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CAN JOURNALISTS REALLY BE PROSECUTED for publishing national security secrets? In the wake of a series of New York Times stories revealing highly sensitive counterterrorism programs, that question is increasingly the talk of newsrooms across the country, and especially one newsroom located on West 43rd Street in Manhattan.
Last December, in the face of a presidential warning that they would compromise ongoing investigations of al Qaeda, the Times revealed the existence of an ultrasecret terrorist surveillance program of the National Security Agency and provided details of how it operated. Now, once again in the face of a presidential warning, the Times has published a front-page article disclosing a highly classified U.S. intelligence program that successfully penetrated the international bank transactions of al Qaeda terrorists.
Although the editors of the Times act as if prosecution is not a possibility, not everyone concurs. One person who is still mulling the matter over is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Asked in late May about the prospect of prosecuting the Times and others who publish classified information, he by no means ruled it out. "There are some statutes on the books," he said, "which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility."
Unsurprisingly, given what is at stake, even that tentative opinion elicited a fire and brimstone denunciation from the Times. An editorial on May 24 dismissed as "bizarre" the attorney general's "claim that a century-old espionage law could be used to muzzle the press." It has long been understood, added the newspaper, that the "overly broad and little used" Espionage Act of 1917 applies only to government officials and "not to journalists."
But this interpretation, even if it were accurate (which it is not), is entirely beside the point. The attorney general did not mention the 1917 Espionage Act or any other specific law. But if the editors of the paper were to take a look at the U.S. Criminal Code, they would find that they have run afoul not of the Espionage Act but of another law entirely: Section 798 of Title 18, the so-called Comint statute.
Unambiguously taking within its reach the publication of the NSA terrorist surveillance story (though arguably not the Times's more recent terrorist banking story), Section 798 reads, in part:
Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information . . . concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States . . . shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both [emphasis added].
This law, passed by Congress in 1950 as it was considering ways to avert a second Pearl Harbor during the Cold War, has a history that is highly germane to the present conduct of the Times. According to the 1949 Senate report accompanying its passage, the publication in the early 1930s of a book offering a detailed account of U.S. successes in breaking Japanese diplomatic codes inflicted "irreparable harm" on our security.
The Japanese responded to the book's revelations by investing heavily in the construction of more secure codes. Thanks to the ensuing Japanese progress, the report concludes, the United States was unable to "decode the important Japanese military communications in the days immediately leading up to Pearl Harbor." In other words, the aerial armada that devastated our Pacific Fleet had the skies in effect cleared for it by leaks of classified information.
Leaks of communications intelligence secrets pose an equivalent danger today....
READ MORE
Leaks and the Law
The case for prosecuting the New York Times.
by Gabriel Schoenfeld
07/03/2006, Volume 011, Issue 40
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December 7, 1941+64
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO
RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
Dear Concerned Americans,
 Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The context of our concern today--regardless of political affiliation--is Iraq and The War on Terror, but the larger fear is that our democracy may not survive.
We have the requisite machines, power and know-how to defeat the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, but do we have the will?
In particular, do we have the will to identify and defeat the enemy in our midst?
Answerable to no one, heir apparent in her own mind, self-serving in the extreme, Hillary Clinton incarnates this insidious new threat to our survival.
What we decide to do about Missus Clinton will tell us much about what awaits us in these perilous new times.
COMPLETE LETTER
December 7, 1941+64
Mia T
AN OPEN LETTER TO TIM ROBBINS, DAVID GEFFEN, CHRIS MATTHEWS, MAUREEN DOWD + JEANINE PIRRO
RE: a not-so-modest proposal concerning hillary clinton
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2005 |
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Sulzberger quickly explained that the Times was able to endorse clinton by separating clinton's "policies" from "the man."
If we assume that the clintons are the proximate cause of 9/11 --- 
