usual, it all worked beautifully. The smarties in the media took the bait, went chasing after the wrong rabbit. Whatever evidence there was that Cheney acted negligently was made to disappear.

The empire remains safe to plunder.