I pit the short-sighted self serving twits at the New York Times

The BBQ Pit
301

Wow. Good article.* Although with that type I gave up 2/3 ways through. I’d ike to see someone with the author’s level of understanding write about what was going on up until 9/11, and what changed. I just went to check the Times article, which I provided a link to in the GD thread, but it is no longer “live”. They want money.

But if I recall correctly, back in 2001 the NY Times itself called for stepping up financial surveillance. And their recent article—the one that is at the heart of this—points out that the Bush administration did something in response to 9/11 involving SWIFT that was different than what they were doing prior to 9/11. The more I get into this the more curious I am about what we don’t know about the timeline, effectiveness, etc.

I’ll look around a little, but I don’t think it is out there yet.

*I’m not familiar with the author or the publication, and I have no where near the knowledge or expertise to do anything than take what he says at face value.

302

When your blog masters told you to move the goalposts, I don’t think they expected you to ship them halfway around the world. You’re a lying, dense, scared little twit who would happily sacrifice my freedoms for your piece of mind. It’s impressive that you are actually able to leave your house with all of that fear you have to deal with. You’ll also notice that your earlier defenders have all bailed. It’s because they saw the light when we flashed the high beam in their beady little eyes. I guess I’ll add blind to the list of your shortcomings.

For anyone who just got here, and doesn’t want to read the thread, where we currently stand is:

We’ve proven that the “secret” program was anything but.

We’ve proven that the person who told us about the program was the president, 2 weeks after 9/11.

We’ve demonstrated that even among those who thought this was secret, there was often a double-standard regarding their outrage. If the publication
was “administration-friendly”, it was okay to publish the info.

We’ve demonstrated that SWIFT, which is simply a clearinghouse, is also not a secret organization.

We’ve demonstrated that we can and have done the exact same thing with or without SWIFT’s help, but that SWIFT allows us to get the same data we had previously without having to get it from many sources.

In a nutshell, the NYT did absolutely nothing to be bothered about.

At this point, many of us are just waiting for Evil One to decide to revisit his thread and admit that it wasn’t warranted based on all of the evidence that has been put forward, and in the meantime are toying with the one remaining holdout, who thinks someone somewhere will buy into his shit if only he keeps it up.

303

That’s “peace of mind”, of course, although the error has a nice fit to it also.

304

You know, you’re such a fucking juvenile. You’re a weak little punk who enjoys being part of a crowd. Childish, brazen when there’s a crowd around, and not nearly as bright as you think. Pathetic.

And how the fuck do you imagine I’m moving goalpsots. I’m defining, them, shithead. Now, I understand you don’t want that done becsuse it stops you from playing semantic games and changing what the “secret” in this discussion is.

Ah, searching for more of a crowd, I see. Here’s a lesson you little twit. Appeal to the masses is a fallacy. And, unlike a spiny little shit like you am not concerned about winning a popularity contest. Yes, I come to this issue from a different position than most here. If they can convince me, fine. If I convince them, fine. Based on the amount of unknown info I doubt either side has enough certainties lined up to convince someone of a different bent. But the immature punk that you are believes that a debate is like a little personal war, albeit one you can fight anonymously in your Michael Moore T-shirt, so you seek to demonize when you can’t convince. And that might even be fun if you had the mental weight to back it up, but you don’t. And it’s not even enough that I’m fielding questions from people beside you while you have me as your sole interlocuter, you try to stampede. Can you not sit back and see how weak that makes you look. And that is your MO. You’ve done it before and got your bitch head slapped slapped back into your quiet corner. You’d be a bully if you had any heft. You don’t, so your just a loud-mouth pussy. Now let me address you lies and stupidity.

You haven’t. Now, don’t try to play a little bait and switch. The "secret prgoram at issue is NOT the existence of SWIFT, it is the relationship the administration had with them post-9/11, as opposed to pre/9/11. And I’m genuiniely interested in this so if anyone has knowledge as to that, please share it.

Cite? Please show where the President mentioned using SWIFT. And please explain, if you think that he was using it all along, what the 2001 NY Times article was calling for. And please explain WHAT CHANGED regarding the administration’s tracking finances and using SWIFT pre- and post-9/11. Again, I’ve asked this earlier because I honestly don’t know. But the NY Times article pointed to in the OP, if I remember correctly, implies or states that the government did something different post-9/11 than it was doing pre-9/11.

