On Journalism, State Secrets, and Prosecution
Personally, I prefer that the leakers be prosecuted and Bill Keller fired, but Gabriel Schoenfeld says the NY Times does face the prospect of prosecution, but not necessarily from the commonly referred to Espionage Act of 1917:
CAN JOURNALISTS REALLY BE PROSECUTED for publishing national security secrets? In the wake of a series of New York Times stories revealing highly sensitive counterterrorism programs, that question is increasingly the talk of newsrooms across the country, and especially one newsroom located on West 43rd Street in Manhattan.
Last December, in the face of a presidential warning that they would compromise ongoing investigations of al Qaeda, the Times revealed the existence of an ultrasecret terrorist surveillance program of the National Security Agency and provided details of how it operated. Now, once again in the face of a presidential warning, the Times has published a front-page article disclosing a highly classified U.S. intelligence program that successfully penetrated the international bank transactions of al Qaeda terrorists.
Although the editors of the Times act as if prosecution is not a possibility, not everyone concurs. One person who is still mulling the matter over is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Asked in late May about the prospect of prosecuting the Times and others who publish classified information, he by no means ruled it out. “There are some statutes on the books,” he said, “which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility.”
Unsurprisingly, given what is at stake, even that tentative opinion elicited a fire and brimstone denunciation from the Times. An editorial on May 24 dismissed as “bizarre” the attorney general’s “claim that a century-old espionage law could be used to muzzle the press.” It has long been understood, added the newspaper, that the “overly broad and little used” Espionage Act of 1917 applies only to government officials and “not to journalists.”
But this interpretation, even if it were accurate (which it is not), is entirely beside the point. The attorney general did not mention the 1917 Espionage Act or any other specific law. But if the editors of the paper 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.
Unambiguously taking within its reach the publication of the NSA terrorist surveillance story (though arguably not the Times’s more recent terrorist banking story), Section 798 reads, in part:
Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner 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 any classified information . . . concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States . . . shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both [emphasis added].
Again, I don’t agree the Times should be prosecuted; they should be shunned, but not prosecuted. Doing so would only allow Keller and company to play the martyr to rave worldwide reviews.
As for the leakers, no sympathy and no mercy…
Freedom of the press that is supposed to help protect us from a tyranical government. Of course, built into this is the reality that this freedom can be abused. The New York Times has clearly abused this power.
The justification for this is that they feel that a government program, has the possibility of being abuse, no actual evidence of abuse mind you, but the possibility of abuse. Thus, they are abusing a freedom in order to protest against the possible abuse of a program. Quite ironic.
I don’t agree the Times should be prosecuted; they should be shunned, but not prosecuted. Doing so would only allow Keller and company to play the martyr to rave worldwide reviews.
…..
I can see your point but with one little point of my own. If it can be proved without a shadow of a doubt that the Times colluded with their leakers to publish secrets of the United States during a time of war THEN they really should be prosecuted. The burden of proof would then be specifically high enough to warrant the extraordinary step of pursuing the Times under such an Act of Sedition or Treason.
In other words, if the absolute proof could be made that the Times editors and reporters were participating in a criminal conspiracy with the leakers, its a “no brainer” in my view. Otherwise, they should be held in contempt until they reveal their sources indefinately if necessary. This is the logical place to begin. The point being that we cannot let this criminal activity go unpunished just because the leakers are talking to their friends in the press instead of passing microdots to the enemy. Hey, just my 02 cents.
Carol
I have a much more cynical take on the behavior of Keller and the others at the Times: I see their actions as motivated by personal hostility toward the President and his Administration, by their desire to undermine our participation in a war they oppose, by their belief that these stories will someone enhance their standing among their peers, and by their hope that these actions will enhance their attractiveness (and thus $$$) among the news reading public.
Without their acknowledgement I can’t prove it, but it is the scenario that makes the most sense given the facts.
1) Should the Wall Street Journal also be shunned or prosecuted for putting the story on its front page?
2) Should Fox News and Geraldo Rivera have been prosecuted for revealing the location of American troops in Iraq?
3) Should the New York Times been prevented from publishing the Pentagon Papers?
