NYTimes & LATimes Feeling The Heat

[Annie]

Not something you see every day. Their reasoning: 'Can't trust the government, they try to hide failures...trust us instead....' Oh yeah, problem here is that the SWIFT program was successful, not a failure. By their reasoning, the government should have been taking out ads on it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/o...&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

July 1, 2006
Op-Ed Contributors
When Do We Publish a Secret?
By DEAN BAQUET, editor, The Los Angeles Times, and BILL KELLER, executive editor, The New York Times

SINCE Sept. 11, 2001, newspaper editors have faced excruciating choices in covering the government's efforts to protect the country from terrorist agents. Each of us has, on a number of occasions, withheld information because we were convinced that publishing it could put lives at risk. On other occasions, each of us has decided to publish classified information over strong objections from our government.

Last week our newspapers disclosed a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions. We did so after appeals from senior administration officials to hold the story. Our reports — like earlier press disclosures of secret measures to combat terrorism — revived an emotional national debate, featuring angry calls of "treason" and proposals that journalists be jailed along with much genuine concern and confusion about the role of the press in times like these.

We are rivals. Our newspapers compete on a hundred fronts every day. We apply the principles of journalism individually as editors of independent newspapers. We agree, however, on some basics about the immense responsibility the press has been given by the inventors of the country....

 

[musicman]

Loose translation: "Bitch, bitch, bitch! What about the Americans we DIDN'T endanger today?"

 

[Adam's Apple]

Yes, I would say they are feeling the heat. We should clip and save this article and Bill Keller's famous letter as these might be the only times in our lifetimes that we will see such obviously "self-defense" articles printed in either the NYT or the LAT.

And I've noticed they don't really do such a hot job of defending themselves. What say you?

 

[Annie]

Yes, I would say they are feeling the heat. We should clip and save this article and Bill Keller's famous letter as these might be the only times in our lifetimes that we will see such obviously "self-defense" articles printed in either the NYT or the LAT.

And I've noticed they don't really do such a hot job of defending themselves. What say you?

As I said, I think they have a logic problem:

Their reasoning: 'Can't trust the government, they try to hide failures...trust us instead....' Oh yeah, problem here is that the SWIFT program was successful, not a failure. By their reasoning, the government should have been taking out ads on it!

 

[Annie]

A decent take, lots of links. Oh yea, I know it's Hugh Hewitt:


http://hughhewitt.com/archives/2006/06/25-week/index.php#a002611

Osama Issues Another Tape: Did He Thank the New York Times? (Bumped and Updated)
by Hugh Hewitt

Both New York Times editor Bill Keller and Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet have tried to explain away their reckless decision of June 23, but the anger is only mounting. Yesterday I asked Larry Kudlow the impact of their decisions to publish classified information that helps terrorists elude capture on the companies' brand and economic health. He replied:

Killed 'em. Killed 'em. You cannot believe the intensity of anti-New York Times feeling. Killed 'em. You know, we sent a guy, Cody Willard, who's a contributor to our program, and we do this little cam thing. He goes out and interviews people on the street, and I had him ask the question about the Times. People are furious. We did a poll, investor class poll on it, and people were just...80/20 against the New York Times.
​

How deep is the public's disgust? So deep that Keller and Baquet have teamed up to issue yet another appeal for understanding.

It is the same old, same old, and still as unpersuasive and even more unresponsive to the arguments against their actions and the evidence that is accumulating that not only did the provide terrorists with crucial information, they have in fact damaged the willingness of other countries to allow the U.S. to monitor Swift.


The only interesting thing about the piece is that the two co-authored it, meaning they decided to cooperate when the damage being done was to themselves, but to compete when the damage was to the national interest.


The disgust will only keep growing, and hopefully when the Senate returns, its resolution will put the blame for this sorry episode in the history of journalism squarely where it belongs --not on the "media," but on two specific newspapers run --I won't say "led"-- by two specific editors.


