Odd coordinates

When the story first broke about the disapearance of Phillip Merrill, a noted Washington, DC, publisher and philanthropist, I hardly gave it a passing thought. He was a wealthy publisher who, for whatever reasons, probably drowned or committed suicide. Odd and tragic yes, but such is the nature of the daily headlines all over the country.

But Mr. Merrill's name would pop back up later. Around June 17 a story broke about the Secret Service detaining a man for 'odd actions' around Vice President Cheney during a trip to Colorado. While searching around for why Cheney was in Colorado and whether it had anything to do with Aspens, I checked the Aspen institute website and found a tribute to Mr. Merrill.

Turns out the former State Department employee/entrepeneur was a trustee of the Institute and good friends with the Cheneys. They had something in common--Maryland homes along the water.

This is not to say anything untoward happened to Mr. Merrill. By all early accounts it was thought to be an accident, since the initial indications were that he was beloved by his family, was a good sailor and the weather was fine. After his body was located with an anchor around his legs and a shotgun blast to the head, his family decided he had been a little depressed of late.

Fast forward to three weeks later and we have the New York Times blabbing the GPS coordinates of Cheney's home (and Rummy's) while giving away security measures at Rumsfeld's home. Hey, just sayin...

MORE 7/3/06

Glenn Greenwald's post stirred up a lot of talk about the net. My post was in context with the Merrill mystery, and was meant to be taken in context with a series of stories in the Times. Greenwald is correct--taken by itself it's a puff piece. But as Malkin asks in her follow-up post, why? Why now?

The administration pushed back hard after the Times ran with the Swift story. As a result Keller took big media heat. All of a sudden we see Cheney and Rummy's addresses tucked in the Sunday edition. Just sayin..