Ah, “we”. I love it. The weakness, and the attitude you bring to this, revealed. Not anything I’ve argued, but whatever degree of guilt the LA Times and the WSJ might have they are not the ones who broke the story. I think they all made a mistake, but the NY Times made a more fundemental one. For you or anyone to not acknowledge any difference in the role the NY Times played compared to others is dishonest. Now why was the WSJ not treated like the LA Times? I don’t know. If so, and it appears to be so, I think we deserve an answer to that. One beyond your knee-jerk assumption.

(Love the “we” again.) I don’t think anyone claimed the organization itself was secret. Only the particulars of the realtionship it had with the administration post 9/11 was.

So, you’re arguing that we should simlpy be less efficient? Keep in mid, that the NY Times article contianed no allegation of illegality. And there is a lot we do not know regarding the use and usefullness of Swift:

• We don’t know what the new relationship between the administration and SWIFT was post-9/11, as opposed to pre-9/11.

• We do not know the degree to which that new relationship was unkown to terrorist organizations.

• We do not know the degree of their ignorance of it. That is, were they completely ignorant of the new development, fully aware o it and the details, or somewherein between?

• We do not know the role their ignorance of it (whatever the degree) played in the program’s effectiveness.

As I mentioned earlier, we need to see a graph or somehting showing the actual effectiveness of the program (post-911) plotted over time. (No, I didn’t miss the “we”, "we"ak one. “’'We’ak One”, I like that. Hmm, maybe that’ll be you new name.

And the circle closes. (What? No “we”?)

Ah, “us”. You’re back on track. Thanks for not letting me down, “WEak One”.

Now, I still find this issue interesting. And there are a lot of questions I’d like answers to. So if you have some legitimate points to offer, please do so. If not, perhaps others will pick up the slack for you. If you just want to wail, whine, and demonize, you will be wasting your efforts. I just don’t want to waste time with such behavior. so if you come back, please bring your adult game. If you do, I will respond in kind.

305

It’d be nice to be able to find that information in the NYTimes article though, if the leakage/treason charge is to hold any water, wouldn’t it?

I’m beginning to think that what the white house and congressional republicans are bitching about is the Times, and the WSJ’s, printing of sensitive but unclassified information; stuff at the same level as that recent gloomy memo from the embassy in Baghdad..

If that’s the case, then any degradation in the effectiveness of the program is the administration’s own fault for failing to classify the information in the first place.
Of course, I’m not holding my breath waiting for an admission of responsibility from Bush et. al. They’ve adequately demonstrated aren’t into that kind of talk.

306

That cuold very well be the case. At least it would make more sense with the half-heartedness of the administration’s protestations both before and after the leak.

Agreed. If they failed to not safeguard info that needed to be safeguarded, then there is definitley fault there . This should be found out and appropriate steps taken. At the same timethough, while a paper may not be obligated to not sharing information with a SBU, they also have no obligation to share it. As was pointed out in one of the articles over the past few days, papers always make decisions to not publish info. The question here is, if it’s a close call, what is more important, the public’s right to know or national security? I believe that if there is a question, you err on the side of national security. I think this point was also made by C. Matthews on the show I mentioned.

Unfortunately, I think you are wise in not holding yor breath in this regard.

307

http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itdhr/0297/ijde/goodale.htm

Amendment I - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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I think your post focuses this discussion on an important matter. I’ll speak for myself, as I seem to be alone in this discussion. But I think it safe to say that most of what follows would be agreed to by most conservatives and at least some moderates and liberals. Again, I bring up Chris Matthews as a quick example of someone who arrived at the same conclusion I have but has strong liveral credentials.

I comlpetely understand the importance of a free press and that it’s mention in the Constitution makes it sacrosanct. But that does not mean it is absolute. Like the free speech clause which it is attached to, most people would agree that there are limits. For instance, I doubt anyone in this discussion would be of the opinion that we have the right to shout “Fire” in a crowded theater or to publish troop movements.

Where we disagree is in one of two areas, perhaps both. One is what to do if the press’s ability and responsibility to keep an eye on the governement and keep us informed butts up against the President’s responsibility to protect us. I am of the opinion, that when this happens that one should err on the side of security. I understand many here disagree with that. So be it. It is a philosophical and Constitutional question that I doubt will result in either side persuading the other in one discussion.

The other area of disagreement I think is over who gets to decide what is a national security secret and what isn’t. While I understand that this President has made many wary when it comes to claims of secrecy in the interest of national security, the fact remains that he is the President and that the power resides with him. While congress is responsible for declaring war (let’s not get sidetracked), the power to wage war is vested in the President as Commander In Chief. It is an awesome power, and although he has much help in the form of advisors, generals, admirals, and his cabinet, the final decision resides with one person.

