Free Republic

I grew up during World War II, and remember not only that it consumed our thoughts and our energies, but that it was them or us. Today we are again at war with an enemy more widespread and barbarous than even Hitler's SS or Tojo's Bataan-march officers could ever have imagined, and we have faced before the terrors of suicide bombers (we called them Kamikazes). One big difference I see is the continual exposing of our nation's secrets by the New York Times - fed by liberal holdover leakers in the administration who think they know better than the President...

WASHINGTON, June 22 - Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling May 15, 2006 10:33 AM Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report: A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources. "It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation. ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA...

Is The New York Times about to be indicted? That would be a fair inference from the strange exchanges that have gone back and forth over the past few days between the Justice Department and the editors of the paper. On Sunday, during the ABC news program, "This Week," Attorney General Gonzales was asked if the federal government might prosecute journalists who published classified information. "There are some statutes on the books," he answered, "which . . . would seem to indicate that this is a possibility." He went on to suggest that such prosecutions were implicitly authorized by the...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that...

Back to Story - Help US could prosecute reporters for leaks: Gonzales 18 minutes ago The federal government appears to have the authority to prosecute journalists or newspapers for publishing classified information, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Sunday. The Justice Department is investigating who disclosed the government's secret domestic surveillance program to The New York Times, which broke the story in December. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said told ABC's "This Week," when asked if the government could prosecute...

Nominations are needed tonight for Free Republic's Culture of Treason Media Awards to be presented tomorrow night outside the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C.The Culture of Treason Media Awards, aka the Benedict Arnolds, are to be awarded to those reporters and news outlets whose reporting has undermined the efforts by the United States to fight and win the war on terror.Nominations are needed by 11 p.m. tonight. Voting will start shortly after that and will end at 2:30 p.m. Saturday (tomorrow.)Some nominations to kick things off:Mark Knoller of CBS News for failing to report Cindy Sheehan's remarks calling...

NEW YORK On his national radio program today, William Bennett, the former Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration official and now a CNN commentator, said that three reporters who won Pulitzer Prizes yesterday were not "worthy of an award" but rather "worthy of jail." He identified them as Dana Priest of The Washington Post, who wrote about the CIA's "secret prisons" in Europe, and James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times, who exposed the National Security Agency's domestic (a.k.a. terrorist) spy program. Scott Johnson of the popular Powerline blog also weighed in today, under the heading "The...

March 7, 2006 Expect Journalistic Tongues to Loosen By Jack Kelly Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists. They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Mr. Franklin pled guilty Jan. 20th and was sentenced to more than...

Jane Harmon: NY Times Should be Prosecuted In a stunning break with her party, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday that the New York Times should be prosecuted for damaging national security by revealing the National Security Agency's top secret terrorist surveillance program authorized by President Bush. "If the press was part of the process of delivering classified information, there have to be some limits on press immunity," Harmon told NBC's "Meet the Press." Moderator Tim Russert then pressed: "But if [the NSA leak] came from a whistleblower, should the New York Times reporter be prosecuted?"...

In today's article on the investigation of the leaks underlying the New York Times's December 16 disclosure of the NSA terrorist surveillance program, the Times finally acknowledges its own legal jeopardy: [C]onservatives have attacked the disclosure of classified information as an illegal act, demanding a vigorous investigative effort to find and prosecute whoever disclosed classified information. An upcoming article in Commentary magazine suggests that the newspaper may be prosecuted for violations of the Espionage Act and says, "What The New York Times has done is nothing less than to compromise the centerpiece of our defensive efforts in the war on...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal agents have interviewed officials at several law enforcement and national security agencies in a criminal investigation into The New York Times' disclosure of a U.S. domestic eavesdropping program, the newspaper reported. In a story posted to its Web site to appear in its Sunday editions, The Times said the investigation was focused on circumstances surrounding its disclosure late last year of the highly classified program. Officials and others interviewed by the Times said the investigation seemed to lay the groundwork for a grand jury inquiry and possible criminal charges, the Times said. Many described the...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 — Federal agents have interviewed officials at several of the country's law enforcement and national security agencies in a rapidly expanding criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding a New York Times article published in December that disclosed the existence of a highly classified domestic eavesdropping program, according to government officials. The investigation, which appears to cover the case from 2004, when the newspaper began reporting the story, is being closely coordinated with criminal prosecutors at the Justice Department, the officials said. People who have been interviewed and others in the government who have been briefed on the...

IS THE New York Times a law unto itself? When the Times published its December 16 exposé of the secret National Security Agency electronic surveillance of al Qaeda-related communications, reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau noted that they had granted anonymity to the "nearly a dozen current and former officials" who were the sources for the story. Risen and Lichtblau stated that they had granted these sources anonymity "because of the classified nature of the program." Implicit in the Times's rationale is the recognition that leaks of such classified information are illegal.That recognition is, of course, correct. Section 793 of...

New York Times editors published reporter James Risen’s December account of National Security Agency wiretapping without having seen the manuscript of Mr. Risen’s book on the same subject, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the events. Ever since the appearance of Mr. Risen’s Dec. 16 piece, co-written with Eric Lichtblau, rumor and speculation have surrounded the relationship between the article and Mr. Risen’s book, State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration, which was published early this month. The Drudge Report implied that the paper had timed the wiretapping scoop to promote Mr. Risen’s...

The magazine to the stars, Variety, called the New York Times’ James Risen a “journalistic hero.” In an article about the problems that Risen’s new book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," might pose for the Times, Variety reporter Michael Learmonth began by offering great praise for the author: “After years of entanglement with Judith Miller, the New York Times can celebrate a true journalistic hero in James Risen, the reporter who uncovered the NSA eavesdropping story.” Learmonth continued:

Here's James Risen, the New York Times reporter who coauthored the paper's December 16 story on NSA surveillance of foreign terrorists, flogging his new book on the Today show. He presents an interesting theory of governance. Risen: Well, I–I think that during a period from about 2000–from 9/11 through the beginning of the gulf–the war in Iraq, I think what happened was you–we–the checks and balances that normally keep American foreign policy and national security policy towards the center kind of broke down. And you had more of a radicalization of American foreign policy in which the–the–the career professionals were...

THE LEAK SPEAKS! VOX POPLAR: Good evening. This week the United States is abuzz with tales of 'domestic spying' and the leaking of classified information to the media. At the center of this story is New York Times reporter and author James Risen. Welcome Mr. Risen.JAMES RISEN: It's good to be here. VOX POPLAR: I think the one or two angry loners who read this blog are wondering about the timing of all this. JAMES RISEN: I think the timing's great. VOX POPLAR: Very great for you considering it led to the filibustering of renewal of the Patriot Act,...

Apparently a great many people agree with me that the NY Times again stepped over the line and committed treason when it revealed the NSA program to intercept calls between suspected foreign Al-Qaeda and their accomplices in the United States; also a Rasmussen poll reported that 64% of those surveyed agreed that this surveillance program is necessary and legal. The federal law is 18 U.S.C. § 798, a law that precisely prohibits leaks of the type of classified information disclosed in the story. Subsection (a) of the statute provides: Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available...

NY Times Facing NSA Leak Indictment? The New York Times reporters who broke the Bush "Spygate" story, as well as the paper's top executives who approved its publication, face the very real prospect of criminal indictment by the Bush Justice Department - a lawyer involved in the 1971 Pentagon Papers battle is warning. With a full-blown Justice Department investigation now underway, Harvey Silvergate tells the Boston Phoenix: "A variety of federal statutes, from the Espionage Act on down, give Bush ample means to prosecute the Times reporters who got the scoop, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau." Silvergate represented several parties...