Over the weekend the New York Times dropped this bombshell: Seems former vice president Dick Cheney had, for eight years, told insiders at the CIA to hide a "secret counterterrorism program" from, let's see here… everybody on earth.

CIA chief Leon Panetta just found out about this thing a couple weeks ago, and he finally gave Congress the heads up, but even Leon Panetta won't/can't tell us what, precisely, Cheney's "secret counterterrorism program" entailed — though it was most likely part of an effort to kill Al Qaeda operatives. (Perhaps by draining their bodies of life-force before moving on to the next host?)

So, um, anybody want to comment?

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful. [...] An intelligence agency spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, declined on Saturday to comment on the report of Mr. Cheney’s role. [...] Bill Harlow, a spokesman for George J. Tenet, who was the C.I.A. director when the unidentified program began, declined to comment on Saturday, noting that the program remained classified. [...] [Cheney's legal adviser David S.] Addington could not be reached for comment on Saturday.

If I didn't know better, I might say that Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) sounds a bit frustrated…

Mr. Hoekstra, the intelligence committee’s ranking Republican, said he would not judge the agency harshly in the case of the unidentified program, because it was not fully operational. But he said that in general, the agency had not been as forthcoming as the law required.

“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.

Right! If only we had some sort of organized program for advanced interrogation techniques that are designed to extract critical information from high-level suspects.

Oh, but what are the odds of that.