Hunter shot by Cheney has a heart attack

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- Harry Whittington, the 78-year-old Texas lawyer whom Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot on a hunting trip Saturday had a minor heart attack yesterday when a piece of birdshot lodged in his heart, triggering an abnormal rhythm, hospital officials said.

The sudden turn in Whittington's condition stunned the White House, which seemed confident that Whittington would quickly recover. At midday, officials at the hospital where Whittington is being treated said his condition had changed dramatically.

''Some of the birdshot appears to have moved and lodged into part of his heart in what we would say is a minor heart attack," Peter Banko, a spokesman for the Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi, told reporters.

The White House was informed of the heart attack yesterday morning, but Scott McClellan, press secretary, did not mention it during his regular news briefing, which followed the White House's failure to confirm that Cheney shot Whittington until 20 hours after the accident.

In a telephone interview, McClellan said he learned of Whittington's condition ''literally just before I was going out to brief" reporters at the White House yesterday. McClellan said he kept the news to himself because ''we didn't know all the facts, and I'm not a doctor." Minutes after the briefing, officials in Texas announced that Whittington was taken to intensive care.

Medical specialists said Whittington's episode is atypical. Dr. David Pearle, director of Georgetown University Hospital's coronary care unit, said most heart attacks are caused by blocked coronary arteries, but Whittington's was triggered by a foreign object -- the birdshot -- lodging in his heart, making a prognosis difficult.

The outcome of Whittington's case depends on, among other things, whether the tiny pellet further damages his heart or causes an infection.

Yesterday, Cheney was visiting lawmakers on Capitol Hill when an aide passed him a note at 12:30 p.m., informing him that Whittington's doctors were about to describe his condition, a White House statement said. Cheney returned to the White House and watched the press conference in his office, then called Whittington, wished him well and asked if he could help.

''Mr. Whittington's spirits were good, but obviously his situation deserves the careful monitoring that his doctors are providing," Cheney's office said in a detailed statement. Cheney has not commented publicly on the shooting.

Just a day earlier, a hospital official said, Whittington had been joking about his sudden fame.

The White House was relieved, and the shooting had become rich fodder for talk show hosts and comedians. Whittington was described in stable condition and moved from intensive care.

But during a routine check at 6:30 a.m. yesterday, doctors noticed Whittington had an irregular heartbeat, according to hospital officials. They performed examinations, then moved him back to the intensive care unit for a heart catheterization -- a procedure in which a tiny scope is threaded into the heart to check for damage, hospital officials said. Doctors immediately noticed the tiny pellet, one of dozens blasted from Cheney's rifle that struck Whittington, doctors said. Whittington, however, had no obvious symptoms of a heart attack and didn't appear to be in pain, officials said.

The birdshot, which sprays from a shotgun when it is fired, struck Whittington from his head to his chest, and one pellet ''lodged in a certain area causing inflammatory changes," Dr. David Blanchard, chief of emergency services, told reporters.

''This is not the [typical] heart attack we think of that is due to a blockage," Blanchard said. He added that doctors might have missed the episode if Whittington had not been under close observation.

Whittington ''has the heart of a much, much younger individual . . . we are very, very optimistic" he will fully recover, Blanchard said. The pellet in his heart, he added, ''should not be a problem in the future."

Although Whittington was listed in stable condition yesterday, hospital officials said the irregular heart rhythm was serious enough to warrant another several days of hospitalization, perhaps as long as a week, to monitor his recovery.

Blanchard said the birdshot didn't enter Whittington's heart chambers, nor was it blocking major arteries; it was embedded in the muscle tissue, causing what the physician compared to an ''electrical short-circuit" that can be treated with medication. Yet the pellet's exact location was not known -- one reason why doctors have ruled out surgery for now.

''It's fixed in the heart at this point in time," said hospital spokesman Peter Banko. ''However, it will require that we monitor Mr. Whittington for up to another seven days in the hospital to make sure no more birdshot moves into his vital organs, as well as that piece of birdshot doesn't move anywhere else in the heart."

Medical specialists say Whittington's episode is rare. Dr. Richard Smalling, director of cardiology at the University of Texas Medical School in Austin, said there are at least two possible scenarios that may have caused Whittington's heart attack.

The first involves a direct shotgun blast into the chest cavity, he said, but ''if the birdshot entered directly into the heart that would be a very, very powerful shotgun." The more likely scenario, Smalling said, is that the birdshot penetrated Whittington's neck and migrated to his heart.

White House officials have said Whittington caused the accident, noting that an eyewitness said he left the hunting party to retrieve a bird but didn't alert Cheney that he was returning.

But a state game warden's report said Cheney shares some blame for the accident for deciding to shoot.

In a story on the Washington Post's website, Kenedy County Sheriff Ramon Salinas 3d and Chief Deputy Gilbert San Miguel Jr. said Whittington had been standing several feet downhill from Cheney. The Post quoted Salinas as saying that it could have been hard to see and hear Whittington amid gusting winds and with the sun setting behind where he was walking.

At the White House press briefing, reporters hammered McClellan for the second day about why it took the White House nearly 20 hours to confirm that Cheney shot Whittington. McClellan refused to elaborate beyond his initial response: that the vice president's office decided how to manage the news, and allowed the ranch co-owner to report the accident to a local newspaper.

''There were some very legitimate questions that were asked" by reporters about the delay in providing information, McClellan said. ''As I indicated, I always believe that you can look back and work to do better."

Marlin Fitzwater, former press secretary for former President George H. W. Bush, was quoted on the website of Editor & Publisher magazine as saying he was ''appalled by the whole handling of this."

Ari Fleischer, President Bush's former press secretary, told the magazine: ''It would have been better if the vice president and/or his staff had come out last Saturday night or first thing Sunday morning and announced it."

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada entered the controversy yesterday, saying the delay in releasing information is ''part of the secretive nature of this administration . . . I think it's time the American people heard from the vice president."

Bender reported from Corpus Christi; Kranish from Washington. Material from wire services was included.