I must be thick today...the writing is hard to understand.
Does this help?
"Left-wing pundits and bloggers have insisted that Keller spiked the story to keep George Bush in office.
Keller, however, has a different take on his decision. He insists that the news would have likely helped Bush rather than hurt him, and the public support for this program after its delayed revelation last December supports that analysis.
John Kerry and the Democrats had castigated Bush for the lack of visible effort to find and track terrorists, and the program's exposure would have forced Kerry to recant and suddenly argue that Bush had been too enthusiastic about fighting terrorism, a tough pirouette to execute in a grueling presidential campaign. "
Me too. I don't understand it at all....
I thnk that the point was, if Keller released the NSA secret actions before the election, then Bush would look stronger to the voters by tracking the terrorists with this secret program. Some Congressional leaders knew about the secret program.
At the time before the election, Kerry was saying that Bush was not doing enough to track the terrorists.
This release would then make Kerry's claim of a "do-nothing" Bush much weaker.
I could be wrong, but I think that this is a take on the story.
Go to the original text at Captain's Quarters and click on the "startling admissions" link. Then it will all make sense.
The Times was getting ready to release the NSA surveillance story befor the '04 election, hoping it would hurt George Bush.
Unfortunately for the Times, Kerry was shooting off his mouth about the Administration's lack of visible effort to find and track terrorists.
If the Times had published the story, Kerry would have had to make an embarassing about face, and say that the administration was doing too much! In essence: "I was for tracking terrorists before I was against it."
So, the Times didn't print it right away, and they lied why they didn't.