For a paper to print what an admistration claims to be a national security secret usurps the power vested only in the President. Aside from it possibly causing direct harm to the country, it is an attack on the Constitution.

Now in this particular case we have a President that some do not trust (me included) and a program with a questionable assertion of secrecy. As I’ve pointed out in my last couple of posts, I do think that questions exist, and I am particularly troubled by what seems to have been a half-hearted attempt to dissuade its publication. But I think that many claims here have been stitched together too quickly. I’ve covered the particulars of my thinking in that regard in my last post or two so I won’t repeat it here.

Based ion the facts as I now understand them, I am still of the opinion that the NY Times did the wrong thing. At the very least I think a full investigation should be held with the focus on finding who leaked the info. If there was truly no leak, that will be revealed. But if there was, we should know about it and make an example of that person. I think most of you would agree that if a national security secret is leaked that that person should be punished.

Coming down on the other side of this issue seems problematic. If you allow a paper to over rule the President in deeming what is a national security secret, you rob him of some of the powers he has in his arsenal to protect us. It is not the press’s job to either help prosecute war or to impede it. Without the close calls going to the President, you have them going against the President, and his war plan.

I understand that such an attitude makes ripe the possibility that a President might just declare everything classified in the interest of national security. And I do think that is a real problem. And that the President is deserving of the suspicion most have of him on this issue. But it seems that we have little choice.

On another day there will be a different President and a different war. And even if it turns out that the press’s decision in this instance was right, or at least, doesn’t cause us harm, there is no guarnatee that we will be so lucky next time.

309

Come on, guys, it’s in the First Amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; a free press being essential to the liberty of a country, that press shall be the final arbiter of what constitutes a risk to national security, overriding the legislative, executive and judicial branches.”

Or something to that effect. :slight_smile:

310

But surely the decision to print either way is a decision on what’s a secturity secret and what isn’t? If a newspaper decides not to print, isn’t that equally taking the decision into their own hands? They’re agreeing with what the President says, but since they aren’t under his command, they are making that decision for themselves.

Maybe a better position to take would be “The press has no right to contradict the President’s decision on what a security secret is” (a fine and defensible position).

311

[QUOTE=Frank Rich’s column]
It’s not only the White House that has a vested political interest in concocting a smoke screen by demonizing the fourth estate as a fifth column. The Democrats were holding their hearing because Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, has for two years been stalling his panel’s promised investigation into how the administration used intelligence before the war. Hoping that we’d forget about that continuing cover-up, Roberts last week made a big show of calling for an investigation into the Swift story’s supposed damage to national security.

Rep. (Peter) King, so eager to label others treasonous, has humiliating headlines of his own to counteract: He’s the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee who has so little clout and bureaucratic aptitude that he couldn’t stop the government led by his own party from stripping New York City, in his home state, of 40 percent of its counterterrorism funding. If there’s another terrorist attack, he may be the last person in New York who should accuse others, as he did The Times on the House floor on Thursday, of having blood “on their hands.”

Such ravings make it hard not to think of the official assault on The Times and The Washington Post over the Pentagon Papers. In 1972, on the first anniversary of the publication of that classified Pentagon history of the Vietnam War, The Times’ managing editor then, A.M. Rosenthal, reminisced in print about the hyperbolic predictions that had been made by the Nixon White House and its supporters: “Codes would be broken. Military security endangered. Foreign governments would be afraid to deal with us. There would be nothing secret left.” None of that happened. What did happen was that Americans learned “how secrecy had become a way of life” for a government whose clandestine policy decisions had fomented a disaster.

The assault on a free press during our own wartime should be recognized for what it is: another desperate ploy by officials trying to hide their own lethal mistakes in the shadows. It’s the antithesis of everything we celebrate with the blazing lights of Independence Day.

“reported as far back as 2003 (in The Washington Post)” Why was there no big hoorah back then?

"the administration itself has talked publicly and repeatedly’ … so how was security destroyed?

“We have reported the story ourselves” … Yes they did. Why no outrage against the Post, only against the Times?
“Once a government starts indicting reporters for publishing stories, there will be no drawing any lines…” … A slippery slope, but with the government’s penchant for classifying information and reclassifing previously “unsensitive” information or covering it up, maybe not so far fetched.

312

I love how the weasels at the (Editorial Department) of the Wall Street Journal try to extricate themselves from this brouhaha.

