Posted on 01/04/2006 5:46:15 AM PST by pissant
Hello, 2006. The New York Times kicked off the new year by refusing to answer its own ombudsman's questions about the timing of the newspaper's anonymous illegal leak-dependent National Security Agency monitoring story. Long live transparency and accountability.
Meanwhile, Times reporter James Risen launched his anonymous illegal leak-dependent book, "State of War," with a self-congratulatory appearance on NBC's "Today" show. Risen's leakers, he told Couric, were the opposite of the Valerie Plame case leakers because his people came forward "for the best reasons." How do we know that's true? Because Risen says it is. So there.
Risen then patted himself and his bosses on the back for their "great public service" in publishing the story (never too soon to go Pulitzer Prize-begging) and heaped more praise on his anonymous sources as "truly American patriots." Risen also told Couric that many of his law-breaking sources "came to us because they thought you have to follow the rules and you have to follow the law." Uh-huh.
Asked about the timing of the original story (held a year, then published in the midst of Senate debate over the Patriot Act and a few weeks before the release of his book), Risen said "it wasn't my decision" and refused to "discuss the internal deliberations."
In other words: Keeping secrets to protect counterterrorism operations is an impeachable offense, but keeping secrets to protect the Gray Lady's fanny is an elite media prerogative.
In his book, Risen finds evidence of sinister motives everywhere. This passage on p. 53 is typical:
"The existence of the [NSA surveillance] Program has been kept so secret that senior Bush administration officials have gone to great lengths to hide the origins of the intelligence it gathers. When the NSA finds potentially useful intelligence in the U.S.-based telecommunications switches, it is "laundered" before it is widely distributed to case officers at the CIA or special agents of the FBI, officials said. Reports are said not to identify that the intelligence came from intercepts of U.S.-based telecommunications."
Never mind that such practice, dating back to at least World War II, is routine when sources are classified.
Oblivious to the need to keep classified programs secret, Risen goes on to castigate the Bush administration for not asking Congress to publicly debate the NSA program.
He ends the book with a Cindy Sheehan-esque sermon attacking neoconservatives and the right-wing pundits who supported them, and pays tribute to the heroic "disaffected moderates," including, we presume, his law-breaking sources.
If Risen's good leak/bad leak spin sounds familiar, that's because Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was plying it this weekend on Fox News Sunday. Asked about the Justice Department criminal investigation into the NYT/NSA leaks, Schumer sputtered: "There are differences between felons and whistleblowers, and we ought to wait until the investigation occurs to decide what happened."
Schumer, as I've noted previously, has some nerve pontificating about secrets and disclosures. Guess he puts his former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee staffers, Katie Barge and Lauren Weiner, in the noble "whistleblower" category. (I checked with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C., last week, by the way, and the investigation into Barge and Weiner's involvement in illegally obtaining a credit report on Maryland's Lieutenant Governor Michael S. Steele is still ongoing.)
Contrary to the one-armed Democrat plumbers' wishes, you can't just selectively plug the leaks you don't like and let the other half flood freely. The law regarding disclosures of classified information does not grant an exception based on leakers' motives. See U.S. Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, Section 798. Nope, no Bush Derangement Syndrome exemptions there.
In any case, we'll soon see if and how long Risen is willing to stay in jail to protect his pure and patriotic illegal leakers.
They need to prosecute someone. This is a serious leak that endangers national security where as Plame was a non active employee of the CIA who had already been revealed several times prior to being "leaked". I still haven't figured how you can leak something that isn't secret such as in the case of Plame.
This irony is totally delicious!
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others ...
Sound familiar?
Theis kind of leak needs to be met with executions, not jail time.
And yes, the lefties in this country are the communists of Animal Farm.
Michael Moore will buy 20,000 copies just to get it onto the bestsellers list.
NYT would have printed the plans for the Atomic Bomb in TASS and sheilded the Rosenbergs.
Never mind that such practice, dating back to at least World War II, is routine when sources are classified.
All anyone needs to do is read The Ultra Secret, the history of how the Brits broke the Enigma machine and code, to know how true this is. If the Government were laundering the data NSA obtained in this entirely legal operation, that laundering itself proves that the Government viewed such data, and its source, as absolutely vital for conducting the WOT. Everyone involved in this leak should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Sound familiar?
Yep, sure does, but the direct quote from 1984 is:
"All animals are equal, but the pigs are more equal"
Adding "pigs" actually fits this situation better, don't you think?
What we have here is a conspiracy of career civil servants releasing classified info for partisan purposes.
I just love MM
It is likely that there is no crime involved in the dissemination of information about an NSA program that has been written into U.S. law and has passed Supreme Court review on a number of occasions dating back at least as far as 1979.
Since Clinton, Washington has been a place where it needs to be completely cleaned and rebuilt.
.....Alberto Gonzales, it's time to ear your paycheck......
Indeed. It is also up to the President to press the issue as a law enforcement issue using the existing legal machinery rather than hiding behind a Special counsel.
“In a February 2000 story on CBS' "60 Minutes," correspondent Steve Kroft introduced the piece on the Clinton-era spy program by saying: "If you've made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance that what you said or wrote was captured or screened by the country's largest intelligence agency."
One Echelon operator in Britain told "60 Minutes" that it had even monitored and tape-recorded the conversations of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.”
----All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others ...
Sound familiar?
Yep, sure does, but the direct quote from 1984 is:
"All animals are equal, but the pigs are more equal"
Adding "pigs" actually fits this situation better, don't you think? ----
1984 ???
Never mind the fact that the "anonymous" sources could have been lying in the first place. My point is this: The NYT and James Risen made baseless accusations based upon testimony from "anonymous" sources. Did President Bush "take the bait"?
Now the President (and his "honesty-to-a-fault") is in the uncomfortable situation of defending himself in his use of this controversial operation.
Just an observation ...
I think somebody's forgetting - when Republicans do it, it's called a leak, but when Democrats do it, it's called whistleblowing. That's the nuanced mind at work - something we need more of in the complex world of today. Mr. Ketsup couldn't have said it better.
By your reasoning, it is legal to "leak" any covert operation that is being conducted in accordance with the law. Perhaps it would be illegal to leak details of a program that had not passed legal muster?
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