The NYT

[Coda]

WASHINGTON — Published reports revealing a secret government program that tracks money moving in and out of the United States have endangered Americans and undermines the war on terror, President Bush said Monday.

"The disclosure of this program is disgraceful," Bush said during a question and answer session with reporters at the White House. "For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America."

Disclosure "makes it harder to win this War on Terror," the president said.

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times last week all reported on a Treasury-CIA cooperative plan that conducts bank record searches to follow money across borders. It first began in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Using broad government subpoenas, the program allows U.S. counterterrorism analysts to obtain financial information from a vast database maintained by a company based in Belgium. That company, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or SWIFT, routes about 11 million financial transactions daily among 7,800 banks and other financial institutions in 200 countries.

Since last week's publication of the program, The New York Times in particular has taken the brunt of criticism by lawmakers, conservative publications and national security analysts who say the writers and editors of the Times, including Executive Editor Bill Keller, exceeded the law and violated statutes against transmitting communications intelligence.

"I'm calling on the attorney general to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of The New York Times, its reporters, the editors that worked on this, and the publisher. We're in a time of war ... and what they've done here is absolutely disgraceful. I believe they violated the Espionage Act" and another statute, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," he later told The Associated Press.

Bush on Monday lashed out at The New York Times report and the leaks that produced it. He said the bank transaction searches are legal, do not violate privacy rights and Congress had been briefed on the program.

"What we were doing was the right thing. Congress was aware of it and we were within the law to do so. The American people expect this government to protect our constitutional liberties and at the same time make sure we understand what the terrorists are trying to do," Bush said.

"The 9/11 commission recommended that the government be robust in tracing money. If you want to figure out what the terrorists are doing, you try to follow their money," he added.

The president's response to the report was very much the same as the one he gave last year when The New York Times first published details about the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretap program. Both the phone eavesdropping and bank record searches are said to have helped in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations.

In response to the criticism, Keller wrote in Monday's edition that he did exactly what any upstanding member of the Fourth Estate would do.

"We believe The Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them," Keller wrote in a letter to readers.

"It's not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. ... A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to pre-empt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don't know about it," Keller wrote.

Echoing an argument Keller made in his letter, David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post, said the legality of the program has not been decided by the courts.

"It is said that it was legal. I think we're going to need to take a careful look at that question and make sure that the law was followed, that what most Americans would see as appropriate privacy conditions were maintained," Ignatius said.

He added that the program was obviously useful in tracking the transmission of terrorist funds and "is the kind of thing you want an aggressive government to be doing in its war on terrorism."

Legal Program, Illegal Publication?

Bill Kristol, publisher of The Weekly Standard and a FOX News contributor, said not only was The New York Times arrogant in its decision-making process, but Congress needs to think about "whether the laws on the book are written in the right way" to address to what extent newspapers are culpable when they reveal state secrets.

"[The New York Times] wants to publish anything it gets its hands on. I guess [Keller] thinks it's a big scoop for him," Kristol said. "I think Congress should call Mr. Keller before it as it would call the executive of another corporation who had done something questionable and make Keller defend in a serious way his decision, and the right to appropriate to himself the decision, about whether to reveal covert and classified programs."

Asked whether Congress would hold hearings, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he did not think it was ready to get into the act.

"From a free speech standpoint, true they can do whatever they want. In terms of the safety and security of the American people" they crossed the line, Frist told FOX News.

But Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor of Commentary magazine, wrote in an article published Monday that if The New York Times "were to take a look at the U.S. Criminal Code, they would find that they have run afoul not of the Espionage Act but of another law entirely: Section 798 of Title 18, the so-called Comint statute."

Schoenfeld explained that the law, written in the wake of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, aims to give intelligence agencies a leg up against foreign adversaries by prosecuting anyone who passes on communications intelligence that "could be prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States."

He said that Attorney General Al Gonzales is understandably cautious about prosecuting journalists, but "what might look like a prudent exercise of prosecutorial discretion will, in the face of The Times' increasingly reckless behavior, send a terrible message. The Comint statute, like numerous other laws on the books limiting speech in such disparate realms as libel, privacy, and commercial activity, is fully compatible with the First Amendment."

