Wednesday, June 28, 2006

The NY Times asks: “What’s the big deal?”

Under fire for revealing a program to track terrorist finances, the NY Times cries “Free press above security” in this muddled editorial:

The Swift story bears no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals. Terrorist groups would have had to be fairly credulous not to suspect that they would be subject to scrutiny if they moved money around through international wire transfers.
The Boston Globe (owned by the Times) helped this meme along with “Terrorist funds-tracking no secret, some say.” McQ on Questions and Observations responded:

Arguments have been made that what the Times published really didn't break any new ground or give away any real secrets. That's like saying that we have a spy operation in Iran is akin to saying we have a spy named Mr. X in Tehran and he lives in a particular house on a particular street.
Let’s delve back into the NY Times editorial:

Our news colleagues work under the assumption that they should let the people know anything important that the reporters learn, unless there is some grave and overriding reason for withholding the information. They try hard not to base those decisions on political calculations, like whether a story would help or hurt the administration.
When the President and the chairmen of the 9/11 Commission ask you not to reveal information, it seems like they might have “grave and overriding” reasons to keep the program secret. As to the latter point, here’s Mort Kondracke:

TUA: And they [journalists] don’t believe that they’re left of the rest of the country either.

Mort: No they don’t. They believe that they are right down the middle. But there are certain moments when you can tell. I remember myself, this is sort of ancient history but when Jimmy Carter announced that he was a born again Christian and that he didn’t favor publicly financed abortion; the mainstream media and I was one of them gasped. They couldn’t believe that a Democratic candidate running for president would declare himself in the open a born again Christian. You know they thought that was from Mars.
And similarly I think an example from last week, is if you looked at the well the whole treatment of NSA spying this latest Swift story the mainstream media acts as though George Bush is a greater danger to American Liberty than Osama Bin Laden.
Writing in the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby reveals what effect the NY Times story is having on the troops in the field:

T.F. Boggs is a 24-year-old sergeant in the Army Reserves serving his second tour of duty in Iraq, where he helps to provide security for a military base in Mosul. He is also an occasional blogger, venting his views at www.boredsoldier.blogspot.com. On Sunday, those views took the form of a letter to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. Two days earlier, the Times (along with The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times) had exposed the existence of a top-secret government effort to monitor the international movement of funds between Al Qaeda and its financial collaborators.

Your recent decision to publish information about a classified program intended to track the banking transactions of possible terrorists is not only detrimental to America but also to its fighting men and women overseas,” Boggs wrote. “Terrorism happens here every day because there are rich men out there willing to support the . . . terrorist who plants bombs and shoots soldiers. . . . Without money, terrorism in Iraq would die because there would no longer be supplies for IED's, no mortars . . . and no motivation for people to abandon regular work in hopes of striking it rich after killing a soldier. Thank you for continually contributing to the deaths of my fellow soldiers.”
Hey, T.F. Boggs, don’t question the New York Times’ patriotism.

Maddeningly, there’s probably no legal recourse against the Times despite the text of the Espionage Act. The only thing left to do is punish the ‘paper of record’ by boycott and economic pressure. Let’s push that stock price to (yet another) new low.

Extra – From Jack Kelly on RCP: “Bush should welcome a fight with the media.”

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

When the President and the chairmen of the 9/11 Commission ask you not to reveal information, it seems like they might have “grave and overriding” reasons to keep the program secret.

Solicitor General Erwin Griswold in 1971, arguing for the Nixon administration to enjoin the NY Times and Washington Post from publishing the "Pentagon Papers":

"(It will cause) great and irreparable harm to the security of the United States... I haven’t the slightest doubt myself that the material which has already been published and the publication of the other materials affects American lives and is a thoroughly serious matter. I think to say that it can only be enjoined if there will be a war tomorrow morning, when there is a war now going on, is much too narrow."

Justice Potter Stewart, ruling against the White House:
"In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry – in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government... I should suppose that moral, political, and practical considerations would dictate that a very first principle of that wisdom would be an insistence upon avoiding secrecy for its own sake. For when everything is classified, then nothing is classified, and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless, and to be manipulated by those intent on self protection or self-promotion. I should suppose, in short, that the hallmark of a truly effective internal security system would be the maximum possible disclosure, recognizing that secrecy can best be preserved only when credibility is truly maintained.

We are asked, quite simply, to prevent the publication by two newspapers of material that the Executive Branch insists should not, in the national interest, be published. I am convinced that the Executive is correct with respect to some of the documents involved. But I cannot say that disclosure of any of them will surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable harm to our Nation, or its people. That being so, there can under the First Amendment be but one judicial resolution of the issues before us.”

