Posted on 06/29/2006 1:54:16 PM PDT by veronica
Dear Bill Keller:
Remember me? We met in the elevator here at The Oregonian recently. Your decision to expose a secret program to track terrorist funding got me to thinking I had better write and apologize. I don't think I was sufficiently deferential on our brief ride together. I treated you like the executive editor of The New York Times who used to work for The Oregonian. I had no idea I was riding with the man who decides what classified programs will be made public during a war on terror. I had no idea the American people had elected you president and commander in chief.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. What's that they say -- sarcasm is anger's ugly cousin? I'm angry, Bill.
I get angry when a few unauthorized individuals take it upon themselves to undermine an anti-terror program that even your own paper deems legal and successful. I get angry when the same people decide to blow the lid on a secret program designed to keep Islamic terrorists from killing Americans en masse.
"The disclosure of this program," President Bush said Monday, "is disgraceful."
Strong words, but not strong enough, Bill.
Your decision was contemptible, but your Sunday letter explaining the Times' decision only undermined your case for disclosure.
"It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press . . .," you wrote. "[T]he people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy. . . . They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish."
Too true, but the issue here is your judgment. It would be one thing if you ran this story because the program was illegal, abusive or feckless. Yet your paper established nothing of the kind. In the end, your patronizing and lame letter offered only press-convention bromides ("a matter of public interest").
"Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff -- but it's the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements," you write, after providing a tutorial on how the government only wants the press to publish the official line and the press believes "citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news."
But this is a false and self-serving choice. The issue is your decision to publish classified information that can only aid our enemies. The founders didn't give the media or unnamed sources a license to expose secret national security operations in wartime. They set up a Congress to pass laws against disclosing state secrets and an executive branch to conduct secret operations so the new nation could actually defend itself from enemies, foreign and domestic.
Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff -- but it's the kind of elementary stuff that can get lost in the heat of strong disagreements. And get more people killed in the United States or Iraq.
Not to worry, you tell us, terrorists already know we track their funding, and disclosure won't undercut the program. (Contradictory claims, but what the heck.) You at the Times know better. You know better than government officials who said disclosing the program's methods and means would jeopardize a successful enterprise. You know better than the 9/11 Commission chairmen who urged you not to run the story. Better than Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were briefed on the program. Better than the Supreme Court, which has held since 1976 that bank records are not constitutionally protected. Better than Congress, which established the administrative subpoenas used in this program.
Maybe you do. But whether you do or not, there's no accountability. If you're wrong and we fail to stop a terror plot and people die because of your story, who's going to know, much less hold you accountable? No, the government will be blamed -- oh, happy day, maybe Bush's White House! -- for not connecting dots or crippling terror networks. The Times might even run the kind of editorial it ran on Sept. 24, 2001. Remember? The one that said "much more is needed" to track terror loot, including "greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities"?
Keep up the good work -- for al-Qaida.
I would like to see Bill Keller do the perp-walk but he is probably going to plead down to a lesser charge. Has his bail been set yet?
The Germans did not even though hundreds of Canadians
and British did.
Yet it would have been obvious, but Churchill was right to have done it.
Keller and his ilk should be tried and electrocuted, yesterday
or the enemy will know that this administration and Congress are just not serious.
Interesting idea. If enough people did, the legal fees would bury the Times. Awwwwwwwww
Are you saying that it was wrong to be angry at the press for revealing this secret program because the likelihood of the government tracing the money should be obvious so what's the harm in revealing the secret, or that it was wrong for the government to make the program secret because the likelihood of the government tracing the money should be obvious so what's the point in making it secret?
Either way, the press knew the program was secret and that it was a violation to reveal it.
-PJ
You are missing the point. I live in Houston. I know conceptually where Corpus Christie is. However, if I want to get there, I would need a map to tell me how.
Terrorists and bad guys may know conceptually that fund transfers are being observed but this article laid it out so all could see the details and showing how certain individuals were caught. So now smart bad guys know what procedures and banks to avoid.
Why publish this if you don't believe it is illegal or not working? Who can this possibly help besides Al Queda operatives?
Mature adults know that just because you can do something doesn't mean you must do it.
bump
The "secret" was in the program, not the likelihood, that the government was tracing the funds. The details, like which banks were involved in which countries, that subpoenas occurred between agencies and such, did not need to be exposed.
-PJ
If nothing of substance was revealed, and everybody knew about everything already, then what was the point of the NYTimes printing the story? On the front page, no less?
If every detail of the cooperation of foreign governments and banks cooperation with the security forces of the US were already known by all terrorism organizations, then why on earth would anyone bother asking the NYTimes not to print it?
If this is such a nothing, if it was the security equivalent of "the sun will come up tomorrow"--what's the big deal? And why are you so upset, if other people are upset with the Times? What are you scolding about? After all, this is a nothing all the way around, and ordinary Americans are exercized over a bit of trivia that was already public knowledge all over the entire world, if you are correct.
I'm sure no other governments or banking entities in foreign countries are bothered by this either. Probably won't affect their cooperation with US security forces in the slightest.
In fact, I'm sure you hope more non-news is printed by the NYTimes just so we can all get used to seeing stuff like that in print. After all, nobody should be concerned, right???
Right?
Right?
By the way, have I bothered to call you an ignorant n00b yet? Consider it done.
Well, the analogy is weak, but just as the map is available on the internet, the workings of the international system for wire transfers is not a state secret. Now if the press revealed exactly how the government traced the funds (e.g., by publishing the algorythms that analyze the data), then something damaging to national security might have been revealed. But a press report that the government has obtained the wire instructions collected by the central transfer agent should not have surprised anyone. Indeed, I would have been very disappointed had the press revealed that the government was not actively engaged in tracing funds transferred by wire.
Because W doesn't want the bad press! That and he's utterly gutless for accuse traitors of treason!
Oh well. Was wondering why Oregon would allow anyone to stand against the MSM. Thanks for letting me know...
Finally. A member of the press speaking the hard truth... Thank you.
Foreign governments and banking institutions are involved in this disclosure. Not just domestic ones.
Complaint filed in 32 countries against U.S. bank data mining AP via OhMy News ^ | 6/28/06 | staff
A civil liberties group on Wednesday asked 32 national governments to block the release of confidential financial records to U.S. authorities as part of American anti-terrorist probes. London-based watchdog Privacy International demanded a halt to the "completely unacceptable" monitoring of millions of transactions as part of a CIA-U.S. Treasury program. The Treasury has acknowledged that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks it has tracked millions of financial transactions handled by the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT. Both SWIFT and the U.S. authorities say records were subpoenaed as part of targeted investigations into suspected terrorist activity. The Belgian government said Wednesday that Washington had only subpoenaed data from SWIFT's U.S. office -- but not its global headquarters outside Brussels. However, in its complaint, Privacy International said "the scale of the operation, involving millions of records, places this disclosure in the realm of a fishing exercise rather than legally authorized investigation." The complaint, sent to regulators in all 25 European Union nations as well as Canada, Australia, Iceland, New Zealand, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Norway and the semiautonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong, asks authorities to “intervene to seek the immediate suspension of the disclosure program pending legal review.'"'All of these countries have the potential to suspend, disrupt, paralyze the system," said the group's director, Simon Davies.
Enough of your propaganda, NOOB.
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