NYT and State Secrets

[xrayzebra]

How many of you agree with Rep. King. I wholeheartedly agree with him.
I think the New York Times should be brought to task on their efforts
to undermine our Governments attempts to uncover enemies of our
country. They have done irreparable harm and disclosed state secrets.
What they have done borders on espionage.

This is the second time they have done this sort of thing. They will go to
any lengths to attempt to destroy the Bush administration and further
their own left wing agenda. Freedom of the press my foot. They show
only irresponsible behavior.



Rep. King Seeks Charges Against Papers Over Terror Reporting

Monday , June 26, 2006


WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.

Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.

King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher."

"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.

A message left Sunday with Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis was not immediately returned.

King's action was not endorsed by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

"On the basis of the newspaper article, I think it's premature to call for a prosecution of the New York Times, just like I think it's premature to say that the administration is entirely correct," Specter told "Fox News Sunday."

Stories about the money-monitoring program also appeared last week in The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. King said he thought investigators should examine those publications, but that the greater focus should be on The New York Times because the paper in December also disclosed a secret domestic wiretapping program.

He charged that the paper was "more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people."

When the paper chose to publish the story, it quoted the executive editor, Bill Keller, as saying editors had listened closely to the government's arguments for withholding the information, but "remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Treasury officials obtained access to a vast database called Swift — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The Belgium-based database handles financial message traffic from thousands of financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

Democrats and civil libertarians are questioning whether the program violated privacy rights.

The service, which routes more than 11 million messages each day, mostly captures information on wire transfers and other methods of moving money in and out of the United States, but it does not execute those transfers.

The service generally does not detect private, individual transactions in the United States, such as withdrawals from an ATM or bank deposits. It is aimed mostly at international transfers.

Gonzales said last month that he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. He also said the government would 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.

In recent months, journalists have been called into court to testify as part of investigations into leaks, including the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's name.

He said the First Amendment right of a free press should not be absolute when it comes to national security.


Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2006 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
All market data delayed 20 minutes.

[FromWayDowntown]

This is the FISA story all over again. The Times reports about a program that may invade the civil rights and liberties of American citizens. The White House and it's lapdogs go off screaming about how a program they claim is important to national security has been exposed, without any concern whatsoever of the fact that the program might violate established law or constitutional norms.

It's a complex problem that we face, but I'm rather keen on the notion of government respecting the rights of its subjects. As such, I'll always believe that government surveillance is a good thing so long as it does not violate individual rights. With the wiretapping program, it was clear that the law permitted such efforts, but only with certain safeguards. The government wasn't respecting those safeguards and the Times properly reported on that seeming abuse. There are questions here, too, about whether the program in question is legal. I think the American people have the right to know if their government is again violating the law.

I'm sure that there are many who will vehemently disagree with me about this (and perhaps even call me names), but I'm absolutely convinced that we've lost the War on Terror if the prosecution of that war becomes a means for government to disregard long-established civil rights and liberties. What the hell are we fighting for if we're willing to blithely throw those protections away?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

These guys disagree with you, Xray.

http://www.nndb.com/people/806/000055641/hugo-black-sized.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/35/Williamodouglas.jpg/200px-Williamodouglas.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/US_Supreme_Court_Justice_William_Brennan_-_1976_official_portrait.jpg/200px-US_Supreme_Court_Justice_William_Brennan_-_1976_official_portrait.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5d/Thurgood-marshall-2.jpg/200px-Thurgood-marshall-2.jpg

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Also, the administration has pretty much been saying all along that they've used programs to monitor terroist activity.

The NYT isn't publishing anything new or unheard of. All the NYT did was report that this is going on without judicial oversight.

Hell, Swift has a Web site.

http://www.swift.com/

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Nations Cooperate to Stop Terrorist Funding
Fact of the Day

The targeting of terrorist financing continues to play an important role in the war on terror. Freezing assets, terminating cash flows, and following money trails to previously unknown terrorist cells are some of the many weapons used against terrorist networks. The United States has designated 387 individuals and entities as terrorists or terrorist financiers. The global community has frozen more than $142 million in terrorist-related assets. These steps make it harder for terrorists to build networks, recruit and train new members, and carry out attacks.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of the Treasury


http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040910-4.html

[xrayzebra]

Do they also agree that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Cant remember
which Justice said that. But by law, in the United States, if you make a
transaction in the amount of $10,000 it automatically reported to the Government.
That is within the U.S. Transactions outside the U.S. are not convered by the
Constitution, unless there have been some changes I am not aware of.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

The NYT's report (and just in case you hadn't read it... Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)) says the government is using broader administrative subpoenas instead of specific, individually, court-approved subpoenas.

How exactly is that a "clear and present danger" (as defined by the SCOTUS in Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47)?



"The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Do they also agree that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Cant remember
which Justice said that. But by law, in the United States, if you make a
transaction in the amount of $10,000 it automatically reported to the Government.
That is within the U.S. Transactions outside the U.S. are not convered by the
Constitution, unless there have been some changes I am not aware of.

