More Calls For Prosecuting the NY Times and Ilk

[rtwngAvngr]

Even more culpable.

Exactly equally as culpable.

 

[Annie]

Exactly equally as culpable.

I believe most civil servants sign something saying they will keep whatever secrets they are given clearance for? I doubt the NY Times has such a thing. However, jailing for sources is fair. I'd also slam the NY Times hard, is I was GW. Make a big splash on how they've endangered the ability to get intel, the #1 weapon needed to bring down the threats.

 

[jillian]

I believe most civil servants sign something saying they will keep whatever secrets they are given clearance for? I doubt the NY Times has such a thing. However, jailing for sources is fair. I'd also slam the NY Times hard, is I was GW. Make a big splash on how they've endangered the ability to get intel, the #1 weapon needed to bring down the threats.

Oh...I dunno. Far more damaging to getting intel is outing an agent (even a former one) and endangering all of her contacts because her husband doesn't say the right stuff

 

[Annie]

Oh...I dunno. Far more damaging to getting intel is outing an agent (even a former one) and endangering all of her contacts because her husband doesn't say the right stuff

What happened with Plame was nada, zip. Did anyone mention to you, Rove is not being indicted?

 

[musicman]

Oh...I dunno. Far more damaging to getting intel is outing an agent (even a former one) and endangering all of her contacts because her husband doesn't say the right stuff

INCOMING TRUTH - STRAWMEN TO THE BRIDGE - DILUTE, DEFLECT, MISDIRECT - DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!

 

[manu1959]

Oh...I dunno. Far more damaging to getting intel is outing an agent (even a former one) and endangering all of her contacts because her husband doesn't say the right stuff

bullshit alert whoop whoop

 

[jillian]

INCOMING TRUTH - STRAWMEN TO THE BRIDGE - DILUTE, DEFLECT, MISDIRECT - DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!

Heh! That made me laugh. :happy2:

Just there's so much whining over the mean ole NYT. It's not to deflect or misdirect....just pointing out a bit of a double standard.

 

[musicman]

Heh! That made me laugh. :happy2:

Just there's so much whining ovger the mean ole NYT. It's not to deflect or misdirect....just pointing out a bit of a double standard.

The "mean ole NYT" just FUCKED all of us, jillian.

 

[jillian]

The "mean ole NYT" just FUCKED all of us, jillian.

Oh poo! Gary Hart was talking about monitoring the bank accounts almost immediately after 9/11. In fact, his committee was intimately involved in that as was John Kerry even prior to the 2004 election. And if even *I* knew about that, so do the terrorists.

 

[Dr Grump]

The "mean ole NYT" just FUCKED all of us, jillian.

They didn't fuck anybody. Even a terrorist with a single brain cell knows all telephone and financial transactions are being monitored. That is why they hide under dummy companies etc. That's why you won't find any telephone account under "Mr Al Queda" or any bank account under the same name. They are arseholes, but they aren't stupid. I for one, when seeing the article, didn't go "Holy shit! I never knew that!!

 

[jillian]

bullshit alert whoop whoop

Pfffffffffffffffffft!

 

[Annie]

The "mean ole NYT" just FUCKED all of us, jillian.

They certainly did:

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/2042

Breaking News: Murtha Begged Keller Not To Expose Terrorist Program

Keller is doing an interview on CNN at 7:05 PM Eastern and has dropped a bomb shell bit of news. There were three people outside the administration who asked the NY Times to not expose the terrorist financial transaction monitoring program. Two of them from the 9-11 Commission where the co-chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Keane. The third person who tried to tell the NY Times they should not expose this important program was Democrat Representative John “Jack” Murtha! That’s right - Mad Murtha himself. Of course, this makes sense in an odd way. Murtha would rather not fight terrorism militarily, and this financial tracking program was a good option to military action.

Keller is obviously on the defensive and feeling a lot of pressure - probably corporate pressure. He extended his comment about the administration rationale was ‘half hearted’, as he said in his open letter (which I fisked here). He said that the specific comment was one of many and secondary to the administrations prime concerns. And the prime concern was lack of support by banks if the program became public and public pressure came on them to not participate. Seems King William was not completely straight forward even in his own letter.

The final question showed how unnerved Keller is. Wolf Blitzer asked him if he was concerned about a possible criminal investigation. Keller admitted he and the NY Times have been told of the possibility by administration officials. He tried to claim a prosecution would be tough against the media. More of his fantasizing I am afraid. When someone is warned they have classified information and not to expose it publically, then they bear full responsibility for doing so against the direction of those charged with protecting that information. Keller violated the law knowingly. And he did so to report a non-story. No laws were broken and no one’s rights were violated. The only thing that happened was that terrorists were stopped and peoples’ lives were saved because these people were caught. Now that has just been made harder by King Willaim and his delusions of granduer.

What does it say when the NY Times go so far over the edge even John Murtha won’t follow? I doubt Keller will survive the summer, the NY Times will need a sacrificial lamb, and it is obvious someone pressured Keller to get out and deal with his anti-American acts.

