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.
Its specific targets CERTAINLY are classified information. The difference, I surmise, between the contested NSA program and FISA is the broad admission that the contested NSA program (policy) includes SOME U.S. people as targets of warrantless surveillance.
We need to get Colleen "No Shower" Rowley on the case! She's the ultimate whistleblower and could've stopped 9/11 if it weren't for Bush and his cronies.
This bears all the characteristics of a government agency that knows it has no arrows in its quiver. If revealing the existence of the NSA surveillance was actually a crime, the White House would never have made that request. Instead, they would have pointed out that the NYT would be violating Title So-and-So, Section So-and-So of the U.S. criminal code -- and threatened to run the newspaper out of business and charge every employee with crimes that could land them in prison for decades.
Well, no. The only place I've even seen this fine distinction in terms of the NY Times is right here on FreeRepublic.
FISA says international calls are fair game, or more narrowly, where one end of the call is "Abdul, out of the USA."
What if the Bush wanted terrorists to keep their guard down?
I'm sure that's the case.
Such a policy disclosure would amount to disclosing methods.
Then the FISA statute itself amounts to disclosing methods, because it sets forth policy boundaries.
At some point, I think it is useful to have some rhetoric available to distinguish the range of acceptable uses (policy) from the way those uses would be accomplished (technology) and any specific intelligence obtained thereby. I inserted the word "policy" in order to facilitate that sort of differentiation. The policy under FISA is to limit warrantless surveillance targeting "United States persons" in a specific way. I hold that saying "there is surveillance outside of the FISA bondary" does not amount to disclosing a method.
If saying "there is surveillance outside of FISA boundaries" amount to a violation of law, color me guilty.
See, e.g., Pentagon Papers which were classified.
The first amendment precludes the government from stopping publication before it happens.
Based on what I've read, I don't think the White House gave any indication that the NYT story involved any illegality whatsoever -- just that it wasn't a good idea to run it.
Using the same standard, the NYT admits it was more than a little hesitant to publish and that it treaded carefully over what it published.
We don't know that for sure. NYT v. US, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), leaves open the possibility that a court will enjoin publication of certan material if Congress provides the courts with the power to issue such injunctions. Meanwhile, holds that case, the criminal penalties relating to publication of state secrets must suffice; and the government is free to criminally prosecute publishers who violate the relevant statutes.
I'm a firm believer in "put your money where your mouth is." The NYT published. If the publication is against the law, let's see the indictment. The investigation required is simple and brief, the article is right there for the prosecutor to read.
If the gov't indicted the NYT, wouldn't the NYT be able to excercize its rights for discovery?
There isn't much to discover. The gravemen of the indictment is to point at what is published, then produce the state secret documents that show the same information (it's already out of the bag) meets the defintion recited in the (also already public) statute.
Oh, is that all?
Oh, is that all?
Yep. Sure, there are ramifications of admitting that what was published was a state secret; but if it is, and the government wants to charge that it is, then it has to admit that it is.
The alternative is to let the publication hang out there with its "state secret" status unknown - but the fact still being out in the public eye.
What do you propose? Convictions without proof?
Wait till day before SOL.
A good stategy if the actor isn't going to compromise something more important in the interim.
In the interim, one could make a deal for lesser charges provided no repeat of behavior.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.