True, but had the NYT reported that...you could call them lazy (since it's already public knowledge), but you couldn't call it treason and restrict a liberty specifically granted to the people in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

[FromWayDowntown]

Do they also agree that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Cant remember
which Justice said that. But by law, in the United States, if you make a
transaction in the amount of $10,000 it automatically reported to the Government.
That is within the U.S. Transactions outside the U.S. are not convered by the
Constitution, unless there have been some changes I am not aware of.

Those are cash transactions that must be reported to the government by Currency Transaction Reports. It would certainly seem that this program goes beyond CTR's and seeks to dig out details concerning transactions that wouldn't normally be reported. That, to me, raises some pretty significant 4th and 5th Amendment questions.

The Constitution may not be a suicide pact, but it's also not some document that should be disregarded at any purported justification for invading individual rights. Again, what good is our War if we're so willing to subvert our own way of life to fight it?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Re: "Suicide Pact"



The Genesis and History of the "Suicide Pact" Slogan

Justice Robert Jackson was the first to use the phrase "suicide pact" - in his dissent in the 1949 case of Terminiello v. Chicago. His initial usage was also, to my knowledge, the first and only anti-civil liberties judicial usage of the maxim.

In Terminiello, the Supreme Court upheld the free speech rights of a right-wing hatemonger. In Jackson's dissent, he suggested that the inflammatory speech was likely to produce a violent reaction from the mob outside. Jackson had just been a prosecutor in Nuremberg. And he was fearful that the kind of fascistic acts he had just prosecuted might become commonplace in the United States. He worried about an American version of the Weimar complex: If we do not crack down on Hitlerian types, he thought, our fate may be like that of Germany in 1933.

In the 1960's Justice Arthur Goldberg revived the "suicide pact" maxim in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez and Aptheker v. Secretary of State, but for a very different purpose. Goldberg protected the rights of Communists to travel, and of wartime military deserters against loss of their citizenship, at the same time that he gave verbal deference to the tough-minded view that we would never commit national suicide. The result was pro-civil liberties, and the idea was that the initial Constitutional design was wise, and should be followed.

Even since then, the standard usage of the phrase has been to guard the judge's flank against critics anxious about the stability of American democracy - not to kowtow to such critics by sacrificing liberty for security. The phrase is used to explain that Constitutional rights can be upheld without having security catastrophically suffer.

Recent Judicial Uses of the "Suicide Pact" Slogan Are Also Pro-Civil Liberties

Column continues below ↓ This pattern of decrying-suicide-pacts-while-protecting-liberty was recently confirmed again. Late last year, federal district judge Harold Baer used the slogan when he declared unconstitutional a New York prohibition against wearing masks in public places, in the case of Church of the American Knights of the KKK v. Kerik.

The statute at issue was aimed at suppressing demonstrations by the Ku Klux Klan. (Indeed, it was a successor organization to the Klan that objected to the restriction.) Judge Baer held that the statute violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

He bowed in ritual obeisance to the "suicide-pact" slogan. But he also added this graceful conclusion: "[T]he rational and measured exercise of jurisprudence must be zealously sustained even in time of war, including the war on terrorism."

Compromises for the sake of security might resonate favorably with pundits in the media, but they will not get the same hearing in Judge Baer's courtroom. And his decision shows just how far the suicide pact slogan has come - and how neatly its use has been inverted - since Terminiello. One can imagine Justice Jackson dissenting to Baer's decision too, had he had the opportunity.

Consider, also, the 1999 opinion in Edmond v. Goldsmith by Richard Posner - the prolific author who doubles as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago. There, Judge Posner declared an Indiana "routine roadblock" provision unconstitutional. As he explained, it violated the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The case was simple: The precedents forbade routine searches aimed at producing evidence of criminal activity, and the "routine roadblock" statute plainly fit the bill. However efficient or reasonable it might be for the Indiana police to conduct their routine roadblock searches, past decisions held that this tactic, under the Constitution, was off limits.

Posner was quick to add that in a real emergency, public safety might require the opposite decision: "The Constitution is not a suicide pact," he emphasized. But he also added, "no such urgency has been shown here." Like Judge Baer, Posner subscribes to the judicial inversion of the phrase - using it as a sop to those with security fears, rather than as a reason to curtail liberty.


http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20030107_fletcher.html


George P. Fletcher is Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at the Columbia Law School and the author, most recently, of Romantics at War: Glory and Guilt in the Age of Terrorism.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

And how do you define "national security?"

The problem has been that the government has been using the term rather loosely instead of a more strict basis.

And if the NYT was so deadset on exposing "State Secrets," why would they consult the administration prior to not one, but two stories, eventual publication?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

And since we're talking leaks and prosecution of journalists...

How is it that the two reporters from the SF Chronicle might face longer jail times than those charged (and pled out) in the BALCO case?

If the admin was so concerned about preventing leaks to journalists, they wouldn't have published a PDF copy of the case with information about the possible leak in the case, redact it, but leave the redacting open for anybody with that computer program fighting the fight for the terrorists: Microsoft Word.