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow refused to speculate on whether any legal action would be taken against the newspaper, saying all questions about prosecutions will be referred to the Department of Justice

"There really is a process, the criminal referral process, by which people would investigate whether these kinds of revelations and leaks would violate the law. So we'll have to see whether such things — and typically, referrals are not made public, and certainly I'm not going to do it now."

Snow added, however, "if The New York Times decides that it is going to try to assume responsibility for determining which classified secrets remain classified and which don't, it ought to accept some of the obligations of that responsibility. It ought to be able to take the heat as well."

No Chilling Effect Yet

In his letter, Keller said he was not convinced by the administration's argument that disclosing the program would reduce its effectiveness because international bankers would be unwilling to cooperate and terrorists would find other ways to move money.

"We don't know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling," Keller said, pointing out that the banks were under subpoena to provide the information. "The Bush administration and America itself may be unpopular in Europe these days, but policing the byways of international terror seems to have pretty strong support everywhere."

Treasury Department spokesman Tony Fratto said Monday that his agency has informed major allies that the secret program has adequate privacy safeguards and will continue.

"We have made a point of reaching out to our partners in the international community to make sure they understand our views and the safeguards we have in place," he said. "We want to make sure it's clear to our partners that we value this program."

Meanwhile, Belgium's government said Monday it was not responsible for supervising the handover of confidential financial records to U.S. authorities for the War on Terror. The National Bank of Belgium said in a statement that its main role was to supervise financial stability and that it had no power to prevent SWIFT from passing data to the United States.

FOX News' Wendell Goler, Sharon Kehnemui Liss and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

***

[Chris D]

Yes, it's a bitch living in a free sciety. We're much better off letting the government make all the decisions and keeping us all in the dark. Enjoy your SOMA, and try reading the Bill of Rights sometime.

[shrugs]

All the Fox news fat asses are crying we're at war!! Fucking non-DD214 carrying motherfuckers.

Originally Posted by Coda

FOX News' Wendell Goler twisted this report.

***

[Coda]

Why does this bother you?

[shrugs]

what percentage of this country is at war?
what percentage of the country is affected by it on a daily basis?

[Coda]

By The Editors at National Review

Every passing week, it becomes more apparent that disgruntled leftists in the intelligence community and antiwar crusaders in the mainstream media, annealed in their disdain for the Bush administration, are undermining our ability to win the War on Terror. Their latest body blow to the war effort is the exposure, principally by the New York Times, of the Treasury Department’s top-secret program to monitor terror funding.

President Bush, who said on Monday morning that the exposure “does great harm to the United States of America,” must demand that the New York Times pay a price for its costly, arrogant defiance. The administration should withdraw the newspaper’s White House press credentials because this privilege has been so egregiously abused, and an aggressive investigation should be undertaken to identify and prosecute, at a minimum, the government officials who have leaked national-defense information.

The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) was initiated soon after the 9/11 attacks. It ingeniously focuses on the hub of interlocking systems that facilitate global money transfers. The steward of that hub, centered in Brussels, is the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or “SWIFT.” SWIFT is an organization of the world’s financial giants, including the national banks of Belgium, England, and Japan, the European Central Bank, and the U.S. Federal Reserve. SWIFT, however, is not a bank. It’s a clearinghouse that manages message traffic pursuant to international transfers of funds.

Intelligence about those communications implicates no legally recognized privacy interests. To begin with, they are predominantly foreign, and international. To the extent the U.S. Constitution might be thought to apply, the Supreme Court held nearly 30 years ago that records in the hands of third parties — including financial records maintained by banks — are not private, and thus not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, to the extent Congress later supplemented privacy protections by statute, those laws regulated disclosures by financial institutions. SWIFT is not a financial institution.