4) Should the New York Times and other newspapers have been prosecuted for revealing that the Nixon administration kept an enemies list, used the FBI to spy on its adversaries, and had the IRS harass its opponents?
5) Should the media have been prosecuted for revealing the details of the Iran-Contra affair?
Well, peter, as I said, I don’t think any of the media outlets should be prosecuted, just the leakers. As for the WSJ, it’s not their finest moment, but there’s a history here with the Times. As for your other assertions, they all involved allegations of abuse of power – there is not even the hint of anything untoward about this program, as the Times itself admits – just the vague ‘possibility’ that someone might do something undefined.
Do you feel safer with this program revealed?
If so, why?
Red herrings, my friend…stick to the issue at hand…
I haven’t felt safe since 9/11. There are huge and gaping holes which leave us extremely vulnerable. These include our ports, air cargo, electrical grid, rail lines, water supply, nuclear power facilities, bridges, and tunnels. As an example, the Times sent a reporter in a van to a chemical plant within fifteen miles of Times Square, and he was not stopped or questioned as he parked his car outside the factory. Timothy McVeigh and the two men who shot people randomly in Washington a few years ago have shown us that you don’t have to be Muslim (or particularly smart or well-equipped) to wreak havoc and devastation. It’s a big country and it can’t all be guarded at once – but so little has been done that I feel very unsafe.
The publication of the story in the Times, in my opinion, has absolutely no effect on how safe or unsafe we are. I would expect the government to monitor international financial transactions, and their revelation should not have been a surprise to anyone. If the government wasn’t doing this, that would be a much bigger story.
Well, then, why did the bipartisan heads of the 9/11 Commission beg the Times not to publish the story? Why did John Snow write a public letter of reprimand to Bill Keller?
And you still haven’t answered why, if it wasn’t news, it was treated as a front-page expose by the Times…
Peter, the problem with the Times report is not the “revelation” that the government is monitoring international financial transactions, which, as you said, is not news. The problem is that they reveal HOW it is being done.
It’s equivlent to the Kansas City Chiefs giving the Oakland Raiders (or throw in your favorite local rivalry) an important portion of their defensive playbook, and I guarantee that if any such thing happend in sports, people would lose their jobs at the very least.
While I think the First Amendment nixes the prosecution argument, that the Times willingly and continually publishes our playbook is extremely disturbing. Here’s to hoping that this incident eventually takes them down as a intelligence agency for our enemies.
“I haven’t felt safe since 9/11.”
Uh, watching 3,000 people get incinerated live on TV tends to make one feel that way.
“There are huge and gaping holes which leave us extremely vulnerable.”
We’ve already heard this argument ad nauseum for over a year now – it’s your evergreen argument that’s trotted out on a regular basis when we discuss unrelated security issues. Not relevant to the discussion here.
“And you still haven’t answered why, if it wasn’t news, it was treated as a front-page expose by the Times.”
Yes, or what Keller means when he justifies the publication of said story under the guise of the “public interest.” Whose interests does he imagine are being served here?
I don’t know why the heads of the 9/11 Commission asked the Times not to publish the story – considering that tracking financial assets is something the Commission discusses in some detail:
http://www.state.gov/e/eb/rls/rm/39719.htm
However, it seems clear that Snow is attacking the Times as part of a coordinated effort with Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales. Why do you suppose they are not attacking the Journal? And why do you suppose that they said not a word when Geraldo Rivera identified the secret location of American troops in Iraq?
As for the front page status: the editors of the Journal, the NY Times, and the LA Times all felt that it was a front page story. Why single out the NY Times?
To Evan: it has been public knowledge for years that we track (and freeze) terrorists’ financial assets – it’s in the 9/11 Commission cite, among many others. The identification of SWIFT as the means to do this does not seem to me to be the equivalent of a playbook. Do you really think that any terrorist would act any differently knowing that SWIFT – as opposed to some other mechanism – is how the government executes a program it has publicly announced on many different times?