[boutons_]

June 25, 2006

Letter From Bill Keller on The Times's Banking Records Report

The following is a letter Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, has sent to readers who have written to him about The Times's publication of information about the government's examination of international banking records:

I don't always have time to answer my mail as fully as etiquette demands, but our story about the government's surveillance of international banking records has generated some questions and concerns that I take very seriously. As the editor responsible for the difficult decision to publish that story, I'd like to offer a personal response.

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting the threat of terror.

It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.

The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly. The responsibility of it weighs most heavily on us when an issue involves national security, and especially national security in times of war. I've only participated in a few such cases, but they are among the most agonizing decisions I've faced as an editor.

The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy. Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration's claims about the Iraqi threat. The question we start with as journalists is not "why publish?" but "why would we withhold information of significance?" We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so.

Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff — but it's the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements.

Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress. Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight. We believe The Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them.

Our decision to publish the story of the Administration's penetration of the international banking system followed weeks of discussion between Administration officials and The Times, not only the reporters who wrote the story but senior editors, including me. We listened patiently and attentively. We discussed the matter extensively within the paper. We spoke to others — national security experts not serving in the Administration — for their counsel. It's worth mentioning that the reporters and editors responsible for this story live in two places — New York and the Washington area — that are tragically established targets for terrorist violence. The question of preventing terror is not abstract to us.

The Administration case for holding the story had two parts, roughly speaking: first that the program is good — that it is legal, that there are safeguards against abuse of privacy, and that it has been valuable in deterring and prosecuting terrorists. And, second, that exposing this program would put its usefulness at risk.

It's not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don't know about it.

We weighed most heavily the Administration's concern that describing this program would endanger it. The central argument we heard from officials at senior levels was that international bankers would stop cooperating, would resist, if this program saw the light of day. We don't know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling. First, the bankers provide this information under the authority of a subpoena, which imposes a legal obligation. Second, if, as the Administration says, the program is legal, highly effective, and well protected against invasion of privacy, the bankers should have little trouble defending it. The Bush Administration and America itself may be unpopular in Europe these days, but policing the byways of international terror seems to have pretty strong support everywhere. And while it is too early to tell, the initial signs are that our article is not generating a banker backlash against the program.

By the way, we heard similar arguments against publishing last year's reporting on the NSA eavesdropping program. We were told then that our article would mean the death of that program. We were told that telecommunications companies would — if the public knew what they were doing — withdraw their cooperation. To the best of my knowledge, that has not happened. While our coverage has led to much public debate and new congressional oversight, to the best of our knowledge the eavesdropping program continues to operate much as it did before. Members of Congress have proposed to amend the law to put the eavesdropping program on a firm legal footing. And the man who presided over it and defended it was handily confirmed for promotion as the head of the CIA.

A secondary argument against publishing the banking story was that publication would lead terrorists to change tactics. But that argument was made in a half-hearted way. It has been widely reported — indeed, trumpeted by the Treasury Department — that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash.

I can appreciate that other conscientious people could have gone through the process I've outlined above and come to a different conclusion. But nobody should think that we made this decision casually, with any animus toward the current Administration, or without fully weighing the issues.

Thanks for writing.

Regards,
Bill Keller

=======================

The Constitution itself is a paranoid document that doesn't trust unchecked government. Knowing lies and incompetence of this Repug administration, the partisan viciousness of a Karl Rove (anybody doubt he and the NRC are getting phone data and banking data from these Repug "national security" programs?), why would anyone ever trust, above all, these motherfuckers.

NEVER EVER trust any government, esp now that govt politics is vicisouly partisan and cut-throat and Congress is corrupted to the core.

btw, let's not forget that the Repug administration is 100% responsible for not stopping the WTC attack, in spite of warnings all through the summer of 2001.

==============

btw, DHS says today's alert level is ELEVATED, so please defend yourself accordingly.

http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme=29

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

So is the program ending since the NYT published or has the gov't informed countries that it will continue?

End? Continue? It can't be both.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Terrorist-Financing.html?hp&ex=1151380800&en=8ab56fcf615d88ee&ei=5094&partner=homepage



Bush Condemns Terror Finance Report in Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:37 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday sharply condemned the disclosure of a program to secretly monitor the financial transactions of suspected terrorists. ''The disclosure of this program is disgraceful,'' he said.

''For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America,'' Bush said, jabbing his finger for emphasis. He said the disclosure of the program ''makes it harder to win this war on terror.''

The program has been going on since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It was disclosed last week by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.

Using broad government subpoenas, the program allows U.S. counterterrorism analysts to obtain financial information from a vast database maintained by a company based in Belgium. It routes about 11 million financial transactions daily among 7,800 banks and other financial institutions in 200 countries.

''Congress was briefed and what we did was fully authorized under the law,'' Bush said, talking with reporters in the Roosevelt Room after meeting with groups that support U.S. troops in Iraq.

''We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America,'' the president said. ''What we were doing was the right thing.''

''The American people expect this government to protect our constitutional liberties and at the same time make sure we understand what the terrorists are trying to do,'' Bush said. He said that to figure out what terrorists plan to do, ''You try to follow their money. And that's exactly what we're doing and the fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror.''

