House seeking a resolution condemning the NYT
Mary Madigan
Via The Hill:
House Republican leaders are expected to introduce a resolution today condemning The New York Times for publishing a story last week that exposed government monitoring of banking records.Someone is taking this very seriously.The resolution is expected to condemn the leak and publication of classified documents, said one Republican aide with knowledge of the impending legislation.
The resolution comes as Republicans from the president on down condemn media organizations for reporting on the secret government program that tracked financial records overseas through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), an international banking cooperative.
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Still, a step in the right direction.
Today there was this Boston Globe story puzzling over the same thing I have been trying to figure out. What exactly in the NYT story was previously classified or not already in public documents? Admittedly these public documents were not on the front page of the NYT, but can the government really claim that information they placed in public documents is classified?
Since this SWIFT monitoring program apparently violated no US laws, why was it so important to keep it secret? The terrorists certainly know we are trying to trace all their finical transactions. A number of government officials, including the President, have boasted about the good job we are doing tracing terrorist linked money. Even if the terrorists had never heard of SWIFT, they certainly know the US was getting access to the information from most international banks.
The only think I have seen that makes any sense, although I don’t know if it is true, is the suggestion here that while the SWIFT monitoring program violated no US laws, it probably does violate some privacy laws in some European countries. I guess the fear is that by highlighting this program on the front page of the NYT, the administration is afraid that those European countries will try to put a stop to parts of the program. Clearly some officials in those countries already knew about the program, but putting it on the front page of the NYT will make it more difficult for those countries to continue to ignore their own privacy laws, since they can no longer plead ignorance. I have not, however, heard any administration official making this argument.
In the meantime, I agree with Dave. It's time to subpoena these reporters and force them to divulge their sources.
It's also time to revoke the press credentials of the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times in Washington--no more press passes for the White House or the Congress for any reporter associated with these newspapers or the companies that own them.
--Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804. ME 11:33
They have no relevance to this discussion, of course...
I can't imagine, by the way, that Jefferson would consider the revelation of classified information merely "freedom of the press." But I can't prove that.
I agree with mikeca too. But every controversial Constitutional question I'm familiar with has involved a balance of competing interests. This is no different. We know that classification can be the ultimate CYA manuver.
But this isn't one of those cases. I just can't believe the administration would go to all that trouble if keeping the story classified wasn't important. I work in a big organization. You don't get a lot of high level guys doing that that kind of emergency fire drill for nothing. The people who say this wasn't a big deal can't be thinking straight.
I'd also like our Congressmen, Senators and their staff to cancel their subscriptions to the NYT, stop reading it, and then keep explaining this to their columnists, for example, "Hey, I used to read your stuff. I even got some good ideas, on occasion. Not anymore. But with the extra time, I've been reading a lot more X. Boy, those guys are good! Let me know when you switch to a responsible paper, and I'll subscribe, k."
Yours,
Wince
When the Administration has five people calling the NYT and saying, "Please don't run with this, it will destroy one of the ways we track terrorists", guess what? That's five of your people "discussing with" the NYT who do NOT have "concerns".
So check your assumptions, why don't you?
Other than trying to reason it into reality, have you had any luck yet in finding any proof that this program was not classified? Originally, I thought you had some grounds for that claim, since so few news sources were saying it was. Now more and more are saying it was classified.
I know I've been pretty harsh on you in the past. I expect to be so again in the future. But if you can pursue that issue and get a more definitive answer, I'll have a lot of respect for you.
And if you can find definitively that the program wasn't classified -- not "It makes no sense to call it classified," but someone in authority stating on record that it wasn't classified -- then I will state publicly that you're more right on this issue than I am. The leak of classified issue is the thing I'm most upset about. (Being upset that the NY Times is biased is like being upset that the sun rises in the East: fume away, but you can't change it.)
If so, phooey.
Look at what actually happened. Both the NYT and LAT got this story and sat on it for two or three months while they listened to arguments from the Treasure Department and other government officials as to why they should not publish the story and how it would damage the ability to track terrorists and their finances. The NYT and LAT apparently both were unconvinced, and told the government they were going to go ahead and publish the story.
When the government was convinced that the NYT and LAT were going to run the story, they could have gone to court and tried to stop the NYT and LAT from publishing the story. If this story was so damaging that the NYT should be prosecuted for treason for publishing, why on earth did the government not try to block its publication? At minimum the government could have delayed the publication for months.