From the link provided above by SteveG1, Friday’s OPINION=Editorial Dept. column from the Wall Street Journal

and

So, the forked-tongued monster that is the Wall Street Journal has a news department that made the same decision as the NY Times–to publish on the same day the same information. Brilliant.

Actually, I’ve always respected the News Division of The Wall Street Journal–just never appreciated how independent they were from some of the jackasses that are editorial page writers. Until now.

313

This must be a woosh. Whoever is to be the final arbiter of what constitutes a risk to national security would need a full picture of the war effort and all plans. That would mean the the press would be allowed to know all the information behind why the President believes a program or anything else should be kept classified, and that may involve sharing other classified information with them—which, according to your idea, the press would be able to make the call on whather to publish or not. This makes the press a player in the war effort and our national security. It gives the press the power to classify or declassify facts about the war, allowing them to make national security decisions. That is NOT their job. The Constitution vests that power with the President and no one else. He is the Commander In Chief of any war effort.

314

I’m a little confused by this, particularly the first sentence, but I’ll try to repond. If the press decides to do what the President asks, I don’t see that as agreeing with him at all. I see it as them mererly deferriing to the President, deferring to someone who has more information about the war effort than they do. Someone who the Constitution says is the sole person who has the power to make decisions as to how to prosecute a war.

I’m not sure how that differs with what I’ve been saying.

315

[QUOTE=magellan01]
I’m a little confused by this, particularly the first sentence, but I’ll try to repond. If the press decides to do what the President asks, I don’t see that as agreeing with him at all. I see it as them mererly deferriing to the President, deferring to someone who has more information about the war effort than they do. Someone who the Constitution says is the sole person who has the power to make decisions as to how to prosecute a war.
[/quote]
That’s true, but the responsibility for that decision is still on the editor. In a situation where the information is very valuable to the public (say, it will influence their voting decision) yet is designated secret, and the editor chooses not to release it, then he’s equally going to be blamed for making a wrong decision in deferring to the President should the information come out later. While it makes sense to say editors should defer to the policy of the President in these matters, choosing to defer is itself a decision; based on how valuable the information is to the public, how trusted the President is, and to what extent the information being released will do harm. In essence, the editor will himself make a decision as to the importance vs. the secrecy of the information, even before the issue of “this is what the President would like” comes up.

It doesn’t, really. It just strikes me as a better way to state your position, since saying “The press should not decide what is or is not a security secret” suggests automatic, unqualified deferral.

316

[QUOTE=Frank Rich’s column]
It’s not only the White House that has a vested political interest in concocting a smoke screen by demonizing the fourth estate as a fifth column. The Democrats were holding their hearing because Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, has for two years been stalling his panel’s promised investigation into how the administration used intelligence before the war. Hoping that we’d forget about that continuing cover-up, Roberts last week made a big show of calling for an investigation into the Swift story’s supposed damage to national security.
[/QUOTE]

None of this erases the fact that there are things that are classified for good reason and are important to national security. Some of which even the NY Times might agree should be kept secret. But you can’t just divulge everything to them and the rest of the press and have them making the decisons for themselves. How about if all the major papers agree that it is vital to keep something secret and some smaller paper antagonistic to both the war and the President decides to print it? Maybe just to make a name for themselves and get noticed by the Pulitzer committee?

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
Rep. (Peter) King, so eager to label others treasonous, has humiliating headlines of his own to counteract: He’s the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee who has so little clout and bureaucratic aptitude that he couldn’t stop the government led by his own party from stripping New York City, in his home state, of 40 percent of its counterterrorism funding. If there’s another terrorist attack, he may be the last person in New York who should accuse others, as he did The Times on the House floor on Thursday, of having blood “on their hands.”
[/QUOTE]

Even if all this about King is true, it doesn’t mean his opinion on this matter is wrong. Also, the fact that one representative couldn’t sway all the representatives form all the other states to give up funding and give it to his state is not surprising. I’m not sure how his failing effort to do so has anything at all to do with his position on this matter. It seems like an attempt to characterize him as ineffective in his job, a simple ad hominem attack. With a little poisoning the well thrown in for good measure.

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
The assault on a free press during our own wartime should be recognized for what it is: another desperate ploy by officials trying to hide their own lethal mistakes in the shadows. .
[/QUOTE]

That may be the case. It may also be that it will save lives and help the U.S. make real progrees in the war effort, bringing it that much closer to a decision. I don’t see how one can advocate against erring on the side of security.

