Free Republic

The Book Behind the Bombshell By ROMESH RATNESAR In the abstruse world of espionage, it's not always easy to know when you are in on a secret. So when intelligence sources approached New York Times reporter James Risen in late 2004 with evidence that the Bush Administration was running a covert domestic-spying program, Risen says he "wasn't sure what to believe." As Risen and Times colleague Eric Lichtblau looked into the story, more whistle-blowers came forward, convincing the reporters that the eavesdropping claims were credible. At that point Risen asked a few "very senior" government officials what they knew about...

CRAWFORD, Texas — For six days, President Bush has stayed in nearly complete isolation on his ranch here — just mountain-biking and brush-clearing, the White House insisted daily, and seeing only one visitor, his mother-in-law, Jenna Welch. He never even ventured into this little town of 600, not even to the cheeseburger joint that he often uses as a political tool to show that he is in touch with his neighbors. But on New Year's Day, after a brief stop at an Army hospital in San Antonio to visit wounded soldiers, Bush is scheduled to return to the White House...

Gray Lady Down Trust: The so-called mainstream media in general and The New York Times in particular are waging a relentless campaign undermining the war on terror. The Fourth Estate is beginning to look like a Fifth Column. It's hard to imagine a major American newspaper in 1942 announcing before the Battle of Midway that we had broken the Imperial Japanese code or before D-Day that the Allies had a machine that let us read the Nazis' highest-level transmissions. Yet in the war on terror, that's exactly the kind of information that papers like the Times and The Washington Post,...

WHAT is the proper balance between protecting public safety and promoting public knowledge? Thats a question news organizations face constantly, particularly at a time when American troops are in action overseas. The answer is that we in the media must take both values seriously. Freeing citizens from fear, and from ignorance, are both profound acts of patriotism, but sometimes they are in conflict. The latest example of this conflict comes from the New York Times, where Steve worked for 25 years. Last week the paper disclosed a secret program of government eavesdropping that evaded clear requirements for judicial review. At...

US monitored Muslim sites for radiation: report 5 minutes ago U.S. officials have secretly monitored radiation levels at Muslim sites, including mosques and private homes, since September 11, 2001 as part of a top secret program searching for nuclear bombs, U.S. News and World Report said on Friday. The news magazine said in its online edition that the far-reaching program covered more than a hundred sites in the Washington, D.C., area and at least five other cities. "In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were...

THE ENEMY WITHIN: COMMUNISTS IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING Craig Roberts December 21, 2005 NewsWithViews.com I currently live in a rural Oklahoma county, one that is heavily Democrat Party populated. Almost all of my neighbors, mostly farmers and ranchers, are life-long Democrats. Every one of them are great folks, and more importantly, very patriotic Americans. We seldom discuss politics, but when we do it generally has to do with some “stupid law” that “those people in Washington” come up with that hurts agriculture, the price of beef, the price of fuel, or federal regulations that keep farmers and ranchers from earning a...