Very interesting info about the flip flop of the NYT:One of the most pertinent precedents is a newspaper story that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on June 7, 1942, immediately following the American victory in the battle of Midway in World War II. In a front-page article under the headline, Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea, the Tribune disclosed that the strength and disposition of the Japanese fleet had been well known in American naval circles several days before the battle began. The paper then presented an exact description of the imperial armada, complete with the names of specific Japanese ships and the larger assemblies of vessels to which they were deployed. All of this information was attributed to reliable sources in . . . naval intelligence.I really was under the illusion that FDR had the lid on pretty tight. After all, he was able to keep the lid on the fact that the German U-boats sank 500 merchant vessels off the American coast in the first six months of the war, without losing a single U-boat!The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the Tribune article was that the United States had broken Japanese naval codes and was reading the enemys encrypted communications. Indeed, cracking JN-25, as it was called, had been one of the major Allied triumphs of the Pacific war, laying bare the operational plans of the Japanese Navy almost in real time and bearing fruit not only at Midwaya great turning point of the warbut in immediately previous confrontations, and promising significant advantages in the terrible struggles that still lay ahead. Its exposure, a devastating breach of security, thus threatened to extend the war indefinitely and cost the lives of thousands of American servicemen.
Has the New York Times Violated the Espionage Act?
Commentary Magazine ^ | March 2006 | Gabriel Schoenfeld
Wow. Good post.