Despite this legal daylight, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to defer to privacy concerns. Assuming that American law applied, it obtained SWIFT information by administrative subpoena. It carefully narrowed its scrutiny to those transacting with suspected terrorists. It concurred with its international partners that the resulting intelligence should be used only for counterterrorism and security purposes—not for prosecutions of ordinary crimes (even though such prosecutions would be legal under American law). And it agreed to subject the TFTP to independent auditing to ensure that the effort was trained on terrorists.

By all accounts, the program has been a ringing success. The administration maintains that the TFTP has been central to mapping terror cells and their tentacles, and to shutting off their funding spigot. It has resulted in at least one major domestic prosecution for providing material support to al Qaeda. It has also led to the apprehension of one of the jihad’s most insulated and ruthless operatives, Jemaah Islamiya’s Riduan Isamuddin, who is tied to the 2002 Bali bombing.

But as has happened with other crucial counterterrorism tools — such as the NSA’s program to monitor the enemy’s international communications, which the New York Times exposed, and the CIA’s arrangements for our allies to detain high-level Qaeda operatives, which the Washington Post compromised — the TFTP’s existence was disclosed to the Times and other newspapers by anonymous government officials, in violation of their legal obligation to maintain secrecy. The Bush administration pleaded with the newspapers not to publish what they had learned. But these requests, rooted in the national-security interests of the United States, were rebuffed. The Times, along with the Los Angeles Times (which also rejected a government request not to publish) and the Wall Street Journal, ran stories exposing the program. Yes, the public was being protected. Yes, terrorists trying to kill Americans were being brought to heel. Yes, it appears the program is legal. And yes, it appears the Bush administration made various accommodations out of respect for international opinion and privacy concerns. Despite all that, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller concluded that “the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest.”

It is a matter of interest mainly to al Qaeda. The terrorists will now adapt. They will find new ways of transferring funds, and precious lines of intelligence will be lost. Murderers will get the resources they need to carry out their grisly business. As for the real public interest, it lies primarily in safety — and what the Times has ensured is that the public today is less safe.

Success in defeating the terrorists at war with us is dependent on good intelligence. Without obtaining it and keeping it secret, the government can’t even find the dots, much less connect them. If the compromising of our national-security secrets continues, terrorists will thrive and Americans will die. It has to be stopped.

The New York Times is a recidivist offender in what has become a relentless effort to undermine the intelligence-gathering without which a war against embedded terrorists cannot be won. And it is an unrepentant offender. In a letter published over the weekend, Keller once again defended the newspaper’s editorial decision to run its TFTP story. Without any trace of perceiving the danger inherent in public officials’ compromising of national-security information (a matter that the Times frothed over when it came to the comparative trifle of Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA employee), Keller indicated that the Times would continue revealing such matters whenever it unilaterally decided that doing so was in the public interest.

The president should match this morning’s tough talk with concrete action. Publications such as the Times, which act irresponsibly when given access to secrets on which national security depends, should have their access to government reduced. Their press credentials should be withdrawn. Reporting is surely a right, but press credentials are a privilege. This kind of conduct ought not be rewarded with privileged access.

Moreover, the Justice Department must be more aggressive than it has been in investigating national-security leaks. While prosecution of the press for publishing information helpful to the enemy in wartime would be controversial, pursuit of the government officials who leak it is not. At the very least, members of the media who report such information must be made to understand that the government will no longer regard them as immune from questioning when it investigates the leakers. They should be compelled to reveal their sources, on pain of contempt.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by Chris D

Yes, it's a bitch living in a free sciety. We're much better off letting the government make all the decisions and keeping us all in the dark. Enjoy your SOMA, and try reading the Bill of Rights sometime.

I'd have to concur with DuPre (one "E" or two-I can't remember).

Considering the argument against extending Geneva Convention considerations to our "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo, it seems particularly hubristic to insist on a cloak of darkness because we're "at war".

Just my $.02, though. Your mileage may vary.

Edit: "Administrative subpoena" and "legal daylight" seem to me to be conflicting principles. You can be sure that "administrative" means "secret and not reviewed by a court".

