Posted on 07/03/2006 10:45:54 AM PDT by airedale
On Bill Bennett's radio show this morning he said that in 1983 we had broken the Iranian's code that they were using to communicate with groups in Lebanon. The Washington Post published that information. As a result the communication ceased (I guess it could have changed code & frequency rather than ceased but Bennett said ceased). Two months latter the Marine Barracks Beirut Lebanon was bombed.
Is this story accurate and does anyone have confirmation that's on the web? This would go nicely with the recent NY Times stories and how responsible the press is.
"This would go nicely with the recent NY Times stories and how treasonous the press is."
There; that's much better.
Had the Washington Post broken the story that we had broken the German Enigma codes or the Japanese Naval cyphers during WWII, there would have been executions.
No, the government shouldn't be able to control what newspapers publish. But the newspapers should be subject to the law after they publish treason.
Do we have a time frame that we can use?? The attack was in '83, two months after the article?? What time frame (month) does that put it in?
And if it's true...what did we do about it?
You already know the answer.
Where can one look up the article?
He was relating to the audience what the late Katherine Graham of the Wash. Post had to say in 1986.
Lexus Nexus should have it IF we can get a time frame.
Here is something related apparently--I had FURLED this-I see it's no longer online, but FURL makes a photocopy, and so I did a cut-n-paste here...
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aide: Reagan Warned Before Beiurt Blast
By CALVIN WOODWARD
The Associated Press
Monday, January 30, 2006; 8:42 PM
WASHINGTON -- A former defense secretary for Ronald Reagan says he implored the president to put Marines serving in Beirut in a safer position before terrorists attacked them in 1983, killing 241 servicemen.
"I was not persuasive enough to persuade the president that the Marines were there on an impossible mission," Caspar Weinberger says in an oral history project capturing the views of former Reagan administration officials.
President Reagan meets with Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, left, and Secretary of State Alexander Haig Monday, August 17, 1981, before the start of a National Security Council meeting at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Weinberger says in an oral history project capturing the views of former Reagan administration officials released the week of Jan. 30, 2006, he implored the president to put Marines serving in Beirut in a safer position before terrorists attacked them in 1983. (AP Photo)
President Reagan meets with Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, left, and Secretary of State Alexander Haig Monday, August 17, 1981, before the start of a National Security Council meeting at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Weinberger says in an oral history project capturing the views of former Reagan administration officials released the week of Jan. 30, 2006, he implored the president to put Marines serving in Beirut in a safer position before terrorists attacked them in 1983. (AP Photo) (AP)
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Recollections of an initial 25 Reagan aides were released this week by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Altogether, scholars interviewed 45 Cabinet members, White House staffers and campaign advisers in a project begun in 2001, when Reagan was secluded with advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease. Reagan died in June 2004 at the age of 93.
Transcripts offer largely admiring portraits by Reagan's chief loyalists and Weinberger is no exception, crediting the president with restoring U.S. power and outfoxing the Soviet Union.
But he said one of his greatest regrets was in failing to overcome the arguments that "'Marines don't cut and run,' and 'We can't leave because we're there'" before the devastating suicide attack on the lightly armed force.
"They had no mission but to sit at the airport, which is just like sitting in a bull's-eye," Weinberger said. "I begged the president at least to pull them back and put them back on their transports as a more defensible position."
On another dark corner of Reagan's presidency, the Iran-Contra affair, former Secretary of State George Shultz said Reagan was so moved by meeting the families of U.S. hostages that officials feared the encounters would cloud his judgment, and began keeping the families at bay.
"The president, it just drove him crazy that there were these hostages in Lebanon," Shultz said in his December 2002 interview. Consequently, the "cockeyed dream" took hold of secretly selling arms to Iranians in return for their leverage in freeing the captives.
Weinberger, who often clashed with Shultz on foreign policy, agreed that Reagan's "idea of trying to get the hostages back overweighed almost everything" and arose from meeting the families. "Those meetings destroyed him, absolutely," he said.
Weinberger said Reagan discovered that his description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" twice got lopped out of drafts of his soon-to-be famous 1983 speech. "The third time he didn't put it in the draft, but he gave the speech with that phrase," Weinberger said.
"And you could hear this gasp from the conventional-wisdom people virtually all over the world."
James Kuhn, Reagan's second-term executive assistant, credited Nancy Reagan with much of her husband's success but said she was hard to please. He described her as a first lady who "could ask questions that there were no answers to."
For example, she would demand details of the weather in whatever place the Reagans were going. "And she'd say: 'Rain. Why is it raining? Why is it raining in Cleveland?'" Kuhn related.