Meanwhile, the administration said it has informed major allies that the secret program has adequate privacy safeguards and will continue.

Tony Fratto, chief spokesman for the Treasury Department, said the contacts were made following the disclosure. ''We have made a point of reaching out to our partners in the international community to make sure they understand our views and the safeguards we have in place,'' he said. ''We want to make sure it was clear to our partners that we value this program.''

In advance of Bush's remarks, the New York Times defended itself against criticism for disclosing the program.

In a note on the paper's Web site Sunday, Executive Editor Bill Keller said the Times spent weeks discussing with Bush administration officials whether to publish the report.

He said part of the government's argument was that the anti-terror program would no longer be effective if it became known, because international bankers would be unwilling to cooperate and terrorists would find other ways to move money.

''We don't know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling,'' Keller said, pointing out that the banks were under subpoena to provide the information. ''The Bush Administration and America itself may be unpopular in Europe these days, but policing the byways of international terror seems to have pretty strong support everywhere.''

The note to readers was published the same day Rep. Peter King urged the Bush administration to prosecute the paper.

''We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous,'' the New York Republican told The Associated Press.

Keller said the administration also argued ''in a halfhearted way'' that disclosure of the program ''would lead terrorists to change tactics.''

But Keller wrote that the Treasury Department has ''trumpeted ... that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash.''

[boutons_]

dubya says whatever dickhead and rove tell him to say. The man's alcohol/drug-addled brain hasn't had an original idea his entire life, especially not a creative idea.

[xrayzebra]

Money transferred from Lison to London to Germany is protected by the
Constitution. How is that?

You bunch of left leaning wingnuts need to get a life. You want you families
to be carried out in body bags. Well okay, you protected your privacy. Check
you damn credit report and see how much privacy you have. Its free to check,
once a year. Just go to:

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

Now come back and tell me all about your privacy.

[ChumpDumper]

Can I check yours?

[xrayzebra]

^^It would take much to. Just have certain information and pay a fee.

[ChumpDumper]

"certain information"

Go head and check mine since it's so easy.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Money transferred from Lison to London to Germany is protected by the
Constitution. How is that?

You bunch of left leaning wingnuts need to get a life. You want you families
to be carried out in body bags. Well okay, you protected your privacy. Check
you damn credit report and see how much privacy you have. Its free to check,
once a year. Just go to:

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

Now come back and tell me all about your privacy.

In keeping with check on my credit, I'm already well-aware of that.

Xray, I'm not going to toss out bait at you trying to get you to start ripping me and you shouldn't either, it brings your points down.

Civilized debate is all I'm asking for.

You say you agree with the thought that the NYT and other journalists who publish things like this are treasonous. You are believing that I am a traitor to my country, to the country which my grandfather fought for, my step-dad fought for and his dad and brother fought for.

The newspaper that currently employs me is a member of The Associated Press, which picked up the story from the NYT.

I don't believe I, nor FWD, nor the NYT/LA Times/Washington Post said that the gov't/administration shouldn't attempt to track down terrorists and prevent attacks.

What we are asking for is that our country and its elected representatives follow the law.



"The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."


What has the NYT done other than say that the gov't is running this program with broad subpoenas rather than individual ones approved by the court?

This program was known about before the report. People in the gov't said they were doing this prior to the report.



We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.


The government has FISA, the gov't has the PATRIOT Act. Go to a judge, go to FISA and get individual search warrants for the info they'd like to see. Don't subvert the law.

[Crookshanks]

This is an editorial from the National Review - and I agree 100%!!

Stop the Leaks

By The Editors

Every passing week, it becomes more apparent that disgruntled leftists in the intelligence community and antiwar crusaders in the mainstream media, annealed in their disdain for the Bush administration, are undermining our ability to win the War on Terror. Their latest body blow to the war effort is the exposure, principally by the New York Times, of the Treasury Department’s top-secret program to monitor terror funding.

President Bush, who said on Monday morning that the exposure “does great harm to the United States of America,” must demand that the New York Times pay a price for its costly, arrogant defiance. The administration should withdraw the newspaper’s White House press credentials because this privilege has been so egregiously abused, and an aggressive investigation should be undertaken to identify and prosecute, at a minimum, the government officials who have leaked national-defense information.

The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) was initiated soon after the 9/11 attacks. It ingeniously focuses on the hub of interlocking systems that facilitate global money transfers. The steward of that hub, centered in Brussels, is the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or “SWIFT.” SWIFT is an organization of the world’s financial giants, including the national banks of Belgium, England, and Japan, the European Central Bank, and the U.S. Federal Reserve. SWIFT, however, is not a bank. It’s a clearinghouse that manages message traffic pursuant to international transfers of funds.

Intelligence about those communications implicates no legally recognized privacy interests. To begin with, they are predominantly foreign, and international. To the extent the U.S. Constitution might be thought to apply, the Supreme Court held nearly 30 years ago that records in the hands of third parties — including financial records maintained by banks — are not private, and thus not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, to the extent Congress later supplemented privacy protections by statute, those laws regulated disclosures by financial institutions. SWIFT is not a financial institution.

