The Reliable Source
The whereabouts of Vice President Cheney have been something of a state secret off and on since Oct. 7, when the United States commenced its assault on the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Citing security concerns, White House officials generally decline to discuss the veep's comings and goings. No wonder "Saturday Night Live" suggested in a recent skit that Cheney -- like the elusive bin Laden - - is living in a cave in Afghanistan. Yesterday morning, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told inquiring reporters: "I don't have the vice president's location."</br></br>But now the mystery is solved. The Post's Mike Allen reports that Cheney has spent the past two days hunting pheasant in South Dakota. Aides confirmed the expedition -- which one called "an annual buddy thing" and "an extended weekend" -- after the Associated Press and the Dakota News Network revealed that Air Force Two had landed in Pierre, S.D., at 2 p.m. Sunday. Cheney's pilots gave away the game when they started handing out official souvenir postcards to children in the terminal -- to say nothing of the huge motorcade outside.</br></br>Aides said Cheney visited his home in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last week, then moved on to a pheasant preserve near Pierre to keep a long- standing hunting date with friends -- "an annual tradition," as one aide described it. But Allen reports that Cheney wasn't all play and no work: Yesterday he received his daily intelligence briefing by videoconference and spoke by secure phone with Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was in Washington conferring with President Bush. The vice president also hunted the weekend before last in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where his quarry was duck. "He hunts everything," an aide told Allen.</br></br>In one corner of the Greenbelt Marriott were the Washington Redskins at Sunday brunch, loading up on football fuel before their winning game against the Seattle Seahawks. In the other corner were happy conventioneers -- some in tight leather and black lace stockings -- in town to trade info on dominance and submission, bondage and discipline, fetishism and cross-dressing.</br></br>While the Skins got up for the game, an overflow crowd from the Black Rose 2001 conference at the nearby Ramada New Carrollton attended workshops and lectures with such titles as "Foot Fetishism - - It Ain't Just for Bottoms Anymore," "Blood Art," "Discipline, Obedience, Punishment and Atonement" and "No End in Sight -- Beyond the Basics of Bondage."