"I'd say, 'Well, I guess there's a low pressure system that came in.'
"'Well, why?'
"I'd think, 'Oh God, I'm getting in deeper here.'"
___
On the Net:
Ronald Reagan oral history: http://www.millercenter.org/programs/poh/reagan/
The Chicago Tribune exposed our knowledge of Japanese codes after the Battle of Midway.
There are some who feel that our losses at the Battle of Santa Cruz were the result of the Japanese changing their ciphers following publication.
I wish Travis McGee was still around. He was in Beirut then.
And once again we learn that the MSM is the Enemy of the State and Killers of our young men and women in uniform along with the entire FREAKING DemonRAT party.
Apparently Honest Abe didn't go far enough when he smacked down the Chicago democrat papers. Perhaps if he'd stretched a few necks, we wouldn't be in this situation today.
A History of Publishing, and Not Publishing, Secrets. Here's the money quote:
KATHARINE GRAHAM, the publisher of The Washington Post who died in 2001, backed her editors through tense battles during the Watergate era. But in a 1986 speech, she warned that the media sometimes made "tragic" mistakes.Her example was the disclosure, after the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut in 1983, that American intelligence was reading coded radio traffic between terrorist plotters in Syria and their overseers in Iran. The communications stopped, and five months later they struck again, destroying the Marine barracks in Beirut and killing 241 Americans.
"This kind of result, albeit unintentional, points up the necessity for full cooperation wherever possible between the media and the authorities," Ms. Graham said.
Espionage is still espionage. Those working for the papers receiving national security secrets are treading into criminal territory. Releasing such illicit informaion IS criminal.
Here it is from Bennett's site:
"Katherine Graham on the Press' Failures in National Security
"Tragically, however, we in the media have made mistakes. You may recall that in April 1983, some 60 people were killed in a bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut. At the time, there was coded radio traffic between Syria, where the operation was being run, and Iran, which was supporting it. Alas, one television network and a newspaper columnist reported that the U.S. government had intercepted the traffic. Shortly thereafter the traffic ceased. This undermined efforts to capture the terrorist leaders and eliminated a source of information about future attacks. Five months later, apparently the same terrorists struck again at the Marine barracks in Beirut; 241 servicemen were killed.
"This kind of result, albeit unintentional, points up the necessity for full cooperation wherever possible between the media and the authorities."
For Graham's entire speach go to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A4577-2001Jul16 It's called: Safeguarding Our Freedoms As We Cover Terrorist Acts 4/20/1986
I heard the story wrong since it wasn't the Washington Post that published the info it was a TV network and another paper (NY Times?).
The speach also includes the following example of responsiblity:
"During the Hanafi Muslim attack that I described earlier there were live television reports that the police were storming a building when, in fact, they were merely bringing in food. Some reporters called in on public phone lines to interview the terrorists inside the building. One interview rekindled the rage of the terrorist leader, who had been on the point of surrender."
It also has this to say: "The danger of manipulation. A second challenge facing the media is how to prevent terrorists from using the media as a platform for their views.
I think we have to admit that terrorist groups receive more attention and make their positions better known because of their acts. Few people had even heard of groups like the Hanafi Muslims or Basque Separatists before they carried out terrorist attacks. ....
...We often think of terrorists as unsophisticated. But many are media savvy. They can and do arrange their activities to maximize media exposure and ensure that the story is presented their way. As one terrorist is supposed to have said to his compatriot: "Don't shoot now. We're not in prime time."
Terrorists have taken the following steps to influence media coverage: arrange for press pools; grant exclusive interviews during which favored reporters are given carefully selected information; hold press conferences in which hostages and others are made available to the press under conditions imposed by the captors; provide videotapes that portray events as the terrorists wish them to be portrayed, and schedule the release of news and other events so that television deadlines can be met."
Gee this never happens now does it (sarcasm).
I like her third challenge. Again it's one that the media appears to have forgotten or in their Bush hatred have chosen to ignore. "The heat of coverage. That brings me to a third issue challenging the media: How can we avoid bringing undue pressure on the government to settle terrorist crises by whatever means, including acceding to the terrorist's demands? "
It's a fine line to tread. We need to defend the nation without gutting the first amendment.
I still state that the NYT was free to publish that article, However, they, their reporters and their sources should now be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Specifically, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 115, § 2381 of the United States Code, Re: Treason.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002381----000-.html
How many journalists would EVER permit the President of the United States to kidnap them, hold them at gunpoint, etc. when granting an "interview"? How many journalists would respect their host and not ask inflammatory or insulting questions?
They have ALREADY surrendered to the supremacy of terrorists.
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