Despite this legal daylight, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to defer to privacy concerns. Assuming that American law applied, it obtained SWIFT information by administrative subpoena. It carefully narrowed its scrutiny to those transacting with suspected terrorists. It concurred with its international partners that the resulting intelligence should be used only for counterterrorism and security purposes—not for prosecutions of ordinary crimes (even though such prosecutions would be legal under American law). And it agreed to subject the TFTP to independent auditing to ensure that the effort was trained on terrorists.

By all accounts, the program has been a ringing success. The administration maintains that the TFTP has been central to mapping terror cells and their tentacles, and to shutting off their funding spigot. It has resulted in at least one major domestic prosecution for providing material support to al Qaeda. It has also led to the apprehension of one of the jihad’s most insulated and ruthless operatives, Jemaah Islamiya’s Riduan Isamuddin, who is tied to the 2002 Bali bombing.

But as has happened with other crucial counterterrorism tools — such as the NSA’s program to monitor the enemy’s international communications, which the New York Times exposed, and the CIA’s arrangements for our allies to detain high-level Qaeda operatives, which the Washington Post compromised — the TFTP’s existence was disclosed to the Times and other newspapers by anonymous government officials, in violation of their legal obligation to maintain secrecy. The Bush administration pleaded with the newspapers not to publish what they had learned. But these requests, rooted in the national-security interests of the United States, were rebuffed. The Times, along with the Los Angeles Times (which also rejected a government request not to publish) and the Wall Street Journal, ran stories exposing the program. Yes, the public was being protected. Yes, terrorists trying to kill Americans were being brought to heel. Yes, it appears the program is legal. And yes, it appears the Bush administration made various accommodations out of respect for international opinion and privacy concerns. Despite all that, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller concluded that “the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest.”

It is a matter of interest mainly to al Qaeda. The terrorists will now adapt. They will find new ways of transferring funds, and precious lines of intelligence will be lost. Murderers will get the resources they need to carry out their grisly business. As for the real public interest, it lies primarily in safety — and what the Times has ensured is that the public today is less safe.

Success in defeating the terrorists at war with us is dependent on good intelligence. Without obtaining it and keeping it secret, the government can’t even find the dots, much less connect them. If the compromising of our national-security secrets continues, terrorists will thrive and Americans will die. It has to be stopped.
The New York Times is a recidivist offender in what has become a relentless effort to undermine the intelligence-gathering without which a war against embedded terrorists cannot be won. And it is an unrepentant offender. In a letter published over the weekend, Keller once again defended the newspaper’s editorial decision to run its TFTP story. Without any trace of perceiving the danger inherent in public officials’ compromising of national-security information (a matter that the Times frothed over when it came to the comparative trifle of Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA employee), Keller indicated that the Times would continue revealing such matters whenever it unilaterally decided that doing so was in the public interest.

The president should match this morning’s tough talk with concrete action. Publications such as the Times, which act irresponsibly when given access to secrets on which national security depends, should have their access to government reduced. Their press credentials should be withdrawn. Reporting is surely a right, but press credentials are a privilege. This kind of conduct ought not be rewarded with privileged access.

Moreover, the Justice Department must be more aggressive than it has been in investigating national-security leaks. While prosecution of the press for publishing information helpful to the enemy in wartime would be controversial, pursuit of the government officials who leak it is not. At the very least, members of the media who report such information must be made to understand that the government will no longer regard them as immune from questioning when it investigates the leakers. They should be compelled to reveal their sources, on pain of contempt.

[FromWayDowntown]

I don't believe I, nor FWD, nor the NYT/LA Times/Washington Post said that the gov't/administration shouldn't attempt to track down terrorists and prevent attacks.

What we are asking for is that our country and its elected representatives follow the law.

You're absolutely right, JB. I think what we're also both saying, though, is that this is precisely why the Constitution provides a guarantee against governmental interference with the press. We must have a free and aggressive press that is willing to do more than sit by as a governmental lap dog. If the government is violating the law, the People have a right to know and the press is the most likely conduit for presenting that information. If the People find no problem with governmental indulgence upon civil rights, that will be made known at the ballot box.

If the press isn't to report on this, what on Earth are they to report? Should the press be there to just regurgitate whatever the White House wishes it to say?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

and an aggressive investigation should be undertaken to identify and prosecute, at a minimum, the government officials who have leaked national-defense information.


Works for me.

Start here.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2005-10/20205927.jpg

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Again, what secrets have been revealed by the NYT?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Xray,

What irreperable harm?

President Bush said today that the program will continue.

[Mr. Dictionary]

pres·i·dent ( P ) Pronunciation Key (prz-dnt, -dnt)
n.
One appointed or elected to preside over an organized body of people, such as an assembly or meeting.
Abbr. Pres.
The chief executive of a republic.
President The chief executive of the United States, serving as both chief of state and chief political executive.
The chief officer of a branch of government, corporation, board of trustees, university, or similar body.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin praesidns, praesident- from present participle of praesidre, to preside. See preside.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
presi·dent·ship n.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.


president

A leading decision maker of a company. The president is sometimes the company's chief executive officer.