[QUOTE=Steve G1]

[QUOTE=Frank Rich’s column]
Only a terrorist who couldn’t shoot straight would assume that Swift was not part of the American effort to stalk terrorist transactions; that’s tantamount to assuming that cops would track down license plate numbers without enlisting the Department of Motor Vehicles.
[/QUOTE]

This is one of the unkowns I mentioned. While it is safe to say that the terrorists knew that there were efforts under way to track money, we have no evidence that they new that SWIFT was part of that effort, or the degree to which SWIFT was cooperating with the U.S.

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
But, unfortunately for us, terrorists are not so stupid: it’s been reported as far back as 2003 (in The Washington Post) and as recently as this month (in Ron Suskind’s must-read best seller, “The One Percent Doctrine”) that our enemies long ago took Mr. Bush at his word and abandoned banks for couriers, money brokers, front companies and suitcases stuffed with cash and gold. Tom Brokaw summarized the consensus of terrorism experts last week when he told Chris Matthews of MSNBC: “I don’t know anyone who believes that the terrorist network said, ‘Oh my God, they’re tracing our financial transactions? What a surprise.’ Of course, they knew that they were doing that.”
[/QUOTE]

Again, it goes to one of the unknowns. The admistration has claimed that this program has been fruitful. I heard someone give a few particular examples on TV, but I didn’t write them down. So just how fruitful was it? Did it’s effectiveness, whatever the degreee, plummet at some point? After the publication of the article by the Post, for instance? But, if I recall correctly, that article did not talk about the U.S. relationship with SWIFT. Did the terrorists assume that SWIFT was involved? Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know.

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
“reported as far back as 2003 (in The Washington Post)” Why was there no big hoorah back then?
[/QUOTE]

I assume the administration felt that enough was missing from the article for the program to not be fully compormised. Then again, maybe they said "Fuck, this sucks. But, since it was still somewhat ambiguous and not everything was divulged, a more prudent course of action would be to not make a big deal about it and draw more attention to the article. Again, I don’t know.

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
"the administration itself has talked publicly and repeatedly’ … so how was security destroyed?
[/QUOTE]

As I’ve ponted out, I do not see where they ever shared their involvement with SWIFT. Either in fact, and certainly not in degree.

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
“We have reported the story ourselves” … Yes they did. Why no outrage against the Post, only against the Times?
[/QUOTE]

As to the phrase you quote, as you cited below it, they go on to describe how their decision was different. I think you mean the WSJ. In which case, as I’ve stated, while the LA Times and the WSJ printed the story, they did not break the story. If it was going to be published anyway, the mistake is not as egregious. Now I still do not think any of the papers made the right decision. But the NY Times role is at the heart of the matter. There the ones who found out about the program, through some leak. Which they should have to divulge.

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
“Once a government starts indicting reporters for publishing stories, there will be no drawing any lines…” … A slippery slope, but with the government’s penchant for classifying information and reclassifing previously “unsensitive” information or covering it up, maybe not so far fetched.
[/QUOTE]

I agree. But as I’ve pointed out, if you want the Presiedent ot be able to prosecute a war effectively, and agree that keeping some things classified might truly be in the interest of national security, we have very little choice. Unfortunate? Yes. But not as bad, in my opinion, in not allowing the goverment to classify things as secret in the name of national security, particularly during war time.

Oops, I forgot this:

[QUOTE=SteveG1]
In all of this, Mr. Sulzberger and the Times are reminiscent of a publisher from an earlier era, Colonel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. In the 1930s and into World War II, the Tribune was implacable in its opposition to FDR and his conduct of the war. During the war itself, his newspaper also exposed secrets, including one story after the victory at Midway in 1942 that essentially disclosed that the U.S. had broken Japanese codes. The government considered, but decided against, prosecuting McCormick’s paper under the Espionage Act of 1917.
[/QUOTE]

I am not familiar with this event, but my eye is drawn to the word “essentially”. It’s hard to comment with out more information, but I will say that if they divulged that the code was broken, that the leaker, and others responsible should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and been given the maximum penalty. Again, with the ambiguity causedby the word “essentially”, maybe it was that the Presiden thought that going after the Tribune would focus too much light on the issue.