UPDATE: Three short commentaries from Althouse, Bainbridge and Macguire.

If it was a fight, they'd stop it. The pummeling the not-so-dynamic duo are taking may reveal a reason for the reckless "print everything" strategy: In the old days, the newspapers owned the commentary business. They had no competitors, and the weeklies and monthlies could never catch up with even the most egregious misrepresentations. The papers were beyond reach. No matter what they did, no one could effectively criticize them (i.e. mobilize public opinion against them.)

Now the newspapers --even their biggest guns, the editors-in-chief!-- cannot withstand even a half news cycle before their preposterous posturings are shredded.

It erodes a "news" organization's credibility to be so outclassed so often.

All that newspapers can do to retain a claim for market share is publish secrets that no one else would publish. But this niche of a niche disgusts more than it attracts.

The instant availability of expertise is what has doomed "journalists." They can't defend the indefensible when trios like Althouse/Bainbridge/Macguire saunter up to the keyboard and destroy their pretensions in a few minutes.

If the two editors didn't so richly deserve the scorn, I'd feel bad for them.

Columbia School of Journalism Dean Nick Lemann saw the crisis coming, and he added a program at CSJ to teach "power skills" to journalists so that they could compete with the experts who can quickly see through the many errors even hard working journalists leave in their wake.

But he forgot one key course: Humility. Know what you don't know.

Keller and Baquet don't know counterterrorism. And because they don't, terrorists have been given a gift, and innocents will die.

It. Is. That. Simple.

 

[pegwinn]

ON this issue I guess I am the right wing nutjob. If I were the president and any media published classifed info, I would utterly ruin them. I would have the DOJ on them like white on rice until they were bankrupt and had to sell the presses.

I really am all for freedom of the press. We had embedded reporters. They were alright if a little aloof and self rightous. They also knew that if they compromised anything with our unit that an ass whipping would've ensued. Overall, they were just doing a job and they did it ok.

But they never gave away a position like Geraldo did.

They didn't disclose movements, actions, or counts.

And so they were different than the scum sucking pigs that assisted in someones treason by providing an outlet to the leak. I hope their buildings burn down and thier means of work are destroyed.

If anything happens like this again, I may become annoyed.

 

[Adam's Apple]

"Can't trust the government, they try to hide failures...trust us instead...." (from Kathianne's previous post). Someone should do a poll on that: Who do you trust most to protect the country: the government of the NYT? The results would be a "humble pie" lesson for the NYT.

 

[musicman]

"Can't trust the government, they try to hide failures...trust us instead...." (from Kathianne's previous post). Someone should do a poll on that: Who do you trust most to protect the country: the government of the NYT? The results would be a "humble pie" lesson for the NYT.

LOL - seems I remember DMP posting a parody MSM/DNC, typically loaded "poll question" on the likelihood of civil war in Iraq. Very well done, it was, and right on the mark. Maybe he'll be good enough to help us here. How would the NYT word such a poll question, to make it come out in their favor? I'm looking forward to this!

 

[Annie]

It's getting hotter. Lots of links. Bottom line, the NYTimes is now being 'hit' for what they've told and what they've manufactured to cover what they told. They hold themselves to a very different standard than the government, especially the administration. Like illegal immigration, all but the truly 'looney left' realize when the danger overrides politics and the Times didn't get that right:

July 05, 2006
Secret, Not Secret; Secret, Not Secret

The New York Times undertook to blow what it called, in its headline, the "secret" international terrorist financing tracking program, for reasons that it never has been able to explain. Initially, there was no doubt about the fact that the Times was exposing a secret; reporter Eric Lichtblau used that word to describe the SWIFT program something like twelve times in the body of the Times' article. But when the Times unexpectedly found itself under heavy criticism for damaging national security, it took the nearest port in a storm, and claimed that the SWIFT program wasn't a secret after all. Everyone knew about it! Which, of course, left people scratching their heads over the story's page one, above the fold placement.