Copyright © 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Main Entry: pres·i·dent
Pronunciation: 'pre-z&-d&nt, -"dent
Function: noun
1 : an official chosen to preside over a meeting or assembly
2 : an appointed governor of a subordinate political unit
3 : the chief officer of an organization (as a corporation or institution) usually entrusted with the direction and administration of its policies
4 : the presiding officer of a governmental body <the Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate —U.S. Constitution article I>
5 a : an elected official serving as both chief of state and chief political executive in a republic having a presidential government b : an elected official having the position of chief of state but usually only minimal political powers in a republic having a parliamentary government —pres·i·den·tial /"pre-z&-'den-ch&l/ adjective —pres·i·den·tial·ly adverb —pres·i·dent·ship noun

Source: Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.

president

n 1: an executive officer of a firm or corporation 2: the person who holds the office of head of state of the United States government; "the President likes to jog every morning" [syn: President of the United States, United States President, President, Chief Executive] 3: the chief executive of a republic 4: the officer who presides at the meetings of an organization; "address your remarks to the chairperson" [syn: chairman, chairwoman, chair, chairperson] 5: the head administrative officer of a college or university [syn: prexy] 6: the office of the United States head of state; "a President is elected every four years" [syn: President of the United States, President, Chief Executive]

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

[Spurminator]

Great, now that the Terrorists know about our wiretappping and transaction monitoring, they're going to stop wiring money and making phone calls. We'll NEVER catch them now!

[xrayzebra]

^^I wont question that newspapers have rights under to Constitution to publish
stories "against or for" the government.

I will question their "authority" or "right" to give the enemy aid and comfort by
telling them how our government is spying or obtaining information on that enemy.

They, the newspapers, or media, whatever have a responsibility to "protect" their
readership from injury or death or threat of injury or death. Giving the enemy
a heads up on how our government is attempting to do this is not in the best
interest of anyone, especially the public in general.

It is what is called a "compromise of classified information". The Constitution does
not protect "international" communications. It protects people "within" the
borders of the United States.

Now let us consider something else. What was the NYT real reason for doing this.
They say the public's right to know. I say BS. Their is no inherent right to know
built into the Constitution. Otherwise, your personal business could not be your
personal business.

The real truth of the matter, which I hate, is that ever aspect of American life
has been politicized. Not by Republicans or Democrats but by politicians and you
as a reporter should know that. I have dealt with many reporters in my time.
I had a complaint from one, one time, and he complained he couldn't get some
information because someone wouldn't stop what they were doing and attend to
him and was told to get out of the way. I ask him, how would you like for me
to come to your desk, rummage through it, look at everything. He stated he
wouldn't like it. I said there is your answer. Don't go to their workplace and
expect anything different. I have rambled and may not have answered you question.
If so accept my apologize. I take it you work for the San Angelo Standard Times.
A very good newspaper. Had some very good reporters many years ago.

[Crookshanks]

The NYT overriding motivation behind this story was not "the public's right to know." It was their overwhelming hatred of Bush and all things conservative and their rabid desire to do anything and everything to give this administration a black eye.

And they don't care if it helps the terrorists and costs American lives - and they wonder why their circulation numbers are down! Subversive idiots!!

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

^^I wont question that newspapers have rights under to Constitution to publish
stories "against or for" the government.

I will question their "authority" or "right" to give the enemy aid and comfort by
telling them how our government is spying or obtaining information on that enemy.

They, the newspapers, or media, whatever have a responsibility to "protect" their
readership from injury or death or threat of injury or death. Giving the enemy
a heads up on how our government is attempting to do this is not in the best
interest of anyone, especially the public in general.

It is what is called a "compromise of classified information". The Constitution does
not protect "international" communications. It protects people "within" the
borders of the United States.

Now let us consider something else. What was the NYT real reason for doing this.
They say the public's right to know. I say BS. Their is no inherent right to know
built into the Constitution. Otherwise, your personal business could not be your
personal business.

The real truth of the matter, which I hate, is that ever aspect of American life
has been politicized. Not by Republicans or Democrats but by politicians and you
as a reporter should know that. I have dealt with many reporters in my time.
I had a complaint from one, one time, and he complained he couldn't get some
information because someone wouldn't stop what they were doing and attend to
him and was told to get out of the way. I ask him, how would you like for me
to come to your desk, rummage through it, look at everything. He stated he
wouldn't like it. I said there is your answer. Don't go to their workplace and
expect anything different. I have rambled and may not have answered you question.
If so accept my apologize. I take it you work for the San Angelo Standard Times.
A very good newspaper. Had some very good reporters many years ago.

No apologies are necessary. I know what you're trying to get at.

As far as that reporter story goes, nobody has to do anything for us and you're right. All we ask is access to the same information that everyday Joe off the street has. I've seen reporters that have complexes and they're a problem, without a doubt.

