Posted on 09/27/2006 3:08:48 PM PDT by Sergeant Tim
Author's note: Michelle Malkin pointed out the link to this post on Stop the New York Times.org on her blog today
The declassified key finding of the NIE and the editors at the New York Times agree: we must stay in Iraq.
"The current situation will get worse if American forces leave [Iraq]." the editors of the NY Times, 9/27/06, in their editorial The Fine Art of Declassification
"Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight." Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" dated April 2006 Key Judgments
What is missing from those two quotes is context and we obviously parsed what both the Times' editors and the key findings of the declassified NIE said. Yet parsing is exactly what the NY Times did when they provided a forum for "More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts" to disclose "only on condition of anonymity the contents of a classified intelligence document [the NIE cited above]" who "had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts." While only the President and those he designates may reveal classified information, the editors at the Times published their unnamed sources' characterization of the classified NIE. President Bush described it this way yesterday:
"...here we are, coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes."
The Times provides another forum for a political hack this morning, only this time they name and quote him:
"At one level it is unsurprising stuff," said Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia on the intelligence council until last year. "But there is definitely much there that you havent heard the president say," he added, "including the role that Iraq has played" in inspiring disaffected Muslims to join an anti-American jihadist movement.
How does Paul Pillar know "there is definitely much there [in the NIE] that you havent heard the president say" unless he has seen the entire NIE or the parts of it that were not declassified and published yesterday? Which leads us back to what the Times' Mark Mazzetti wrote (or his editors inserted) in the last paragraph of their original report this past Sunday:
More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of D+ to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.
Paul Pillar is one of eight members of the Council on Global Terrorism.
Was Paul Pillar one of those officials or experts who "had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts" and one of the unnamed sources for the Times' Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat? We do not know the answer to that question yet we think the New York Times has provided the FBI with good reason to start their investigation of who leaked the classified NIE with him.
ping!
bump
Thanks Tim....Pillar is not a friend of Bush...and is a "talker"...he and the NYTimes are made for each other.
Arrest him....
Yes, and what really should disturb all Americans is the continual national security leaks that the Times (and Washington Post) do with impunity.
I know it's sometimes hard to trace leakers but we're not even trying. By the way, Michelle Malkin said tonight on TV that Bush and the Justice Dept. are partly to blame for not making so examples out of some of these treacherous leakers.
Severe punishment of just a couple would send a clear message to the rest very quickly!
I want to see a very public prosecution of the traitors!!! I don't care whether they affiliate with Dims, Pubs, Libs, or moonbats (wait, I already said Dims).
It's high time AG Gonzalez makes the MSM an "offer they can't refuse."
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