[groover]

As New Hampshire's General John Stark once said, "Live free or die!"

[Monte Smith]

Anyone catch the Times' editorial on eminent domain today? Typical Times: eminent domain is a fantastic tool that allows municipalities to create low income housing. And is also allowing the construction of a new building for the Times. But that last is secondary, mainly it's about poor people. Uh huh.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by groover

As New Hampshire's General John Stark once said, "Live free or die!"

I once saw a comedian who opined that it must be particularly galling for New Hampshire prison inmates to have to stamp out license plates with that logo on it........

[walto]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

Anyone catch the Times' editorial on eminent domain today? Typical Times: eminent domain is a fantastic tool that allows municipalities to create low income housing. And is also allowing the construction of a new building for the Times. But that last is secondary, mainly it's about poor people. Uh huh.

FWIW, I don't think eminent domain is really about either poor people or the corporate users like the Times. It's about democracy and the limits of what may be bought and sold (and speculatively held). And the principle also recognizes that fair compensation must be paid when land is taken.

Monte, I'm surprised you don't mind that people can't buy the mineral rights to oxygen usage.

[Al in NYC]

I've had my problems with the Times over the past few years, particularly with their going along with the administration on the rush into war in Iraq without asking any of the important questions. But I'm right with them here. This is one of the major reasons why the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to a free press, so that people can at least be informed of the actions, and potential excesses, of the state. Without the ability to do that any freedom of of the press isn't "freedom" in any meaningful sense at all.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally Posted by Al in NYC

I've had my problems with the Times over the past few years, particularly with their going along with the administration on the rush into war in Iraq without asking any of the important questions. But I'm right with them here. This is one of the major reasons why the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to a free press, so that people can at least be informed of the actions, and potential excesses, of the state. Without the ability to do that any freedom of of the press isn't "freedom" in any meaningful sense at all.

I tend to agree with you, Al, though here (as in many issues) I think it would be helpful to limn the boundaries, if indeed there are boundaries. To take an extreme case: suppose we're in a (generally considered) justifiable war and the government conducts some subterfuge campaign within enemy territory, which campaign gets discovered by the press who, for reasons of their own, print this information resulting in the likely death of military personnel. Would this sort of action always be simply shrugged off or is there a point, a defineable point, at which the government may intervene? I don't know the answer myself, just askin'.

If the current "war" was supported by 90% of the population, would different standards be in place? My inclination is that you leave these sort of things to the judgment of the press and live with the results, good or bad, but I don't think it's an easy call.

[Dr Dave]

I noticed last night on the News Hour that Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) accused The New York Times of being a profit-making institution. You know he's absolutely right, and it is high time we nationalized the news media in this country. Take it out of the hands of profit-mongering America-haters! Yeah!

[Gary Sisco]

The Times has historically *not* published in those kinds of situations, Brian, in fact. Indeed, they have too often, if anything, allowed DC to browbeat them with the "national security" stick and foregone publishing what they knew even when they should have. Most publishers in a serious situation such as you describe would be reasonable people and self-censor. It's called editing.

The fact is, so far as the war *itself* goes, almost no paper in the US gives much coverage to it. You read that a battle or offensive is taking place here or there but you don't get much more information about it than that, really. It took The Economist, weeks after the fact, to describe the actual combat in Fallujah, for instance. Not whether it was justified or whether the war is justified or any of those issues. I'm just talking the basis blow by blow.

Which coverage would actually, if provided, allow people a much more educated view of the war *on which* to base their judgment. If it was provided. But normally, it simply isn't. That's been one of the more bizarre aspects of the war, actually, to me, esp considering that it's very likely the most crowded war in history, journalist-wise.

The truth in almost every circumstance, however, at least since WW2, has been that "national security" is a browbeating weapon used for domestic political reasons much more than anything actually having anything to do with national security as such.