Well, with all due respect, you don’t have a clue (nor do I). The commisioners and the Treasury Secretary know far more about these matters than you or I. For you to impart bad faith to John Snow on the basis of literally nothing (and enough with the Geraldo thing, for cryin’ out loud, it’s a red herring, as I said before) is, shall I say, completely unconvincing. I’m not talking about the Wall Street Journal, or the L.A. Times – I’m asking why this completely unnewsworthy item, as you would have us believe, provoked bipartisan pleas not to reveal it. You have offered nothing in response to that – but of course, you couldn’t, because you’re not in a position to know.
They are – and I doubt their concern was feigned…
The short answers to peter’s questions in comment #4:
1) Yes
2) Yes
3) Yes
4) No, because those things had absolutely nothing to do with national security.
5) Yes
Any questions?
1) If John Snow – or anyone else in the administration – would explain why there is any relationship between identifying SWIFT as the means to monitor financial transactions and any tangible difference in fighting terrorists, then I would feel much differently about it. You and I know that it is illegal to exceed the speed limit. Whether we are caught by radar, unmarked police cars, or cameras has no influence on how we drive. Terrorists know that financial transactions are being monitored – the government has been saying this for years — whether it is through SWIFT or some other means is immaterial.
2) In attacking the New York Times, the administration has seized the lead stories in the news, and pushed off to the side stories about American soldiers being beheaded, an immigration bill going nowhere, a potential North Korean missile launch, and everything else which they would prefer not to discuss in an election year. Moreover, there is no substance to the attack: everybody knows that we monitor financial transactions. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
3) The Fox News thing is not a red herring: it is a concrete example of a news medium clearly violating the law (troop movements and locations are specifically mentioned in Supreme Court decisions as being examples where national security trumps the first amendment) which was given a free pass by the administration. Of course, Fox News is as friendly to the administration as Pravda was to the Kremlin, and the Times is much more aggressive in its reporting (to both Bush and Clinton, among others). It is indicative of the double standard which the administration applies to its own actions: we can leak the identities of CIA operatives to the press with impugnity, but we will go after media which report the things we would prefer to keep secret.
I admire fatman for his consistency, although I disagree with each of his answers.
Ridiculous – your conspiracy theory requires the cooperation of the bipartisan chairs of the 9/11 committee, as I won’t quit reminding you. Absolute nonsense that Bush is using this as a distraction – tell that to Lee Hamilton.
Rubbish…
“However, it seems clear that Snow is attacking the Times as part of a coordinated effort with Bush, Cheney…”
Oh boy – here we go yet again. What can I say, except – the boogeyman’s gonna get ya, Peter. Or as agent Mulder says, “the truth is out there.”
Peter-
looks like you got your hands full, but there is a small issue that I would like to weigh in on.
Stop using Geraldo’s troop revelation as an argument about who should be prosecuted for revealing intel.
The man is shameless. Not even conservatively or liberally shameless, just his own Geraldo’s form.
I doubt there is a conservative, here, who would defend him. If he was on CNN he would be just as distasteful a person arguing/working for the left. No one cares about him, period. He is an embarrassment to FOX news, indepednet of his ‘troop revelation’. Is FOX resposnible for his gaffe? Only that they gave him a mike and put him in with the troops. (FOX-Incompetently negligent, yes. Culpable for classified troop stuff, no.)
This is a guy who was trying to get shots of himself wearing a holster in Iraq, with the troops. When the press saw him packing and brandishing, they moved away in haste, as would I.
Peter, did you actually read the Times piece? The article is not an IDENTIFICATION of Swift as the mechanism – it’s an OUTLINE of the way it works. That is equivilent to a playbook. There are many programs we know exist, but the workings of those programs are strictly classified. Such WAS the case before the Times published this article.
I don’t know how you drive, Peter, but this just isn’t true for me. If I’m driving on a road that’s a notorious speed trap, I sure am going to be more cautious. If I’m driving on a road where I know the cops turn a blind eye, I’ll open up the throttle. I don’t think I’m all that unusual in this.
You would have us believe that terrorists assume every single possible road, to keep with your analogy, is a speed trap. And John Snow says in his letter to Keller that it isn’t so: “While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this particular program incredibly valuable.” In the face of this criticism, you simply dismiss it as part of a conspiracy to knock other stories off the front page, and you conclude what was revealed wasn’t important. Which is interesting, because if it wasn’t important, why did the papers in question decide to splash it across their front pages?
