On may 29th, the AP reported that Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service to eliminate the records of visitors to the Vice President's mansion on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington D.C. fitting with the MSM's claims that the VP is "too secretive." Cheney’s office countered with the fact that he had written orders to save those records. Naturally the New York Times jumped on the bandwagon with a June 3rd piece that went wild-eyed and frothing, veering straight for the "Haliburton" canard that the left has tried to hang on Cheney since his first days in office instead of staying on the topic of the visitor records.

From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Cheney received "deferred salary payments" from Halliburton that far exceeded what taxpayers gave him. Mr. Cheney still holds hundreds of thousands of stock options that have ballooned by millions of dollars as Halliburton profited handsomely from the war in Iraq.

As they are wont to do, the Times again tried to link Cheney with Haliburton payouts despite the fact that the VP has not benefited from any such income since being elected to office.

The office of the Vice President has tried again to get the facts out to the American people in a letter to the Times. Brit Hume gives us the details from the VP's letter that once again explains how wrong the oft repeated Haliburton claims are.

...the Times wrote that Cheney holds stock options in Halliburton that have grown by millions of dollars in value because of the Iraq war. Cheney's office cited a Times article written in 2001 that said - "Mr. Cheney also gave to charity the after-tax value of his remaining Halliburton options ... three days before Mr. Cheney was sworn in as vice president."

Cheney's office says that adds up to nearly $8 million in donations since then. So far the Times has not published Cheney's letter or made the corrections.

So far, the NYT has decided to ignore the facts and the Vice President's letter. They have ignored that he has not taken a cent of Haliburton stock payouts since he was elected to office. Curious that Cheney's charitable donations are so unimportant to the liberal rag. It's also curious that they don't want anyone to know about these donations, isn't it?

Who's being secretive now, NYT?

As to the visitor records, there still seems some confusion over just what the status of those records are and what level of security is placed upon them, but, what is clear is that the VP's office has ordered that they be kept and not destroyed. So the claim that he is destroying them does not seem to be true. Whether they are officially beyond a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request or not is unclear.