Though both the email and the blog response from TSA are incredibly unprofessional, the email is NOT intimidation or a "veiled threat", and exaggerating by claiming it is is not going to help a sane discussion about this issue. What do you think the TSA is "threatening" to do? They have no power over the media.
All the TSA are saying is "exercise caution with reporting on bloggers that make random statements because you can end up looking stupid". They're wrong in this case, of course, and most likely know they're wrong, but that doesn't make their statement be intimidation (nor should it be read as such). Let's stay reasoned and calm, people.
Reporters travel a lot. Severe abuses of the opaque http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List have long been alleged, and I certainly wouldn't put it past them to retaliate that way.
Is there an implied threat of being less cooperative with feeding the journalist info though?
It doesn't have to be "we will put you on a no-fly list" so much as "well, that's our right but we don't have to let you in to any press conferences anymore...."
Wouldn't it be a shame if your shop got broken into, looted and set on fire?
Is the above sentence a threat? Of course it is. Not literally (I did not directly say that I would send thugs to loot your shop if you refused to pay me protection money) but a reasonable person would, more likely than not, interpret it as a threat.
If I did not mean it that way but was so dumb as not to anticipate that you would read it that way, I would deserve to go to jail for extortion anyway.
And the TSA, by virtue of having the power to add people to the No Fly List without public scrutiny and knowing of all the rumours of them having added people for political reasons, they should expect any "request" they make to be interpreted that way, and they should take extra care to ensure that it isn't.
All the TSA are saying is "exercise caution with reporting on bloggers that make random statements because you can end up looking stupid". They're wrong in this case, of course, and most likely know they're wrong, but that doesn't make their statement be intimidation (nor should it be read as such). Let's stay reasoned and calm, people.