Let's look at El Salvador, an example where there's some historical distance so less to defend. What exact damage to national security would there be to reporting that the US was very busily and very directly paying death squads to murder people for their political views by the tens of thousands? Yet, such reporting was more than once called a national security threat. Most papers, the Times included, more or less went along with the program, however. You could read between the lines if you had the necessary historical knowledge of the various players, including very much the journalists, by the way, but if you didn't, you couldn't. They'd report forever about death squads but only very rarely and never directly about the direct connection between them and the Reagan administration. I was there to witness these things for myself and I can tell you frankly that the Times and most other American papers held their punches much more often than not. Weirdly, perhaps, given the demographics of the place, a lot of the best reporting got done by the Miami press (in short, "lesser" papers that were not nationally available papers at the time -- something since changed, thankfully, by the internet).

What is politically embarassing to the point of the state not wanting the people to have knowledge, however, is not a national security issue.

And secret, massive violations of the Constitution *is* a national security issue, though not in the way the state uses the words.

A free press is *supposed to* harass and embarass the state, particularly where people's rights and blood are concerned.

Politicians of course, particularly those in charge, object to embarassment for obvious reasons but that can be avoided much more easily, not to say democratically, by not behaving secretly in ways that would be embarassing or angering to the people. They rarely seem to understand that little clue, however, and all parties are the same so far as that goes, once in power. The dims convenienty have forgotten Clinton's lying, for example. Take the case of his ordering a cruise missile strike in Sudan on a "nerve gas manufacturing facility." It was exposed in the press, repeatedly, that in fact it was a medicine factory, the only one in the country. Clinton and his underlings lied and denied for a couple of years before they finally fessed up about it. Of course, by then it was buried-in-the-back-pages news so most missed the admittance when they finally had no choice but to fess up. They had had all kinds of absurd stories about CIA agents sneaking up and taking soil samples for analysis and all sorts of happy horseshit but it was all made up nonsense used as rationale after the fact when their behavior had been exposed.

Whether the war is supported or not by the population, journalism's job is to expose government lies and brutality. Too bad who doesn't like it. And the 1st Amendment is intended to protect speech, especially speech that angers the state or majority opinion. Speech that doesn't has no need for protection. The concept would be absurd.

The Pentagon Papers is the classic example, of course. They are readily available for next to nothing in used bookstores if people haven't actually read them for themselves. I challenge anyone to find anything in them that threatens the security of the US in any way, shape or form, now or then. How would it have threatened national security to report what was well known to all in Vietnam -- that the US had encouraged and cooperated with political assassination and coups d'etat? Embarassing, certainly, given the high-falootin' rhetoric and inflated self-image of many Americans. National security threat? None. None at all. And that was by far the most embarassing thing in the Pentagon Papers.

The rest was embarassing mainly because it showed in no uncertain terms -- very like the run-up to the Iraq invasion but in the PP case only revealed after the fact -- that pols and bureaucrats like McNamara's insistence -- even in his alleged apologia in old age -- that he made decisions based on "faulty intelligence" was nonsense and in fact a lie. He himself had commissioned the studies involved. Presumbably he read them. Therefore, he had to have been lying about the "faulty intelligence." It wasn't faulty at all. It was simply not what he was wanting to hear, so he ignored it. And millions died for his idiotic stubbornness and refusal to accept the soundness of the intelligence provided to him by people who were actually there. Which he was not for longer than a few, hugely protected and coddled, days, all told, throughout his murderous reign at the Pentagon.

Not a single threat to national security involved. None.

On the other hand, the press did in fact cooperate and cooperate fully during WW2 when there really was national security at stake. Does anyone actually believe that the nation's top editors didn't know about such deceptions as Patton's creation of a phony army in England, complete with phony radio traffic and so forth, that was meant -- and succeeded --to convince the Nazi military leadership that an invasion was being planned elsewhere than Normandy? Give it up, if so. They knew and they knew damned well that it wasn't information for the nation's newspaper pages so it didn't appear there until long after it might have mattered. That's only one example of many thousands.

There's a huge book called *The Deceivers* that goes into relentless detail about every known subterfuge used by the Allies in WW2 and there were literally thousands. Many of them known about by people outside government but sat on for obvious reasons. You don't broadcast in a struggle like that one, with real stakes, that the Allies had "Enigma" and therefore direct access to Germany's most secret communications. Things like that are understood.