317

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
That’s true, but the responsibility for that decision is still on the editor. In a situation where the information is very valuable to the public (say, it will influence their voting decision) yet is designated secret, and the editor chooses not to release it, then he’s equally going to be blamed for making a wrong decision in deferring to the President should the information come out later.
[/QUOTE]

Yes. But I do not view his career as being near as important as our national security. And if he defers and is that “decision” later is hown to be unfortunate, he can simpy, and fairly, point to the wrongness of the President’s dicision. Again, if the expectation is to deference, as I think it should be in national security matters, I doubt he will find himself in a bad position for having deferred and put national security first. And in this model, his deference can never be a “wrong” decision", becaue it is not truly a decision. It is a default position.

The bottom line is that national security is the reponsibility of the President and his ability to effectively protect the citizenry may, at times, depend on secrecy. Non-elected (or appoingted, thereby elected indirectly) people should not be able make the call. Now maybe we can play aroud with the idea of having an appointee, maybe even a cabinet position, that helps weigh the tension between the benefit of secrecy and the pubic’s right to know.

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
While it makes sense to say editors should defer to the policy of the President in these matters, choosing to defer is itself a decision; based on how valuable the information is to the public, how trusted the President is, and to what extent the information being released will do harm. In essence, the editor will himself make a decision as to the importance vs. the secrecy of the information, even before the issue of “this is what the President would like” comes up.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, that is why I think deference more like a default position rather than a an active decision. Now, this attitude, if adopted would make it rather easy for it to be abused by the President. But I think that is a short-term problem. If, after the particular program is ended or the threat has passed, the press can actively criticize the President for both the program itself and his penchant for declaring state secrets. That will cause future administrations to be very careful about these decisions.

318

[QUOTE=magellan01]
Yes. But I do not view his career as being near as important as our national security. And if he defers and is that “decision” later is hown to be unfortunate, he can simpy, and fairly, point to the wrongness of the President’s dicision. Again, if the expectation is to deference, as I think it should be in national security matters, I doubt he will find himself in a bad position for having deferred and put national security first. And in this model, his deference can never be a “wrong” decision", becaue it is not truly a decision. It is a default position.
[/quote]
Only from one perspective.

“Editors should defer to the President, unless they have a very good reason not to do so” would have non-publishment as a default position.

“Editors should publish all information about the government, unless they have a very good reason to defer” would have publishing as the default.

It’s equally valid to claim “default position” for either side of the decision; it’s certainly a decision that the editor must take.

The problem of course with that is that anyone in that position would be a government appointee, and as such there’d be little difference between the President’s position on the matter and the appointee. It’s really not workable.

Ok, that would be setting up government on the “honor system”; how can we trust the government to make the programme non-secret after it’s effective time has passed? It would have to be self-reporting, and the honor system just doesn’t work.

Secondly, the problem with “short-term” is that four years is short-term. The electorate could re-elect a President without knowing the truth (or as close to the truth) about them as possible, since no topics set as “secret” may be addressed. In fact, it would give a huge advantage to whatever party is currently in power, since many mistakes (or even successful programs the electorate disagree with) aren’t going to come to light, leading to that party being re-elected again.

319

[QUOTE=Christian Science Monitor]

National security vs. freedom of the press
The media must monitor the powerful, not just serve as their mouthpiece. …
It’s sad, but for some this question has been reduced to just another subargument in the nation’s all-consuming blue- versus red-America political debate. President Bush’s supporters see turncoats in the press reports and his detractors see warriors for truth. But before everyone suits up in his and her red and blue jerseys, they should consider what’s at stake.

First, the media doesn’t treat national security leaks the way they do speculation about cabinet hirings and firings. The New York Times sat on its National Security Agency wiretap story for a year before running it in December. Despite multiple leaks of CIA official Valerie Plame’s name to the press, only one journalist ran with it - and that’s noteworthy. … Second, whatever anyone says, the debate over stopping government leakers is not about politics; it is about government power. Whistle-blowers and the media outlets they ultimately talk to serve a vital role - one that was imagined by the founders of this country. The press was not meant only to be a megaphone for those in power - a means to keep people informed of what they were doing - it was to be a monitor of power. …
Ultimately, the question is, will the nation’s security come at the expense of the nation’s bedrock principles?
[/QUOTE]

I guess so, since “they’re gonna kill us all” and “they hate us for our freedoms”. Better to drop our freedoms in the nearest trashcan, so they won’t hate us anymore(?)
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=97316

[QUOTE=The Nation]

Who Will Stand Up for Freedom of the Press?
The Bush administration’s attempt to demonize the New York Times – a newspaper that gave the administration plenty of aid and comfort when the White House was spinning lies about WMDs in Iraq – will be remembered as one of the ugliest chapters in the history of press freedom in the United States.