It turns out, though, that there was at least one guy who didn't know about the SWIFT program--Eric Lichtblau. In November 2005, as noted this morning by Villainous Company, Lichtblau himself authored an article in the Times titled, "U.S. Lacks Strategy to Curb Terror Funds." In that article, Lichtblau, obviously unaware of the SWIFT program, wrote that progress in identifying sources of terrorist funding had been poor, and that the administration:

is now developing a program to gain access to and track potentially hundreds of millions of international bank transfers into the United States.

But experts in the field say the results have been spotty, with few clear dents in Al Qaeda's ability to move money and finance terrorist attacks.​

Apparently those "experts in the field" didn't know about the SWIFT program either, even though it had been going on for years, as Lichtblau later reported, nor did they evidently know about its role in capturing the most wanted terrorist in Southeast Asia, Hambali.

So much for the "everybody knew about it" defense. Note, too, what it says about the editorial policies of the Times: if the administration allegedly lacks a strategy, it should be criticized for that. If it turns out that it had a strategy all along, and the strategy was a successful one, then the administration should be criticized for keeping it a secret.

If Lichtblau had an ounce of integrity or self-respect, he would resign in disgrace, along with Bill Keller and Pinch Sulzberger.

Via Blog of the Week Patterico's Pontifications.

UPDATE: The report that was the basis for Lichtblau's November 2005 article, by the Government Accountability Office, can be accessed here. The report is mind-numbingly bureaucratic. It is also a bit schizophrenic. At various points, it acknowledges the broad charge that it received from Congress; for example, at pages 1-2, the cover letter addressed to three Senators:

You asked us to address specific U.S. efforts to combat terrorist financing abroad as a follow-up to our previous work on the nature and extent of terrorists’ use of alternative financing mechanisms. In this report, we (1) provide an overview of U.S. government efforts to combat terrorist financing abroad and (2) examine U.S. government efforts to coordinate the delivery of training and technical assistance to vulnerable countries.
​

Point 1 is of course very broad, and would include the SWIFT program if GAO knew about it. In fact, the GAO report takes only an occasional pass at broad issues relating to the government's efforts to track terrorist financing. See, for example, page 13, part of a section titled "U.S. Government Agencies Conduct Intelligence and Law Enforcement Activities Across Borders":

The U.S. strategy to combat terrorist financing abroad includes law enforcement techniques and intelligence operations aimed at identifying criminals and terrorist financiers and their networks across borders in order to disrupt and dismantle their organizations. Such efforts include intelligence gathering, investigations, diplomatic actions, sharing information and evidence, apprehending suspects, criminal prosecutions, asset forfeiture, and other actions designed to identify and disrupt the flow of terrorist financing.​

This is a classically meaningless bureaucratic laundry list. GAO's report gives no indication that its writers knew anything about the SWIFT program, which turned out to be the centerpiece of our efforts to "Conduct intelligence and law enforcement activities across borders." In Appendix II, GAO purports to list the federal government's "Key International Counter-Terrorism Financing and Anti-Money Laundering Efforts." Needless to say, the SWIFT program is not among them. Moreover, GAO actually lists the government's "Key Efforts" in order, by "Entity and Importance." What entity did GAO say was most important to our anti-terrorist financing efforts? SWIFT? No--the United Nations! GAO was not, to put it politely, in the know.

Mostly, GAO's report focused on the second--much narrower and less important--point itemized in the report's cover letter: "U.S. government efforts to coordinate the delivery of training and technical assistance to vulnerable countries." This is where GAO identifies various "turf battles" that allegedly impeded progress. It is interesting that when the State Department was given a chance to review GAO's report in draft form, one of the comments it made was that the report's original, broad title did not accurately describe the narrow focus of the actual report. GAO agreed (see p. 62), and changed the report's title to "TERRORIST FINANCING: Better Strategic Planning Needed to Coordinate U.S. Efforts to Deliver Counter-Terrorism Financing Training and Technical Assistance Abroad," a topic that would not include broader anti-terror financing efforts like the SWIFT program.

