When the President and Vice President thundered and fulminated at the NYT as they have the last few days, presumably they had no idea that the classified information they were so incensed at the NYT for publishing was not exactly much of a secret. That’s why it’s generally a good idea to leave the mean-spirited attacks to attack dogs. It can really come back and bite you if it turns out that the attacks were based on priors that were comically out of touch with reality.

There are all the reports, from the report of the 9/11 Commission to President Bush’s executive order to Treasury Department press releases that declared our firm intention to utilize financial data in The War On Terror. There is the 2002 U.N. report which laid out in so many words that the U.S. government was monitoring SWIFT data “to spot and verify suspicious transactions”. Then there are the websites of various entities who fought at our side on this financial battlefield in The War On Terror:

SWIFT has a Web site, at swift.com.

It’s a very informative Web site. For instance, this page describes how “SWIFT has a history of cooperating in good faith with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and appropriate international organisations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in their efforts to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities.”

(And yes, FATF has its own Web site, too.)

Our use of financial data, including information from SWIFT, in The War On Terror seems to have had a very large public footprint indeed. Yet Tony Snow is firmly convinced that the terrorists had no knowledge of this financial battlefield in The War On Terror till the NYT opened its big fat treasonous mouth:

When asked to back up the White House accusation that a recent New York Times story put American lives at risk by disclosing vital secrets to terrorists, the best press secretary Tony Snow could do yesterday was this: “I am absolutely sure they didn’t know about SWIFT.”

Maybe he too receives communications directly from some higher power? How else can anyone be absolutely sure that information that is in the public domain is unknown to somebody else?

Some time today the vicious attacks on the NYT orchestrated and led by the President and Vice President should start to come back and bite them. Look for much scorn and ridicule to be heaped upon them. Most of it from people like me, unfortunately. But some of it certainly from Democrats and some of it from brave and intrepid media folk.

The real question, of course, is: Aren’t people like the President and Vice President supposed to know the facts about matters like these? How come they had absolutely no idea that their precious classified information was in the habit of regularly dressing like a commoner and leaving the palace grounds at night? Isn’t there someone whose job it is to make sure the President receives accurate information about such (by their own rhetoric) vitally important components of The War On Terror? So who’s going to be awarded what medal for this one? Was it an embarrassing enough blunder that John Negroponte can realistically aspire to the Medal of Freedom? Or will he have to settle for some lesser form of punishment?

And what do you think Dennis Hastert is going to be thinking today? He trusted the administration and put his foot ankle-deep in doo-doo first, and then into his own big mouth:

“What we’re talking about is people who are leaking classified information. It’s not news. It’s classified information our government is using to fight terrorists,” said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, of Illinois.

“Loose lips kill American people,” he added.

Or what about Sen. Jim Bunning?

Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning said on Fox News that those who wrote, published and leaked the story should be tried for treason.

“They have put all of our troops at risk and anyone who aids the enemy during a war and helps them should be held responsible,” Bunning said.

Being an attack dog for the Bush administration is surely looking like a less attractive proposition than it used to.