The question that will ultimately be asked is not whether the Times did the right thing in revealing to the American people the details of Bush-authorized spying programs–by any measure, the newspaper was right to do what it did and history will provide more than enough vindication.

[/QUOTE]

Generally, whenever there are dirty dealings and the press blows the whistle, they (the press) are vindicated… no matter how super double plus secret the information supposedly was, and they generally are supported by the Supreme Court.

[QUOTE=Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio]

This Administration is angry that the media leaked the story about it snooping into the bank records of millions of Americans. It supporters in Congress want to formally condemn the New York Times. What a bunch of baloney.

"It is about time the media did its job of protecting the public interest. If the media and this Congress had shown some independence from the party line of this Administration, the claims of WMDs would have been dismissed, and fact there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 would have been well established and we would not have gone to war against Iraq.

"A few years ago, a movie, Wag the Dog, told of how a US administration misused its communications power to create phony stories to put the nation into an international conflict. This Administration not only wagged the dog in Iraq, but, with the help of its fabricators at the Rendon and Lincoln groups, it was wagging a whole kennel.
“In a free society the media cannot be a lap dog of any Administration. The First Amendment states, ‘Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech’, except of course, under this Administration.”
[/QUOTE]

He sounds pissed off, doesn’t he? But it’s true. We were fed bullshit for 6, almost 7 years now. I want some real information for a change. I want to go to that dirty reality based world.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/06/28/EDGDOILNBN1.DTL

[QUOTE=San Francisco Chronicle]

THE BUSH administration’s jihad against newspapers that reported on a secret program to monitor the personal-banking records of unsuspecting citizens is more important than the original story. For what the president and his spokesmen are once again asserting is that the prosecution of this ill-defined, open-ended “War on Terror” inevitably trumps basic democratic rights in general and the constitutionally enshrined freedom of the press in particular.

The stakes are very high here. We’ve already been told that we must put up with official lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the unprecedented torture of prisoners of war and a massive electronic-eavesdropping program and other invasions of privacy. Now the target is more basic – the freedom of the press to report on such nefarious government activity.

The argument in defense of this assault on freedom is the familiar refrain of dictators, wannabe and real, who grasp for power at the expense of democracy: We are in a war with an enemy so powerful and devious that we cannot afford the safeguard of transparent and accountable governance. … Freedom of the press, enshrined in our Constitution at a time when our fragile nation was besieged by enemies of the new republic, is not an indulgence to be allowed in safe periods but rather an indispensable tool for keeping ourselves safe. That is just the point that Vice President Dick Cheney, the high priest of excessive secrecy – even in domestic matters, such as refusing to reveal the content of his negotiation with Enron lobbyists in framing the administration’s energy policy – is bent on obscuring. … The administration’s attack on the Times, in fact, is not really about national security, but rather follows a domestic political agenda that requires attacking free media which dare offer criticism. On Monday, following the pattern, Cheney also attacked the Times’ earlier disclosure that the National Security Agency had simply ignored the legal requirement of court warrants in monitoring telephone calls. “I think that is a disgrace,” he said of the Times winning a Pulitzer Prize for the stories.

What is truly a disgrace, though, is an administration that has consistently deceived the public about its intentions and which continues to shamefully exploit post-Sept. 11 fears to ensure its grip on the body politic.
[/QUOTE]

And it IS a grasp for more power. We have all seen just how it is wrapped up in exploiting or generating fear and paranoia and xenophobia. If you can control the press, you control what the people know. If you control what they know, you shape what they think. If you control what they think, you control them. Remember Goebbels and The Theory Of The Big Lie.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/zenger/freespeech.htm

[QUOTE=exploring Constitutional Conflicts]

Values Served by the Protecting of Free Speech

The Discovery of Truth
This value was first suggested by Milton, who first suggested that when truth and falsehood are allowed to freely grapple, truth will win out.

Facilitating Participation by Citizens in Political Decision-Making
It has been suggested that citizens will not make wise and informed choices in elections if candidates and proponents of certain policies are restricted in their ability to communicate positions.

Checking Abuse of Governmental Power
As Watergate, Irangate, Clintongate (and all the other “gates”) demonstrate, freedom of the press enables citizens to learn about abuses of power–and then do something about the abuse at the ballot box, if they feel so moved.

[/QUOTE]

There are 3 "philosophies as to whether the press should be sanctioned, limited, prosecuted etc.