Publishing the truth about Fallujah, on the other hand, that the USMC cleared the city room by room using handgrenades without knowing who if anyone was in the buildings and rooms -- killing many, many civilians of all ages without mercy -- nothing else could even have been expected, given the circumstances and tactics -- and driving hundreds of thousands into chaotic homelessness on the run -- does not in any way threaten the US's national security, however embarassing it might be to have such brutality broadcast to the world and the domestic population.

In any case, however, the internet has changed these issues for all time. There's nothing that can be kept secret now, with soldiers posting to bbs's and emailing directly from combat and so forth, never mind the place crawling with journalists from all over the world, not just Americans who are easily controlled (they are). Everything now, all knowledge, is a send-button click away from public knowledge.

Thank goodness.

Thank goodness also the internet has made all of the world's newspapers (or something very close) a mouse click away for anyone who wants to read them. And I encourage all Americans to read them. You'll often find a rather different front page.

[Gary Sisco]

Recently, another example, the governor of VT made a "secret" trip to Iraq to visit with the too-many VT Nat'l Guard people there. (I use the quotation marks because the governor's receptionist told me on the phone, quite casually, before the press, that the governor wasn't available because on his way to a secret visit to Iraq!) When he returned, the local daily reported his "secret" trip and of course his commentary, that -- amazingly enough -- everthing couldn't have been groovier in Iraq and the people there are solidly behind the administration's war and policies and grateful and so forth and so on.

It took a political gadfly who has a weekly gossip column (pretty much) to expose that the governor hadn't even spoken with a single Iraqi, or even travelled with one, during his entire time in the country. The only Iraqis he even saw were seen from the air. He was with Americans the entire time.

The daily didn't bother to point this out, which of course sheds quite a different light on the governor's remarks about the war and what Iraqis think or don't think about it.

And if you think that's stupid, try this: The NYT for a time while I was in Nicaragua had a reporter there, their main byline reporter, who *couldn't speak Spanish.* Didn't prevent him -- or the Times -- from telling us, often, what "most Nicaraguans" thought about anything. As if he, or consequently the Times's editors, had a single way of knowing.

[Brian Olewnick]

As I said, I essentially agree with your take on this; I just don't want to brush aside legitimately difficult decisions even if, ultimately, I'd defer to the press' judgment over the government's. The press, being human, is likely to get it wrong once in a while (if not more, though quite possibly less so than the government) and people should be educated to understand that it's going to happen (more galling if it occures for retaliatory political reasons) and it's something that, when it does, has to be lived with, 'cause ain't nothing perfect, just some things less perfect than others.

[Gary Sisco]

Especially the state.

[Gary Sisco]

Incidentally, I had a security clearance in the service because I was a technician who worked with gear, some of which was highly classified for good reasons. Politics aside, I've kept those secrets all these years, though the gear is likely long obsolete. The principles on which it worked, however, are not and are likely still operative on the newer gear. So I've kept my mouth shut. Real issues and real blood would be at stake, there, not the embarassment of politicians and bureaucrats, about which I couldn't care less.

Our resident submariners, I've noticed, even when well in their cups, have consistently closely guarded theirs, too, I'm happy to report.

I like the way the media/NYT hides behind the "publics right to know" philosophy in order to ignore the gov and publish what it wants. It's not the medias'/NYT's decision to decide which particular security issue to publish and which not to publish. That information can be used in a multitude of ways and it's possible that its exposure is not just a matter of personal freedom/individual rights. Granted there will be exceptions, but it seems like it's the Times rule of thumb, that the "exception" is happening much too often to be such. The NYT can satisfy its leftist agenda without exposing, making National Security more difficult than it is. e.g. If the NYT has information and the gov says "don't publish it," and the Times deems it imperative that the public knows, it should go after the act of censoring, on a case by case item, rather than deciding unilaterally to publish the actual security information.

