Vice President Dick Cheney to Brit Hume yesterday:

One of the problems we have as a government is our inability to keep secrets.

Yeah, Dick, would that we were more like the USSR. Open government - whose idea was that? I blame the Founding Fathers.

To be fair, here is the complete context of the above quote:

Q There have been two leaks, one that pertained to possible facilities in Europe; and another that pertained to this NSA matter. There are officials who have had various characterizations of the degree of damage done by those. How would you characterize the damage done by those two reports?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: There clearly has been damage done.

Q Which has been the more harmful, in your view?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to get into just sort of ranking them, then you get into why is one more damaging than the other. One of the problems we have as a government is our inability to keep secrets. And it costs us, in terms of our relationship with other governments, in terms of the willingness of other intelligence services to work with us, in terms of revealing sources and methods. And all of those elements enter into some of these leaks.

So, really the secrets the Vice President was referring to were just offshore torture prisons and illegal domestic spying programs. I mean, seriously, how can a government and its officials be expected to function if they can't hide the fact that they're violating the law?