What did the government do instead of trying to block publication? They went to the WSJ and leaked a government version of the story to the WSJ, so that a more favorable version of the story would appear in the WSJ at the same time as the NYT story. That certainly is going to make it hard for the government to make the case that revealing the existence of this program was extremely damaging to the WOT.
In spite of having made no legal effort to block the publication of this story, and in fact having leaked the story themselves to another newspaper, we now have all these Republican politicians and government officials all repeating the same talking points about how damaging this story was and how the NYT should be prosecuted for treason. Because all the poleticans and right wing talking heads are all repeating the same talking points, people like Tom, who aren’t paying close attention, figure there must be something to it. This is the strength of the Republican Party. They have very good message discipline. They can get lots of politicians and right wing pundits all repeating the same talking points on TV, and that alone will convince people who are not paying close attention that they must be mostly right.
Because it directly led to the capture of high-ranking terrorists. This database provided valuable information about ties between suspected terrorists and groups financing them. It directly led to the capture of Al Qaeda operative Riduan Isamuddin, believed to have masterminded the 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia. It helped identify a US man convicted of helping an Al Qaeda member launder $200,000 through a Pakistani bank.
Now this program will have to be scrapped, and we'll have to spend more of your tax dollars to find something to replace it. And terrorists who might have been caught will go free.
I guess the fear is that by highlighting this program on the front page of the NYT, the administration is afraid that those European countries will try to put a stop to parts of the program.
Yes, because Americans have always been terrified by angry Belgians. They might send us a sharply worded letter.
We're probably going to have to scrap the program anyway.
They may not be serious about this after all. According to Hewitt, the draft resolution doesn't mention the NYT or the LAT at all.
'The Hill' gave the impression that it did. Maybe it was wishful thinking?
I can see arguing the program will be less effective because the terrorist may understand more about how to evade it, but I do not see this argument that the program will have to be stopped. We were already sending out press releases saying what a great job we were doing tracking terrorists finances and that we were freezing terrorist bank accounts, so it would be silly to say the terrorists did not know. They must be aware of which of their bank accounts got frozen. They must already have a good idea which banks will allow them to avoid detection, like Saudi Arabian banks do.
There have been a ton of leaks to the press in the last ten years or so, hell I'd say 20 years, actually longer... anyhow a long time. Why not induce a penalty for the people who leak this information instead of the media outlets that print it? Isn't that the real source of the problem here?
This isn't groundshaking stuff anyhow. The government has been able to monitor banking tranactions for awhile now to track criminals. Along with credit card transactions etc... This isn't breaking news.
And thanks to their own Frankenstein's Monster, Judith Miller knows just how well that works.
Tell that to the top-level terrorists who were caught under this program. Obviously, they didn't know.
How do we find the leakers? Well for starters they can keep an eye on their employees more. It is hard to believe that a government with our resources could be so easily confounded by a couple of flapjaws.
Sorry, I thought the Judith Miller reference would be more clear: Mr. Fitzpatrick, the prosecutor they demanded in expectation that he would jail Karl Rove, but who instead jailed Ms. Miller.
And if it was no big deal, why did it make the front page of the NY Times? I can't believe the Times wastes their front page on things that aren't news! Or maybe, just maybe, the Times saw it as news; and therefore there's some justification for seeing this as news.
I know, I know: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
And yes the times will put it on the front page just like the 11 O' clock news continuously tells us that smoking is bad for us, or that chemical plants are not secure enough. Then they say, "New news about smoking... stay tuned so our sponsors know you watched their commercials.".
They take the same story, dust it off, give it a new coat of paint, and sell people the same crap over and over again. Capitalism at it's finest.
This is just an excuse; blame the media for the inability to keep a secret under wraps. A secret that wasn't a secret at all. So really it's; blame the media for our inability to successfully capture all of the bad guys. Look if anything revealed the plan, it was their friends being captured and the monies fueling the crimes they commit drying up. It's as if the assumption that these terrorists are unable to put 2+2 together is rampant.
Forcing news companies to reveal their sources is like forcing a corperation to destroy their source of fresh product after the first batch has been made. They would protest loudly to this. Also it opens the door for the government to demand people reveal other things that they didn't necessarily have to reveal before. This is never good no matter how well intentioned.
Nah. Check this out. Key grafs: Yours,
Wince