In these times, I trust the gov just a bit more than the media. Maybe in another time and place it'd be different.

[Gary Sisco]

Does anyone seriously believe that terrorists moving money hadn't already assumed some such monitoring? How stupid do people think others are? A stupid terrorist is a dead terrorists.

Sometimes I wonder if there is any substantial number of people left here who can still think outside a partisan view or one put forth by state or media. In other words, think on their own using their own brainpower.

Here's Sullivan's, I'd say utterly reasonable, response:

I confess to being a little bemused by the hysteria in some parts of the blogosphere about the NYT publishing details of the government's close monitoring of some financial transactions in the war on terror. I should qualify that by saying that the argument against the press is the strongest I've yet read in any of these cases. Unlike the NSA wire-tapping program, or the secret torture prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, this program does not seem to be illegal, or only legal under the doctrine that anything the president does in the war is de facto legal. It seems carefully structured to prevent abuse of privacy, it appears to have been effective (although you and I have no way of knowing for sure). If I were Bill Keller (fat chance, I know), I probably wouldn't publish.

On the other hand, publishing it does not, it seems to me, obviously render the program ineffective. And the Malkinesque charges of treason seem a little, er, excitable. The press publishes stuff that doesn't always help the government in wartime. Duh. In a democracy, in a war which has sharply divided the country, this is hardly a big surprise. If the NYT didn't do it, someone in the government would find a way to leak it in another way. One wonders what would happen in Power Line's perfect world, where the MSM always followed the government's advice in wartime, suppressed news of defeats and setbacks, and avoided any damaging revelations that might encourage the enemy or inform citizens of government errors or abuses. Let's say someone within the administration still wanted to leak the program. Wouldn't they just give the info to an anti-Bush blogger? And would the damage be any less than it is - in today's media universe? In a paradoxical way, some bloggers both want to dismiss the NYT and then describe it as the essential gateway for all important information. It cannot be both. In today's transparent, web-based media, wars are just going to be subject to more scrutiny - especially divisive wars, run by controversial presidents, with as many opponents within the government as outside it. Get used to it. And take a Xanax.

[Gary Sisco]

I don't believe jbc. He has to be a purposefully preposterous peformance artist.

On the other hand, being all too familiar with what passes for education in the US ....

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally Posted by jazzbluescat

In these times, I trust the gov just a bit more than the media. Maybe in another time and place it'd be different.

Just in case it's not already clear, this attitude scares the shit out of some people, like me.

[Gary Sisco]

That attitude is exactly, in every way, antidemocratic and anti-American in the most literal sense of the term.

Hence, the superpatriots will agree. Until some other party controls the presidency. Then they won't.

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

I don't believe jbc. He has to be a purposefully preposterous peformance artist.

On the other hand, being all too familiar with what passes for education in the US ....

Hey, in this particular instance, if the information is as benign as some people believe, then what's the harm in respecting the gov's want/need to keep it secret? Damnned if it's the NYT' call to make.

I reckon you're so fucking bright that we have to put a pot over your head to see the sun rise in the morning.

[Gary Sisco]

Doesn't seem to occur to many that governmental misbehavior is itself a threat to national security.

Anyone who'd trust proven, career liars, however, deserves his or her fate.

[Vince Kargatis]

When something is secret, you do not know whether it's benign or not. That's not hard to understand, is it?

[crawjo]

Originally Posted by Vince Kargatis

Just in case it's not already clear, this attitude scares the shit out of some people, like me.

Unfortunately, it seems also to be a fairly widely-held position among conservatives, especially when it comes to the NY Times.

[RBS]

Attack the messenger for speaking the truth.

You think these guys don't know their finances are being monitored? Or their phone calls are being tapped?

Gimme a break.

It's a great way to distract from Bush's piss poor performance in Iraq and his abominable level of incompetence.

[Gary Sisco]

Face -- You're right. Until the parties change places again. Then all of a sudden the Constitution will be sacred in a literal sense with the same people.

Hey, it's not like someone got a blow job or something...