And there are two main reasons your Geraldo thing is a red herring. First, Rivera was punished – he was kicked out of his embedded unit. And I don’t recall anyone, right or left, saying Geraldo shouldn’t suffer for what he did; I recall many people saying he should have been punished criminally. Second, what he did was make unscripted hand gestures, trying to explain positions like a football play, on live TV.
It was stupid and inexcusable, but I can’t believe you fail to see the difference between one TV dolt doing something spontaneous and an entire news organization working on a story for weeks, finding no indication there was anything wrong with what the government was doing and being implored by various sources, including the leaders of the 9/11 commission, not to print what they’d found out, and in the end deciding none of that mattered, for reasons that I’ve yet to hear clearly explained.
Listen, I agree with you about your concern over the holes in our security. But I’m damned if I can see how you can be so worried about these holes (which, it should be noted, somehow remain unexploited, even five years after the 9/11 attacks), and so blithely unconcerned about this report, other than it fits neatly into your unwavering “Bush is bad” viewpoint.
Re posts 15 & 16: Keith Olbermann did a piece which correlated raised terror alerts with events like primaries, elections, and embarrassing news events (such as Abu Ghraib). There was an uncanny linkage between the two (and needless to say, all of the raised terror alerts turned out to be false alarms). Would they have a temper tantrum about the Times to distract people from everything else? I wouldn’t put it past them.
Re post 17: I agree that Geraldo is shameless – but if the administration is going to go after media which reveal secrets, then go after all of the media, and not just those whose editorialists criticize the administration
Re post 18: sorry, I just can’t accept that terrorists and their allies would do anything differently even if they read the Times (and LA Times and WSJ) reporting. They have been told for years that we go after the money, and the administration has publicized asset seizures of suspected terrorists. Your contention is that they blithely ignore all of this and move money around the banking system, but all of a sudden they will stop doing this because the Times showed how the surveillance works?
Re post 19: well, I’ve gotten one ticket in the last fifteen years, so I’m probably not a typical example of driving. Probably my inherent paranoia (when I go to a football game and the players are in a huddle, I think they’re talking about me). I figure that I can get caught anywhere. Do you go through red lights at 2 am when there is nobody there? I don’t, because a) it’s illegal and b) you never know. I wouldn’t assume that terrorists are any less cautious.
As to the more interesting issue of holes in our domestic security vs. the articles in the Times and elsewhere: you have to compare the (massive) vulnerability we have because of the inattention to protecting the homeland with the (negligible) vulnerability we have because the Times revealed how the banking monitoring works. This (or any) administration can fairly be judged on how they protect the national security. You can devote money, resources, and the bully pulpit to protect our people and infrastructure, or you can castigate the media (or both). My complaint is that the administration has done far too little of the former and far too much of the latter. The enemy is the guy who drives his bomb-laden van into the Holland Tunnel, not the New York Times. I believe this administration’s priorities are skewed because their efforts are not focused on the things which would truly make us safer.
Re all posts: let’s use a different example. The media recently reported that only 5% of cargo coming into US ports is examined for radiation. Presumably this came from a classified source. You could argue that the public disclosure of this fact helps terrorists, as they now know that they have a 19 of 20 chance in sending radioactive cargo through the port system undetected. You could also argue that this reporting alerts the public to a problem which can be fixed. If the media did not report this and a radioactive bomb went through, there would be an outcry as to why this was kept hidden. Should the media report information which can help terrorists as well as ourselves? And if so, why shouldn’t the media report on what the government is doing on your behalf?
Peter, I again point out what the Treasury secretary said: “While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this particular program incredibly valuable.” Now if you’ve already decided he’s lying, I guess it’s easy for you to dimiss him and ignore the implications. But I look at a long history of human nature indicating people think they can get away with things when they can’t. Crooks will probe a system for weaknesses, and governments recognize that. So sometimes they’ll let them probe, in the hopes they’ll do things and, thinking they got away with it once, keep doing them. I’d bet this is exactly the kind of thing that has been happening, at least up until now.