Which brings us to Lichtblau's article in the Times. For the most part, he recites the GAO's bureaucratic critique of the programs that aid other countries. But Lichtblau couldn't resist taking these narrow and relatively insignificant critiques and applying them more broadly to what he called "one of the main prongs in [the administration's] attack against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups." And, of course, the Times headline writer didn't focus on the narrow issue of aid to other countries, but instead blared: "U.S. Lacks Strategy to Curb Terror Funds." To be fair, though, Lichtblau's broader indictment is consistent with some of the broader (albeit completely unsubstantiated) language in the GAO report.

But Lichtblau compounded the offense by going outside the GAO report to inform the Times' readers on the government's broader effort to track terrorist financing. His assessment was 100% negative:

The administration has made cutting off money to terrorists one of the main prongs in its attack against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. It has seized tens of millions of dollars in American accounts and assets linked to terrorist groups, prodded other countries to do the same, and is now developing a program to gain access to and track potentially hundreds of millions of international bank transfers into the United States.

But experts in the field say the results have been spotty, with few clear dents in Al Qaeda's ability to move money and finance terrorist attacks. The Congressional report-- a follow-up to a 2003 report that offered a similarly bleak assessment -- buttresses those concerns.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who leads the Senate Finance Committee and was one of the lawmakers who requested the study, said he was disappointed to learn that in an area as critical as countering terrorist financing, ''they haven't gotten very far yet.''​

What can we conclude from this? Several things. First, neither Lichtblau, nor the GAO, nor Lichtblau's "experts" knew anything about the secret SWIFT tracking program. This renders the Times' current defense untenable.

Second, both GAO and Lichtblau were quick to criticize the government's overall anti-terrorist finance efforts when, in fact, they had information on only one minor aspect of those efforts. This is not surprising: the federal bureaucracy and the New York Times' staff both consist overwhelmingly of loyal Democrats.

Third, Lichtblau and his "experts" were ill-informed. Hambali, the most wanted terrorist in Southeast Asia and the architect of the Bali bombing, had been captured, with the aid of the SWIFT program, in August 2003. So readers who relied on the Times and Lichtblau's "experts" for information on how the administration was doing in fighting al Qaeda were misinformed.

Fourth, Lichtblau's current reporting is deeply dishonest. His statements to the effect that everyone knew about the SWIFT program are obviously false; neither he, his "experts" nor the GAO apparently were aware of it. Further, if Lichtblau were a reporter with integrity, his most recent story would have begun with an acknowledgement of his own prior, inaccurate reporting. An appropriate headline might have been: "We had it wrong: Bush administration doing great job in tracking terrorist financing." Don't hold your breath.

Finally, this episode casts light on the broader relationship between the Bush administration and the press. Here, the administration endured unjust, uninformed criticism first from the GAO, then, echoed and amplified, from the press. It must have been tempting, and surely would have been politically helpful, for the administration to leak the existence of the SWIFT program and the fact that its anti-terror financing programs have been successful--have, in fact, contributed to the capture of one of the world's most wanted terrorists. But the administration didn't do that. The administration endured unjust criticism and political damage rather than expose a program that was important to the nation's defense. How sad that Bill Keller and Eric Lichtblau didn't learn from President Bush's example.

I wonder how many similar instances there may be, where the administration has refrained from responding to liberal critics rather than compromise national security. Quite a few, I suspect.
Posted by John at 10:26 AM

 

[Adam's Apple]

Everybody with a brain knows why the NYT chose to publish the story about the SWIFT program, and their lame-brained attempts at trying to explain themselves just makes it all that more obvious. It's clear for anyone with eyes to see that their political hatred outshines their love of country.