Posted by AJStrata on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 6:25 pm.

and Keller gets his own letters!

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005443.htm

Mr. Bill Keller, Managing Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Dear Mr. Keller:

The New York Times' decision to disclose the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a robust and classified effort to map terrorist networks through the use of financial data, was irresponsible and harmful to the security of Americans and freedom-loving people worldwide. In choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful counter-terrorism program and alerted terrorists to the methods and sources used to track their money trails.

Your charge that our efforts to convince The New York Times not to publish were "half-hearted" is incorrect and offensive. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Over the past two months, Treasury has engaged in a vigorous dialogue with the Times - from the reporters writing the story to the D.C. Bureau Chief and all the way up to you. It should also be noted that the co-chairmen of the bipartisan 9-11 Commission, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton, met in person or placed calls to the very highest levels of the Times urging the paper not to publish the story. Members of Congress, senior U.S. Government officials and well-respected legal authorities from both sides of the aisle also asked the paper not to publish or supported the legality and validity of the program.

Indeed, I invited you to my office for the explicit purpose of talking you out of publishing this story. And there was nothing "half-hearted" about that effort. I told you about the true value of the program in defeating terrorism and sought to impress upon you the harm that would occur from its disclosure. I stressed that the program is grounded on solid legal footing, had many built-in safeguards, and has been extremely valuable in the war against terror.

Additionally, Treasury Under Secretary Stuart Levey met with the reporters and your senior editors to answer countless questions, laying out the legal framework and diligently outlining the multiple safeguards and protections that are in place.

You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that "terror financiers know" our methods for tracking their funds and have already moved to other methods to send money. The fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works. 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.

Lastly, justifying this disclosure by citing the "public interest" in knowing information about this program means the paper has given itself free license to expose any covert activity that it happens to learn of - even those that are legally grounded, responsibly administered, independently overseen, and highly effective. Indeed, you have done so here.

What you've seemed to overlook is that it is also a matter of public interest that we use all means available - lawfully and responsibly - to help protect the American people from the deadly threats of terrorists. I am deeply disappointed in the New York Times.

Sincerely,

[signed]

John W. Snow, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Treasury

 

[musicman]

They didn't fuck anybody. Even a terrorist with a single brain cell knows all telephone and financial transactions are being monitored. That is why they hide under dummy companies etc. That's why you won't find any telephone account under "Mr Al Queda" or any bank account under the same name. They are arseholes, but they aren't stupid. I for one, when seeing the article, didn't go "Holy shit! I never knew that!!

Oh poo! Gary Hart was talking about monitoring the bank accounts almost immediately after 9/11. In fact, his committee was intimately involved in that as was John Kerry even prior to the 2004 election. And if even *I* knew about that, so do the terrorists.

So, when "dilute, deflect, misdirect" doesn't work, we go straight to "OK, they did it, but it's no big deal"? This is sad, people.

 

[manu1959]

treason by both the nyt and those that leaked the info

 

[musicman]

They certainly did:

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/2042


and Keller gets his own letters!

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005443.htm

Hey, Bill - know what that means? It's your ASS!

 

[Annie]

NRO smacks at both, the Times and the Leakers, with good advice to GW:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDVhYWQzMmQ3YWRlNzFkYjRmZmY4ZTQzZmUwZjJhZjI=

June 26, 2006, 1:34 p.m.

Stop the Leaks

By The Editors

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.interesting, eh Jillian?

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.

 

[musicman]

I've never heard it put more simply or elegantly than this:

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.

Is anyone besides me beginning to get a "Rathergate" feeling on this? I think some heads are fixing to roll. More important, I don't see the NYT recovering from this one anytime soon. This is huge.

Which - of course - would tell anyone with half a brain that these poor bastards have been set up by Karl Rove!

 

[Hobbit]

I've never heard it put more simply or elegantly than this:

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.

Is anyone besides me beginning to get a "Rathergate" feeling on this? I think some heads are fixing to roll. More important, I don't see the NYT recovering from this one anytime soon. This is huge.

Which - of course - would tell anyone with half a brain that these poor bastards have been set up by Karl Rove!

Depends on which half. If you completely exclude the entire left brain (resposible for logic), then it probably would tell somebody with half a brain that very thing.

 

[musicman]

Depends on which half. If you completely exclude the entire left brain (resposible for logic), then it probably would tell somebody with half a brain that very thing.

LOL - my point exactly! It's how so many people can simultaneously believe that GWB is an evil genius and a moron!

 

[jillian]

I've never heard it put more simply or elegantly than this:

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.

Is anyone besides me beginning to get a "Rathergate" feeling on this? I think some heads are fixing to roll. More important, I don't see the NYT recovering from this one anytime soon. This is huge.

Which - of course - would tell anyone with half a brain that these poor bastards have been set up by Karl Rove!

That's an awful lot of "disgruntled" folk, mm. Couldn't possibly be that most of the country genuinely thinks the guy's a screw-up and the intel community is tired of the actions of the admin and then having the admin blame them for those very same screw ups.