Regarding your port example, if the papers in question had limited themslves to saying the government is monitoring some financial dealings, without going into details about SWIFT and how the whole operation works, it would be akin to the reports about the lack of port security. A SWIFT version of the port story would explain exactly how the government chooses which cargo to examine, what red flags they look for, what kind of examinations take place, etc. The port story is saying, “Here’s a problem the government hasn’t addressed.” the SWIFT story is saying, “Here’s a situation the government has addressed, no one is opposed to it, and we’re going to reveal the mechanics of it to everybody.”
No doubt the Keith Olbermann study was statistically sound and peer-reviewed; I’ve long admired his scholarly contributions to the field of security studies…
RE: post 20 –
My contention is that the NY Times, WSJ, and LA Times have laid out for terrorists the manner in which their assets are being tracked and seized, thereby making it easier for them to change their methods to the intent of avoiding detection. It’s free counter-intelligence for Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. It’s one thing to show someone a toolbox (Swift was publically known prior to the article), but it’s entirely another to take the tools out of the toolbox and show how each of them works (what the article did).
By the way, your bashing of the administration is nausiatingly void of ANY specific and educated suggestions as to what “truly makes us safer”. You are simply engaging in Bush bashing, and any emphasis (or words, for that matter) from the President beyond what you deem to “truly make us safer” compells you to scream out about issues unrelated to the debate at hand. The performance of this administration is NOT related to this argument in either a practical or moral sense beyond the fact that the discussed program is being used by the administration.
Your “different example” does not compare to this case because information like you describe would not likely be classified as it would be part of any publically available Standard Operating Procedure for inspection of cargo at ports. Even if, for the sake of argument, the information was classified, it tells nothing, as Dennis has noted, of HOW the problem is being fixed. Reporting on those possible solutions is far more comparable to this case, and would endanger national security because it would enable terrorists to know what they needed to do to develop work-arounds to avoid the new procedures (or abandon such smuggling attempts altogether and move to different projects and/or options). Media should report the problems as they come up, what they should not do is always disclose how those problems are being solved if they require classified status (especially if they are getting results).
Ultimately, what is so hard to believe about the notion that the Times may have made it harder on the United States to freeze terrorist finanical assets because of this Times piece? It’s irrelevant whether the piece does, in fact, influence terrorists to change their methods. The point is that they are getting free counter-intelligence from an AMERICAN source.
…”Keith Olbermann”
Well, you just jumped the proverbial shark on this one, my friend. Using one of the most ridiculed and discredited doofuses on the airwaves today to make your point.This is the same mongoloid who compared Ken Starr to Adolph Eichmann. Let’s not forget his sterling bona fides in this field either – 5 years on SportsCenter. Given this standard of rigorous academic excellence, I’ll start quoting that noted political authority Sean Hannity from now on.
No wonder you’re such a repetitive defender of the Times – Walter Duranty would’ve loved you. Are you actually telling us that you watch this nutjob on a regular basis? My god, that’s scary. He just got severely reprimanded for engaging in a venomous and childlike e – mail exchange with someone who dared to question him on the “facts” that his show spews out on a daily basis. This is where you think you get credible information on the world at large?
Peter, you told me a long time ago that you never cottoned to being a KosKid, and rarely went to the Democratic Underground site. Given this admission, I don’t think you’ve been truthful with us on this front, since moonbats like Oby has deranged and psychotic folks on his show all the time – it’s the conspiracy du jour on his show, 24/7.
To Dennis: if, as Snow suggests, terrorists “have continued to (use) the formal financial system” despite the government loudly and repeatedly saying that they will track the flow of funds, why would the Times reporting change this? What difference does it make if they use SWIFT or some other mechanism?
More importantly, I question your assertion that the reporting “laid out for terrorists the manner in which their assets are being tracked and seized.” You can go through the Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html?ei=5065&en=8b8acbe63f34dad9&ex=1151640000&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print
and the only part which could remotely be considered a “playbook” is the following:
“The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.”
How much does that tell you (or a terrorist)? Do you really think this is analogous to “how the government chooses which cargo to examine, what red flags they look for, what kind of examinations take place, etc.?” Does this seem to you that the Times is revealing “the mechanics of it to everybody?” It seems that there is a lot of specific information in your example, but very little in the Times piece.
