This story just keeps getting more bizarre. The latest twist my Vail sources are buzzing about is the chatter around town that Dr. Steadman, the top-flight orthopedist that Vice President Cheney was supposedly visiting when he was given the “12 lead EKG” his office has denied he had, was not even at the hospital at the time of Cheney’s visit. “He’s not normally at the hospital on Fridays,” a well-placed individual said of Steadman, “and this was not a previously scheduled visit.” The word is that everyone is too afraid to discuss these details -- even with each other, having been told that they’ll be federally prosecuted if they do. My sources tell me that hospital staffers have been deeply unsettled by all this, since they’ve been seeing high profile pols for years. “Dan Quayle has been coming there for years,” another source told me. “Gerald Ford has been coming for years. In fact, he was just here on Monday… and there was no big hullabaloo. He came with two Secret Service agents, but it wasn’t a big deal. No one can remember the lid being put on things as tightly as they have been over this. People at the hospital are very uncomfortable with the way this has been handled.”
Unfolding…