Justice Hugo Black, concurring:
"The Solicitor General argues and some members of the Court appear to agree that the general powers of the Government adopted in the original Constitution should be interpreted to limit and restrict the specific and emphatic guarantees of the Bill of Rights adopted later. I can imagine no greater perversion of history. Madison and the other Framers of the First Amendment, able men [p717] that they were, wrote in language they earnestly believed could never be misunderstood: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press. . . ."

The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government... The word "security" is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic."

Solicitor General Griswold again, years later, writing in 1989:
"I have never seen any trace of a threat to the national security from the publication. Indeed, I have never seen it even suggested that there was such an actual threat…. It quickly becomes apparent to any person who has consideration experience with classified material that there is massive overclassification and that the principal concern of the classifiers is not with national security, but rather with governmental embarrassment of one sort or another. There may be some basis for short-term classification while plans are being made, or negotiations are going on, but apart from details of weapons systems, there is very rarely any real risk to current national security from the publication of facts relating to transactions in the past, even the fairly recent past. This is the lesson of the Pentagon Papers experience."

Eric said...

I'm sure this is your one-size-fits-all response to every conservative blog that dares to mention the NY Times story. Cut and paste, cut and paste.

Because all roads lead back to Nixon and Vietnam, right? The Pentagon Papers were exactly like the SWIFT program and anybody who says different must be under Karl Rove's spell. Just like those poor, brainwashed troops in the Jacoby article.

Clown.

Anonymous said...

No defense for what the NYTimes did. There is no legitimate arguemtn, either.

http://loudcrickets.blogspot.com/2006/06/nytimes-what-do-you-want-bush-to-do.html

Anonymous said...

wvwv: Do you think any secret should not be published by the NYTimes? If Special Forces are in a country, that's OK to print? Secrets of weapons programs? Holes in the missile defense? Names and pictures of informants that we pay off in Afghanistan to track Al Queda? Do you have a limit, or are all things "Americans have a right to know"?

Anonymous said...

That's a very funny response, Eric, considering your dismay that the Times may "maddeningly" escape prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act. And the treacherous parallels you see with the 1942 Chicago Tribune.

As a "clown," I respect your brand of comedy.

Anonymous said...

It's 2006, and a secretive, extralegal Republican White House is blasting the New York Times for exercising long-settled Constitutional freedoms in its oversight role which the President doesn't respect, by publishing covert intelligence information? And some maniacs would compare this with... the Pentagon Papers case?

How absurd! The proper analogy is clearly the Dred Scott case!

Synova said...

When were the newspapers elected to an oversight role?

I must have missed that vote.

Anonymous said...

Here's something else you missed. "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press."

I think I read that on the wall of a bathroom stall someplace.

When did we vote for the NY Times? Right after we voted for my Supreme Court, Cabinet, lobbyists, religious pundits, fat documentary makers, news anchormen and producers, generals, business community, charities and relief workers, intelligence agencies, anti-war protesters, grass roots organizers, heads of TV networks, handlers, advance men, pollsters, chiefs of staff, think tanks, PAC committees, and partridges in pear trees. "Unelected newspaper overseers"? Grow up.

Anonymous said...

It's comfortable to condemn the Times, a familiar target. Be sure to aim some of that vitriol at those traitors at the Wall Street Journal, which ran the same story an hour or so after the Times.

Synova said...

And someone else missed libel and slander laws, copyright, and a whole host of other limits on what the free press can legally print.

What limits should be on the press? If your answer is "none" there's no reason to take you seriously.

Anonymous said...

How about libel, slander, and copyright infringement, for three?

None of which have the slightest thing to do with the banking story. But then, the Times banking story is a tough one to shout down on the merits.

Most fortunately for our nation, the case law on the First Amendment is thick, documented, and has been decided overwhelmingly in favor of freedom of information. With random exceptions, that topic is effectively settled. But please, continue to have this very serious and very imaginary "what limits should be on the press?" debate if it pleases you.

And by the way, the official White House leaks directly to the New York Times promoting their false Iraqi WMD talking points did far more to damage and endanger our country than the banking surveillance story ever will. If your answer is "no" there's no reason to take you seriously.

Synova said...

And yet, you didn't say what limits there should be on classified military , etc., information.

Interesting example, BTW. Supposing a white house "leak"... should the press print such things without independant confirmation?

They say you can't cheat an honest man. Is it possible to leak a lie to an honest reporter? Or do they just print any old "a source that refuses to be named?"

Maybe, just maybe, they oughtn't.