The Times Is At It Again

Here we go again.

Eric Lichtblau and James Risen of the NY Times have once again chosen to publicly disclose a Bush Administration anti-terrorism program. (free login required)  The two reporters would like, apparently, to substitute their judgement, and that of executive editor Bill Keller, for that of the President and the security agencies, who are actually charged with this duty.

WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

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.

Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said.

The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview on Thursday.

The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records.

There is, seemingly, no problem with this program based on the description of it leading off the story.  These Times reporters are "concerned," though, and so revealed classified information.

The Bush administration has made no secret of its campaign to disrupt terrorist financing, and President Bush, Treasury officials and others have spoken publicly about those efforts. Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said: "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced 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."

If Mssrs. Keller, Lichtblau and Risen were really concerned with national security and acting in the public interest they wouldn't be printing descriptions of classified programs, they'd be revealing the names of the anonymous sources so that they could be prosecuted for giving classified information on a legal, properly supervised and successful program.

On Thursday evening, Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary, said: "Since immediately following 9/11, the American government has taken every legal measure to prevent another attack on our country. One of the most important tools in the fight against terror is our ability to choke off funds for the terrorists."

She added: "We know the terrorists pay attention to our strategy to fight them, and now have another piece of the puzzle of how we are fighting them. We also know they adapt their methods, which increases the challenge to our intelligence and law enforcement officials."

Exactly.

Lots more on this from Captain Ed, Kim Priestap, Expose The Left, Stop The ACLU and Hot Air, among others.

Comments

[Right Valley]

From The Right Valley:
http://www.cliffordcroft.com/rightvalley/index.asp

The New York Times has delighted in revealing confidential information about the methods our security services are using in the war on terror. These disclosures naturally compromise our efforts to fight terrorists by making the terrorists alert as to how we track them, making the terrorist plots harder to discover and increasing the risk that terrorist attacks against the US will be undiscovered. In other words, their disclosures potentially put lives in danger.

But the Times seems to feel that the public's "right to know" outweighs all this. If the public's "right to know" is so strong, I think the public also has a "right to know" more about the New York Times. I think the government should do the following:

o) Tap the phones of all columnists of the New York Times and then print the names of all their sources in their articles (if these sources actually exist). The public has a "right to know" who these anonymous sources are, to better judge the credibility of their statements. This might inhibit people from giving off-the-record information to the times, but hey, the public has a right to know.

o) Print the income, net worth, and credit card and bank account numbers and balances of all editors and reporters for the New York Times. Sure, people could misuse this information, but the public's right to this information is more important.

o) Publish the net worth and distributions from the Sulzberger trust fund. Again, this is private financial information, but the public has a right to know who is funding the Times and where the money is going. And besides, once this disclosure is made, we can find out how much the Sulzberger's are giving to "the poor" every year!

o) Publish the political affiliations and political donations of all reporters and editors of the times, as well as political organizations they belong to. A small invasion of privacy, but that still doesn't trump our "right to know". If this information is displayed in a pictorial format, we can play "Where's Waldo" to find the single Republican!

[LJ Edwards]

What kind of idiotic web site is this? Why don't the contributors bother to search out the FACTS?!
The Wall Street Journal as well as the Los Angeles Times published the SAME information as the New York Times. And YES, as an American citizen I do have a right to know what the hell my government is doing in their so called "war on terror." The Bush administration has been trying to muzzle the MSM for quite some time. We have a little thing called "freedom of the press" in our Constitution which the Bushites would love to eliminate altogether. For further enlightenment go to www.nonesoblind.org, where one can find an intelligent rational discussion of the FACTS of this lawless administration.

[Giacomo]

Hey, do I run into your living room and call you an idiot? I don't think so. Let's keep it civil.

In the first place, I chose to highlight the NY Times story, but I could just as easily say the same things about the LA Times. In fact, someone did. The Wall Street Journal printed it after the administration realized the Times2 would be printing it and gave them the story also as a courtesy.

And no, you don't have a right to know everything your government is doing in the war on terror, if your knowing compromises their ability to do the job you insist they do, protect you from homicidal maniacs.

Show me an instance of the Bush administration "muzzling" the MSM. Come on. They couldn't even stop the NYT from publishing not one but two stories outing programs designed to protect Americans. Some muzzle. And it's not like they are free from criticism, are they?

Further, freedom of the press does not mean the press can publish whatever it wants. Look up the word "libel" in the dictionary if you don't believe me. National security issues are another item that comes to mind. Remember the phrase "loose lips sink ships?"

Finally, I checked out that website briefly. After reading this post I can tell you there are none so blind as the readers over there.

Gore has seriously studied this problem, and he recognizes that this is really something we need to look at, We need to look at it even if we’d rather not, because it is our moral obligation to recognize the consequences of our actions, and our inactions, because our own fate and especially the fate of our descendants hinges on whether we look at this inconvenient truth. (run on sentence and poor punctuation in the original)

Amusing.