Also, I question the assertion that “no one is opposed to it.” From the Times article:
“The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans’ financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift. That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.
‘The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you’re sitting, troubling,’ said one former senior counterterrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, ‘the potential for abuse is enormous.’”
The government is departing from historical precedent in a program which even some people within the government think violate legal and privacy issues. Not newsworthy? Something which should be hidden from the public?
To Dennis: suggestions for making us truly safe include increasing the inspection of cargo entering the country by land, sea, and air; prohibiting railroad cars from transporting chemicals through major metropolitan areas; mandating security perimeters around nuclear and chemical plants; increasing funding for anti-terrorism (the total amount in this year’s appropriations was something like $800 million – or four days in Iraq); protecting the water supply (the reservoir in Central Park is guarded by nothing more than a ten foot fence); staffing FEMA with competent people; having evacuation plans for major cities in case of disaster (there didn’t seem to be one for New Orleans, so presumably they don’t exist for other cities); etc. Aside from preventing airplane passengers from taking their tweezers on the plane, it’s hard to see exactly what the administration has done to protect the homeland.
Dmac: yes, I admit it, Keith Olbermann is my guilty pleasure. I enjoy watching a newscast which takes an unabashedly liberal viewpoint (although I usually only watch the first half hour, and then switch to Brit Hume at 9:30). However, I don’t think that he “has deranged and psychotic folks on his show all the time,” unless you think that Dana Milbank and the British guy from Newsweek are psychotic.
Okay, peter, last snark for now – using the Times article to buttress the Times article is a neat trick, but a bit circular – can you quote me anything that supports the NY Times position that wasn’t published in the NY Times?…
Not yet — since the story broke a few days ago, I’ve only read the Times and the Journal (which has been silent on the issue) — however I look forward to getting the Economist on Friday to see what they think about all of this –
Two other thoughts:
1) Re post 7: it is not certain that “the bipartisan heads of the 9/11 Commission (begged) the Times not to publish the story.” From Bill Keller’s interview on CNN:
KELLER: “To the best of my knowledge, three people outside of the administration were asked by the administration to call us. I spoke to one of them. One of them spoke to our Washington bureau chief. One of them spoke to Jill Abramson, our managing editor. All of them spoke, they thought, in confidence, and I don’t think I will breach the confidence of what they said, although I will say that not all of them urged us not to publish. ”
Keller later identified the three as Kean, Hamilton, and Murtha. It’s unclear which of the three urged the Times not to publish – it may have been Kean and Hamilton, but I haven’t seen any reporting which indicates this.
2) Re the administration’s claim that Congress was briefed: Jane Harmon was quoted today saying that she was not briefed until two weeks ago.
Well, I would just have to ask you on what basis you repeatedly call John Snow an outright liar…really, it’s embarrassing to watch the knots you’ll twist into to protect the reputation of your beloved Times – are you sure you aren’t a Sulzburger?…
My take on Olbermann?
This is a guy who was so torn up about having to cover Lewinsky that he ‘cried to himself over it’.
5 years later he is trying to raise a fund to get the sex tapes on Bill O’reilly?(Hey, I did want to hear those tapes, but Olbermann is leading the lynch mob? The man is mentally imbalanced.
Methinks that the whole case is about the one agent who did get fired for searching a name without authorization.
It got back to that ‘name’ and struck very close to home. The people in the agency who came foward were trying to protect that ‘name’, because the records will always exist and the potential for it being released is too great.
This program, which on the surface looks reasonable, worried some people here enough so that they were directed to end it by all means neccessary. I don’t feel that they were thinking it thru though…
Just a thought.
Too add to my theory-
Why now? How long has this program been in effect? What was the threshold point for going to the papers, witha group of 20 or more?
One more salient point-the ‘name’ of the person that was ‘illegally investigated’ through the program-is the rosetta stone to the left.
This is the first actual victim of the Bush’s new ‘spy’ programs. No victim on NSA, no victim on Patriot Act, but when they finally get a small ‘meaningless’ program that does produce a victim, they remain anonymous and irrelevant.