  1. There are those who hold that the freedom of the press is absloute.
  2. There are those who hold that it is a “relative” thing, that must be carefully balanced against national security.
  3. Then there are those who hold that the government should have the final say, when security is involved.

The first is pretty straightforward, and matches James Madison’s two propsed versions of the first amendment.
The second looks like a “reasonable” approach, but then we eventually wander off to “type 3”, because we have to answer who does the weighting and makes the decision. I say it should be the press themselves. If it should be the government, then we have opted for number 3. If we say every instance must be legally decided, then only the trial attorneys will benefit.
If we go for door number 3, then we have censorship and the press becomes nothing more than a propaganda minsistry.

It was not that long ago, there was a man named Richard Nixon. He wa using the FBI to spy on people. Some were dangerous. Some had criticized him but were not dangerous. Some had just pissed him off for sme reason. Eavesdropping, wiretaps, and burglar style break ins were the methods used. He had an “enemy’s list” that kept growing. If it had not been reported by the media, no one would have ever known.
Likewise, if not for the media, we wold have never heard of the Pentagon papers.
Now, we would have never known that there were no WMDs or Nigerian yellow cake. We would not know that the NSA was spying on us. Even the reports of torture, something anyone with any decency should view with horror and disgust, were talked of as being some sort of criminal and treasous “helping the enemy” sort of activity. Where does it end?

I honestly do NOT trust this administration to properly classify anything based on national security. I do trust them to classify documents based on political gain. I also trust them to leak even the most sensitive and damaging information, if it serves their personal interest. How dare they complain about anyone reporting or leaking anything?
After all, it was the government that leaked Plame’s identity to the press. During the Clinton years, it was the specially appointed investigator Kenneth Starr who kept leaking information to the world.

Good leaks, bad leaks.

320

Falsehood: Times article tipped off terrorists to U.S. bank-tracking efforts

Long before June 23, Bush and other administration officials acknowledged that terrorists were increasingly using other methods of transferring money to evade detection. In testimony before Congress in 2004, Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Stuart A. Levey said, “As the formal and informal financial sectors become increasingly inhospitable to financiers of terrorism, we have witnessed an increasing reliance by Al Qaida and terrorist groups on cash couriers. The movement of money via cash couriers is now one of the principal methods that terrorists use to move funds.” In 2002 and 2003, the Congressional Research Service documented terrorists’ increased use of alternative money flows, including “informal value transfer [hawala] systems that leave virtually no paper trail.” Further, various news outlets and independent organizations have noted terrorist organizations’ hesitance to use the international banking system in recent years. Shortly after 9-11, Bush heralded the establishment of a “foreign terrorist asset tracking center at the Department of the Treasury to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks.” On November 7, 2001, then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill announced that the United States, along with an “international coalition,” had begun “to block assets, to seize books, records and evidence, and to follow audit trails to track terrorist cells poised to do violence to our common interests.” In a September 10, 2004, statement, the Treasury Department disclosed “some of the many weapons used against terrorist networks,” which included “following money trails to previously unknown terrorist cells.” Even SWIFT’s cooperation in these efforts was a matter of public knowledge. Indeed, a United Nations working group learned years ago of the Treasury Department’s use of SWIFT and noted the tactic in a December 2002 report. The consortium’s own website notes its “history of cooperating in good faith with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and appropriate international organizations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in their efforts to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities.”
Falsehood: Times’ justification for bank-tracking story opens the door to disclosure of any classified information

Supreme Court precedent suggests that, in contrast with the information published by the Times, the publication of intelligence regarding troop movements or impending military operations would likely be punishable by law and even enjoined. In the 1931 case Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court stated that the government could prevent newspapers and magazines from publishing select matters, including upcoming troop movements in a time of war: “No one would question but that a government might prevent actual obstruction to its recruiting service or the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops.” Decades later, in his concurrence in the 1971 case New York Times v. United States, Justice William Brennan cited this passage from Near to describe the “single, extremely narrow class of cases in which the First Amendment’s ban on prior judicial restraint may be overridden.”
As to the excuse that the government’s reason for spying was to protect us after 9/11, that too is false….

Bloomberg’s Andrew Harris:

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation’s largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.

‘‘The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,’’ plaintiff’s lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ``This undermines that assertion.’’

``The U.S. Department of Justice has stated that AT&T may neither confirm nor deny AT&T’s participation in the alleged NSA program because doing so would cause `exceptionally grave harm to national security’ and would violate both civil and criminal statutes,’’ AT&T spokesman Dave Pacholczyk said in an e-mail.