Where'd Dick go?

Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project, NYT

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

A report that former Vice President Dick Cheney was behind the decision to conceal a C.I.A. program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

Hmm.

Seems like not too long ago I was complaining I was seeing too much of the former Veep. And yet this story implies that he might have had something to do with a failure on the part of the CIA to fully disclose info about (read down, this is what I'm getting out of it) not the torture program and not the warrantless wiretapping (although you know he was keeping all that stuff as quiet as his energy plan--which I still say was "Invade Iraq, and....profit") but some other, really important, but still unidentified program. Which I'm going to, for the sake of blogging, assume was heinous.

I know. That's very, very unfair of me. I'm probably a very bad blogger for assuming that a government that a) flouts the Convention Against Torture, b) spies on its own citizens with not a whole lot of reason, and c) misrepresents its intelligence to other government officials and everybody else, probably is doing something heinous when it's being double, super-secret. And when Cheney is involved with keeping it secret.

I'm sure it just looks really bad. Probably just some innocent business about death squads or whatever.

Sure wish he'd go on the old talk circuit and open up about it though, huh?