Question: Was anybody drinking in this party?

Cheney: No. You don't hunt with people who drink. That's not a good idea. We had --

Question: So he wasn't, and you weren't?

Cheney: Correct. We'd taken a break at lunch -- go down under an old -- ancient oak tree there on the place, and have a barbecue. I had a beer at lunch. After lunch we take a break, go back to ranch headquarters. Then we took about an hourlong tour of the ranch, with a ranch hand driving the vehicle, looking at game. We didn't go back into the field to hunt quail until about, oh, sometime after 3:00 p.m.

The five of us who were in that party were together all afternoon. Nobody was drinking, nobody was under the influence.

....Question: Had you discussed this with colleagues in the White House, with the president, and so on?

Cheney: I did not. The White House was notified, but I did not discuss it directly, myself. I talked to Andy Card, I guess it was Sunday morning.

Question: Not until Sunday morning? Was that the first conversation you'd had with anybody in the -- at the White House?

Question: Say that again?

Cheney: I said Karl has hunted at the Armstrong, as well, and we're both good friends of the Armstrongs and of Katharine Armstrong. And Katharine suggested, and I agreed, that she would go make the announcement, that is that she'd put the story out. And I thought that made good sense for several reasons. First of all, she was an eyewitness. She'd seen the whole thing. Secondly, she'd grown up on the ranch, she'd hunted there all of her life. Third, she was the immediate past head of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the game control commission in the State of Texas, an acknowledged expert in all of this.

And she wanted to go to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, which is the local newspaper, covers that area, to reporters she knew. And I thought that made good sense because you can get as accurate a story as possible from somebody who knew and understood hunting. And then it would immediately go up to the wires and be posted on the Web site, which is the way it went out. And I thought that was the right call.

Question: What do you think now?

Cheney: Well, I still do. I still think that the accuracy was enormously important. I had no press person with me, I didn't have any press people with me. I was there on a private weekend with friends on a private ranch. In terms of who I would contact to have somebody who would understand what we're even talking about, the first person that we talked with at one point, when Katharine first called the desk to get hold of a reporter, didn't know the difference between a bullet and a shotgun -- a rifle bullet and a shotgun. And there are a lot of basic important parts of the story that required some degree of understanding. And so we were confident that Katharine was the right one, especially because she was an eyewitness and she could speak authoritatively on it. She probably knew better than I did what had happened, since I'd only seen one piece of it.

....The decision about how it got out, basically, was my responsibility.

Question: That was your call.

Cheney: That was my call.

Question: All the way.

Cheney: All the way. It was recommended to me -- Katharine Armstrong wanted to do it, as she said, and I concurred in that; I thought it made good sense.

Cheney: Yes.

Question: And did you discuss this with Karl Rove at any time, as has been reported?

Cheney: No, Karl talks to -- I don't recall talking to Karl. Karl did talk with Katharine Armstrong, who is a good mutual friend to both of us. Karl hunts at the Armstrong, as well --