I also know that there is a ton of politicizing of everyday issues and that's why the country is as polarized as it is.

My question to you is, and kind of a reply, what info did the NYT give out that wasn't already known.



"One tool that has been especially important to law enforcement is called a roving wiretap. Roving wiretaps allow investigators to follow suspects who frequently change their means of communications. These wiretaps must be approved by a judge, and they have been used for years to catch drug dealers and other criminals. Yet, before the Patriot Act, agents investigating terrorists had to get a separate authorization for each phone they wanted to tap. That means terrorists could elude law enforcement by simply purchasing a new cell phone. The Patriot Act fixed the problem by allowing terrorism investigators to use the same wiretaps that were already being using against drug kingpins and mob bosses. The theory here is straightforward: If we have good tools to fight street crime and fraud, law enforcement should have the same tools to fight terrorism."


http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/06/20050609-2.html

The gov't is telling us about the programs. The gov't is telling the terrorists that we're watching them.

I hate to say it (and I pray to God this isn't taken the wrong way), but a terrorist that doesn't think he's being watched/monitored is a pretty stupid terrorist.

All people are asking for (sane ones, at least) is that the Executive Branch of our government go through the law. Allow the Judicial Branch to check the Executive, which is what they are supposed to do, and it's all good.

Follow the legalities and follow the document that our way of life was born on.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

The NYT overriding motivation behind this story was not "the public's right to know." It was their overwhelming hatred of Bush and all things conservative and their rabid desire to do anything and everything to give this administration a black eye.

And they don't care if it helps the terrorists and costs American lives - and they wonder why their circulation numbers are down! Subversive idiots!!

Actually...



The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy. Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration's claims about the Iraqi threat. The question we start with as journalists is not "why publish?" but "why would we withhold information of significance?" We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so.


And it's generally accepted that newspaper circulation numbers are declining bcause people are getting their information from multiple mediums - including the internet, which most newspapers have failed in capitalizing on.

Think about it this way, I live in San Angelo. It is impossible to get a same-day issue of major national newspapers in this city, save for USA Today.

I've tried to subscribe to the NYT, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, the Christian Science Monitor.

I can't.

Where do I go? To online editions, which do not count in daily/Sunday circulation numbers.

[xrayzebra]

^^Legalities were followed. What did they tell the terrorists. Well for one thing
SWIFT. Did they know that, I don't know. Nor do you.

They do now. How will help them. Like you say, they aren't dummies by any means.
So they will/may deal with people who use other means of transferring funds.

What I am driving at, is that that our methods were disclosed. Yes, they knew
we were watching money transfers, but may not have known how.

I have no problem with our government monitoring aspects of our life. I have
nothing to hide. And proper oversight was being done. Congress, or key members
of Congress, were informed and briefed of what was occurring. Nothing was
done in secret in the true meaning of the word. No information gathered has
been used to injure an American citizen to my knowledge.

The operation was kept secret from public view, but not by one branch of government.

My point being. Yes the terrorist know we are trying to keep tabs on them
in every aspect. How we are doing it is the secret, not that we are attempting
to do it. The methods are what kills the program. NYT gave details.

[fyatuk]

"certain information"

Go head and check mine since it's so easy.

You should be able to get it with a name, address, and fee, or social security number and fee.

Your credit report is checked by about 15 companies a year without your permission because they want to know if you are the type of person they want to market to. Most of those are listed on your credit report (their version of letting you know).

Address history and most other records can be obtained for processing fees thanks to the Freedom of Information Act.

Any PI worth his salt can pull all pertinant information on an individual in a few hours, for less than $100 cost to them.

[ChumpDumper]

Yep.

It's asinine to think a terrorist would think the government wouldn't check on these things -- especially when Bushie told them he would.

[boutons_]

dickhead's recurrent wet dream for US media:

===========================

June 26, 2006

China Weighs Fines for Reports on 'Sudden Events'

By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, June 26 — Chinese media outlets will be fined up to $12,500 each time they report on "sudden events" without prior authorization from government officials, according to a draft law under review by the Communist Party-controlled legislature.

The law, revealed today in most state-run newspapers, would give government officials a powerful new tool to restrict coverage of mass outbreaks of disease, riots, strikes, accidents and other events that the authorities prefer to keep secret. Officials in charge of propaganda already exercise considerable sway over the Chinese media, but their power tends to be informal, not codified in law.

Although more than 100 million Chinese have access to the Internet and hundreds of commercially driven newspapers, magazines and television stations provide a much wider selection of news and information than was available in the recent past. As a result, Chinese authorities have also sought fresh ways to curtail reporting on topics and events they consider harmful to social and political stability.

Editors and journalists say they receive constant bulletins from the Propaganda Department forbidding reporting on an ever-expanding list of taboo topics, including "sudden events." But a few leading newspapers and magazines occasionally defy such informal edicts. They may find it more costly to ignore the rules if they risked being assessed financial penalties.

The draft, under consideration by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, was described in outline by newspapers today.

It says that newspapers, magazines, news Web sites and television stations should face fines ranging from $6,250 to $12,500 each time they publish information about a sudden event "without authorization" or publish "fake news" about such events.

