Posted on 06/28/2006 11:45:14 PM PDT by RWR8189
According to Tony Snow, the President does not have the authority to investigate or call for an investigation.
Of course, I'm sure the AG would do so if the President let it be known that he wanted the matter investigated.
I suspect all these leaks are being investigated.
The irony of all this is that the NYSlimes, itself, wrote an editorial 2 weeks after 9/11 calling for tracking and confiscating the funds terrorists used. This is the very effort that they, themselves sabotaged by exposing the very operation that they supported a short 5 years ago.
My!! How the Times have changed!!!!
The NYT have changed their story a few times now.
First, the NYT editors originally said said they had to go public because it's the public's right to know about such a secret program.
They have since changed that excuse to the fact that there is no harm in their reporting on this program because everyone knew about it anyway. So which one is it?
Civil rights groups certainly didn't know about it. But they do now and are threatening to sue the financial institutions involved in the EU.
Co-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission Kean said that very few people even in the banking world know about SWIFT and how it works, and almost no one would have had any idea that the US was able to get access to this data.
Kean further said that: "The terrorists didn't know the financial transactions went through this one group. Treasury told me, this was a method of financial tracking that people didn't understand, that nobody knew this was how things were done. Top-notch people in the US didn't even know."
I think you'll get one, but not the other.
A recent newcomer here, but my two cents are that you're 'on the money' with your idea of applying pressure for a leadership change at the Times. We are forced to take some responsibility in times like these. Anger, discussion and debate alone is not going to cut it. Public pressure, and constantly applied, is effective and needed.
I hope we see some concrete steps over the coming days. The pending resolution condemning the NYT will help, and the administration may have more plans than we know. But without everyone getting involved doing what we can, and without sufficient punitive actions against the NYT, I fear the only thing left that would bring the Times and liberals temporarily to their senses would be (God forbid) another terrorist attack. If that happens, the Times may not even survive the public wrath that would surely follow.
I'll keep that list in mind- thanks.
>>It sounds like you're making the NYTimes case for them here. And as far as your 3 reasons for not prosecuting a leak, we do not know that the leaker is not being sought right now--whoever gave the information to the Times may well be prosecuted.<<
The three reasons leaks are sometimes not prosecuted was a historical observation.
But I do feel alone on this issue and its strange. I've certainly held minority opinions on Freep before but this is the first time I've felt alone - in being concerned about the financial records sifting program and the expansion of government power.
>>What I read isn't that the NSA's going through records of everyone, but that they're tracking certain transactions from known accounts. I'm as nervous about it as you are, but the fact is that there isn't a Constitutional reason to object to these actions through FOREIGN banks.<<
That would be enough to change my opinion - if only terrorist suspects were having their records looked at. The figure i keep hearing is "millions of records" though.
>>The banks aren't in the U.S. and these transactions aren't between American banks and the European banks. I fail to see the 'expansion' when the power is exercised outside the U.S. to begin with. The President has already got almost limitless power to take action outside the boundaries of the U.S., except where specifically limited by statute.<<
American banking records are protected by the financial privacy law - if you can get around tht law by outsourcing to a European company - that's a loophole, not the intent.
>>Why not? I'll ask again what Ann Coulter asked: if Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had published the fruits of their spying in the Times, would it be legal? <<
Didn't they sell atomic bomb secrets - no problem with public support for that program. IF (and only if) the program is sifting through millions of American citizens records without following the administrative supoena ruls then it will be unwise to prosecute the paper.
Now, if you are right and I'm wrong about the scope - that only suspected terrorists records are being examined then I will also be wrong about the prosecution - in that case prosecution of the paper will be the smart thing to do - the public totally supports going through the records of people associated with Al Quaeda, as do I.
>And believe me, I'd be with you if I thought or had read they were going through every transaction without regard to any suspicious lead-in. That might be the case with NSA phone pattern tracking raised elsewhere, which I'm against, but that is NOT my understanding of the situation here.<<
I appreciate you posting that part. It sounds like we don't have a disagreement about principle or protecting the country or individual rights - we just think the scope of the program is different.
Great, well thought out post.
This is NOT a prior restraint case. Neither is this a case of gross government misconduct. This is completely legal government action blown open by a press full of anti-American vitriol. This is about the ability of the government to prosecute release of classified information AFTER it is printed, classified information that has no 'public interest' beyond the paper's thin assertion thereof. This isn't the f'in Pentagon Papers, and the Times trying to make it so does not suddenly turn it into a First Amendment case.
Empaneling a grand jury takes no time at all. Grand juries can be used to indict multiple crimes and defendants. If he was interested in prosecuting, it'd have been done the day the article came out. The release of the classified info is all that was necessary to prosecute. The President has let us down as long as treasonous bastards like these walk the streets, because not doing his job encourages more such lawlessness on the part of the presstitutes.
Btw, waving the bloody shirt doesn't work unless the people think you're going to do something about the folks who caused the tragedy, and the administration is waving hard without any intention of solving the problem by prosecuting the miscreants here. You and they think that we'll vote for you in November as a result. But the American public is sick of tough talk and no action. Without prosecution, you're just giving the Rats another talking point.
"We have been allowing treason to persist for far too long, and a lot of damage has been done. Laws against treason, like any laws, must be vigorously and regularly enforced or they become dead letters. We cannot afford to ignore the erosion of a standerd of conduct so essential to our national seccurity, and politics should have nothing to do with it. It is a matter of honoring the Oath of Office."
Well said BUMP!
Well since you have such a high opinion of yourself and seem to think you know better than the President and his team why is it that he's living in the White House and not you?
"Well since you have such a high opinion of yourself and seem to think you know better than the President and his team why is it that he's living in the White House and not you?"
Why is it you feel like you have to make personal implications about my opinion of myself? You asked how I know he's not doing the job--I answered, in a way you evidently cannot refute. Obviously, the person here who is exhibiting true arrogance is you, because since you recognize your ass was handed to you, you feel you must turn away from the argument and to personal insult. Only a person whose personal opinion of themselves is so inappropriately high that they cannot brook objection to their own viewpoint, one who cannot suffer the ignominity of failing to convince others, would be so threatened as to turn to the distracting and insulting tactics of your last post.
Let me know when you have something to say that actually reasonably defends the President's inaction as somehow Constitutionally appropriate, as opposed to dangerously encouraging more such treason.
Just try reading your own posts history, you might learn something about yourself.
Let me know when you have something to say that actually reasonably defends the President's inaction as somehow Constitutionally appropriate, as opposed to dangerously encouraging more such treason.
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