If it wasn’t a ransom payment, why did Obama keep it secret?

From Jonah Goldberg at The New York Post via H/T at Lucianne:

One of my all-time favorite lines is from Henry Thoreau: “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

It came to mind this week when the White House and State Department insisted that the charge the US paid a ransom to get back American hostages was purely circumstantial. Sometimes, a $400 million payoff in laundered money, delivered in the dead of night in an unmarked cargo plane, isn’t what it looks like.
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The $400 million wasn’t a ransom; it was simply the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement of that dispute. “We would not, we have not, we will not pay ransom to secure the release of US citizens,” top White House flack Josh Earnest insisted. That the money was delivered to coincide with the release of our hostages is little more than a funny coincidence.

And shame on you for thinking otherwise, Earnest seemed to be saying Wednesday. The $400 million dropoff was actually a great success for smart diplomacy, because it saved taxpayers “potentially billions” more if the arbitration over the matter hadn’t gone our way.

Still, one wonders why, if it was such a laudable and innocent money-saving maneuver, they kept it all secret from the American people.

Because there is a trout in the milk.