The Secrecy of Mr Cheney

Sorry it's been so long. There's been a vacation and some minor family illnesses which have intervened and kept me from staying on the ball.

Nevertheless, I found the secrecy surrounding the Vice President's trip to Pakistan quite amusing. I don't doubt the need for secrecy, but what I find absolutely hilarious are reports like these, last Sunday, before it was announced that he had been in Pakistan. Apparently on the "way home" from Sydney, the Vice President's had to make an emergency landing in Singapore after Air Force 2 had mechanical problems.

Maybe this is not common knowledge for most Americans, but you would expect members of the press reporting this fact to know that Singapore is NOT on the way to the US when coming back from Australia. In fact, it is essentially in the exact opposite direction from the "way home", which would have taken Air Force 2 out over the Pacific, towards Tahiti, Fiji, Hawaii, and ultimately the West Coast. Again, I obviously don't take issue with the landing, and given the secrecy the traveling press corps was sworn to, I don't doubt that it was local reporters in Singapore which reported the landing.

My question is this, you would figure that if keeping the trip so secret was of vital importance for the security of the Vice President, they would have either a) found a secure location at which to make the emergency landing, or b) assuming that was not possible for some reason, rescheduled the trip to Pakistan? Now it is certainly true that ex ante, we didn't know where the VP was going, but I can tell you that when I heard these reports, I immediately thought that something was going on. I should have written something right then, but I know you all are very trusting readers :)

The larger point is how this fits in with this Administration's general obsession with secrecy. If secrecy in this instance was warranted, fine, but how critical could it have really been once the concealment of the fact that Cheney was returning home had been disrupted, and yet they continued along their way to the "secret meetings"?