If I were the victim, I would be running to the papers for protection. Unless-
I can’t have my name out there because I have something to hide so I’ll get 20 CIA officals to come out and do the work for me? Must be somebody important.
Who is it?
Somebody worth more than 7 figures, who has a lot of overseas transactions, with strong political connections. I’m starting to think that it was the NYT who got played…the story was never the program, it was their first crack at getting a ‘victim’ but they never asked any of their 20 informants or chose not to print it. Maybe they can keep secrets.
I’ve put this post up on my blog:
As the New York Times has become the self-appointed final arbiter of which classified programs should be publicly disclosed, and as its decisions have a bearing on our nation’s security and relationships with foreign governments and international institutions, I believe it is high time that it make available the transcripts (with sources excised, of course) of the discussions among its staff members in those instances that culminate in the publication of information on such programs. It is unacceptable and against the public interest that an organization as influential as the “Newspaper of Record” should be able to keep its deliberations secret. What about it, Mr. Keller? Let us judge for ourselves instead of taking your word for it.
Agree? Disagree?
In spite of all the foregoing–Mark, your original point is still the most important: The leakers should be ID’d and prosecuted.
Keller’s pathetic and obvious machinations are small potatoes; identifying the leakers of this and other stories ought to be the focus here.
Peter, not that I expect to change your mind, since not even dynamite would make you budge an inch, but the very quote you cite seems a good example of explaining just how the program worked, along with bits about how it allows them to track names and account numbers, and other bits talking about what it can’t do, such as track ATM withdrawls within this country. The notion that terrorists could be allowed to use the financial system, without understanding the extent to which they are monitored, clearly doesn’t enter into your thoughts, nor do the concrete exmaples given in the story of how the program has helped track down some terrorists, despite your certainty they already know everything about how they’re being tracked.
As for people being opposed, you’re right, there’s a few in that story, mostly unnamed, who have “expressed concerns” that this program could be abused. The problem is every government program could be abused. Show me some actual abuse, and then you’re talking a more newsworthy story. And I still haven’t figured out how you square the notion that this revelation was not news at all, and yet it deserved such prominent play.
I think for you this all comes down to “Bush is a liar, and the New York Times is impartial.” You’re free to think what you want, but that seems less like a reasoned approach to the matter, which you usually seem to pride yourself upon, and more like the kneejerk reaction of a guy who needs a fix of Olbermann rants.
Sure, the Times is completely impartial – just ask the Soviet citizens who died under Stalin’s pogroms about Duranty’s excellent reporting.
Now, that’s a Pulitzer we can all get behind!
Well, Dennis, after hearing the administration announce persistently over the past few years that they are following the money, it’s hard to imagine how they would do this without tracking names and account numbers. The detail which the Times added to what the administration has already said publicly is miniscule. After everything the administration has said on the subject, I simply don’t see anything in that story which could conceivably tell any terrorist anything he did not already know.
Moreover, “the notion that terrorists could be allowed to use the financial system, without understanding the extent to which they are monitored” is ludicrous. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of how banks work would know that any deposit, withdrawal, or transfer could be monitored. Al Qaeda isn’t the Keystone Kops: they are patient, savvy, and by no means stupid. Do you think that people who are Internet-savvy, know how to manipulate the media, and have been successful in planning and executing massive attacks are too dumb to figure out that making a financial transfer won’t be monitored? To borrow a quote, the idea that the Times piece somehow alerted Al Qaeda to something they didn’t know is an “absurdity too gross to be insisted upon.” The administration told them everything they needed to know long ago.
The suggestion that the Times did this to “hurt Bush” is equally silly. If you wanted to print a story attacking Bush, you wouldn’t write a piece about how the administration is fighting terrorism by tracking financial assets. Would you suggest that the Journal also is trying to hurt Bush by putting the story on its front page?
The story is newsworthy in that it confirms that the administration is doing what it says (if anything, it’s a pro-Bush piece), as well as because there are privacy and legal issues which ought to be discussed in a public forum. Moreover, the American people have the right to know what their government is doing, and the press has the obligation to report it. The limit of press responsibility starts at the point where the publication of a story poses an imminent threat or vulnerability which outweighs the public’s right to know, such as the location of troops or a diagram for building a nuclear weapon. By any definition, this story fails to meet that criterion.
Another reason the story is newsworthy is this: Since 9/11, the Bush administration has used 9/11 as the justification to expand executive powers far beyond anything in my lifetime, and I’m old enough to remember ten cent Cokes in glass bottles. Much of what they have done has been outside the checks and balances in the Constitution, whether it is the NSA programs, the abandonment of FISA requirements, the signing ceremonies, etc. Now the administration is involved in another surveillance program which is far larger in scope and ambition than any executive branch has done before. Whether it is right or wrong, it is certainly newsworthy to bring to light how the Bush administration is expanding executive powers. How could you not print this?
peter, it’s self-evidently not a pro-Bush piece, as I will perhaps show in a post later…
I don’t think it was written to be a pro-Bush or anti-Bush piece — certainly it had the same substance as the Journal piece, and I don’t recall ever seeing an anti-Bush piece in the Journal — but it plays to the Bush theme of being aggressive on terrorism, so in that sense it could be perceived as supporting the Bush agenda –
“Much of what they have done has been outside the checks and balances in the Constitution, whether it is the NSA programs, the abandonment of FISA requirements, the signing ceremonies, etc. Now the administration is involved in another surveillance program which is far larger in scope and ambition than any executive branch has done before.”
I see the presses role as defending the indivudual who is a victim of this ‘zealousness’. If the press could give me a name of a victim and tell me how their specific rights were taken away, they would be on firmer footing. Their work assumes that there will be a victim-
Just as their work, pre-Iraq war, assumed that there were wmd’s in Iraq.
The Times reported on the putative WMD in Iraq because the government leaked misleading (and classified) information to Judith Miller. It’s OK when the administration leaks to suit its purposes, but evidently it’s not OK if others leak information the government would prefer to keep secret.
As for victims: it’s a little difficult to identify victims when the scope and nature of the plans are secret. As noted above, I don’t think that the existence of victims (if any) is part of the reason why this story is newsworthy and in the public interest. The press’s zealotry (if that’s what it is) is justified for other reasons.
Peter, just look at what the story itself said:
So whether it’s because they’re dumb or sloppy or something else, the program had been working. Your implication is it was ultimately harmless, because no terrorist could ever be so foolish as to get caught in it. Obviously, some have.
Anyone with a familiarity with the banking system knows their transactions could be monitored, just as you say. That doesn’t mean they think all transactions will be monitored, and when you try something a few times on a small scale, and nothing seems to happen, it’s easy to think you’ve found a weakness in the system. That’s probably why prosecutors have worked to hide the origin of their evidence, lest those terrorists find out the perceived weakness was not so weak. But now they all know, and we can thank these newspapers for that.
Let’s take the assertions of government officials trying to justify the program at face value and assume that people were indeed caught through the monitoring of financial transactions. These people were caught after the government repeatedly announced that we will monitor the flow of money. If that didn’t stop them from using the banking system, I don’t see why an article in three US newspapers will also stop them. The question I would ask regards the statement that “now they all know” – they all knew before, but some (apparently) went ahead anyway.
If you can’t see how tripping up some people through the financial system in such a way that they don’t know that’s how they got tripped up in the first place is different from running a big news story saying “Here’s how we got these guys!”, I can only conclude your reflexive, contrarian instincts are playing a bigger role in your thoughts than you might otherwise acknowledge.
Well, perhaps so. However, I don’t find anything wrong with the administration’s surveillance of financial transactions – I think they are doing the right thing here. My reason for writing these posts is that I believe that the Times has done a courageous thing in printing the story in the face of unparalleled vitriol from Republicans and their allies. I also believe that there is a massive hypocrisy in crucifying the Times and ignoring the fact that the Journal printed essentially the same article on the same day. I’m equally upset at the Journal, which pilloried the Times last fall for its reporting on the NSA programs, and now they have done essentially the same thing so they wouldn’t be out-scooped by their rivals (and, unlike the Times, the Journal editorial page has been completely silent about doing so). So it’s not reflexive Bush-bashing – I fully support what they are doing here.