While state media did not offer a definition of "sudden events," in the past they have included natural disasters, major accidents, public health or social safety incidents.

Journalists say local authorities are likely to interpret broadly, giving officials leeway to restrict coverage of any social and political disturbance that they consider embarrassing, like demonstrations over land seizures, environmental pollution or corruption.

Last fall, the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets removed some information about natural disasters, including the death toll, from a list of topics that government agencies had the power to treat as official secrets. The move was viewed positively at the time as an attempt to provide the public with more timely and accurate information about such disasters.

The declassification came after central and local government authorities initially covered up the SARS respiratory epidemic in 2003. Health authorities later acknowledged that the cover-up made the SARS outbreak more severe.

The new law would appear to undercut the spirit of that revision, forcing journalists and editors to seek prior approval before writing about disease outbreaks.

"The way the draft law stands now it could give too much power to local officials to determine that someone has violated the law," said Yu Guoming, a professor of journalism at People's University in Beijing.

Mr. Yu said he hoped the legislature would review the draft and make its terms "much more specific" to avoid heavy new restrictions on media freedom.

Others suggested that the impact on the press might be mixed.

The new law could make it easier to punish media outlets for even routine reporting. But it also sets a limit on the fine that can be accessed for each violation. Major media outlets could clearly afford to risk a fine if they felt the value of the news in question warranted coverage.

Moreover, the fines could presumably be challenged in court, making them a more active forum in the future for deciding the limits of media controls in the country, a legal expert said.

====================

dickhead would also upgrade the above to throw the journalists and their editors in Gitmo or extraordinarily renditioned to Morocco or Egypt or Eastern Europe.

[Crookshanks]

dickhead would also upgrade the above to throw the journalists and their editors in Gitmo or extraordinarily renditioned to Morocco or Egypt or Eastern Europe.

Ding, Ding, we have a winner!! Can we make it retroactive?

[DarkReign]

Great, now that the Terrorists know about our wiretappping and transaction monitoring, they're going to stop wiring money and making phone calls. We'll NEVER catch them now!

/sarcasm

[Nbadan]

I think Xray has been writing the Denver Post again:


esponse to killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq

Re: "Soldiers' bodies found; deaths were 'barbaric,"' June 21 news story.

Why have those who have continually howled at our treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo met the recent kidnapping and sadistic and brutal murders of our two young soldiers with deafening silence? Where is your outrage now? Not only should we behead 100 prisoners in retaliation (complete with Web-posted snuff videos), but also the editors, commentators, college professors and left-wing congressmen who would suddenly break their silence to come out in support of these enemy jihadists. We need to stop listening to these sanctimonious hypocrites who apply the rules of war only to our side. Let us untie the hands of our troops and allow them to fight and win.

Dave Petteys, Littleton

Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com/letters/ci_3979865)

Believe it or not, this hate-filled editorial was written by a student from Columbine High School.

[Nbadan]

Bernie Ward, defending the NY Times, smacks down a wingnut talk show host: He storms off the set! (http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/06/26/bernie-ward-smacks-down-wingnut-talk-show-host)

[Gerryatrics]

Mr. Bill Keller, Managing Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Dear Mr. Keller:

The New York Times' decision to disclose the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a robust and classified effort to map terrorist networks through the use of financial data, was irresponsible and harmful to the security of Americans and freedom-loving people worldwide. In choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful counter-terrorism program and alerted terrorists to the methods and sources used to track their money trails.

Your charge that our efforts to convince The New York Times not to publish were "half-hearted" is incorrect and offensive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the past two months, Treasury has engaged in a vigorous dialogue with the Times - from the reporters writing the story to the D.C. Bureau Chief and all the way up to you. It should also be noted that the co-chairmen of the bipartisan 9-11 Commission, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton, met in person or placed calls to the very highest levels of the Times urging the paper not to publish the story. Members of Congress, senior U.S. Government officials and well-respected legal authorities from both sides of the aisle also asked the paper not to publish or supported the legality and validity of the program.

Indeed, I invited you to my office for the explicit purpose of talking you out of publishing this story. And there was nothing "half-hearted" about that effort. I told you about the true value of the program in defeating terrorism and sought to impress upon you the harm that would occur from its disclosure. I stressed that the program is grounded on solid legal footing, had many built-in safeguards, and has been extremely valuable in the war against terror. Additionally, Treasury Under Secretary Stuart Levey met with the reporters and your senior editors to answer countless questions, laying out the legal framework and diligently outlining the multiple safeguards and protections that are in place.

You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that "terror financiers know" our methods for tracking their funds and have already moved to other methods to send money. The fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works. While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this particular program incredibly valuable.

Lastly, justifying this disclosure by citing the "public interest" in knowing information about this program means the paper has given itself free license to expose any covert activity that it happens to learn of - even those that are legally grounded, responsibly administered, independently overseen, and highly effective. Indeed, you have done so here.

What you've seemed to overlook is that it is also a matter of public interest that we use all means available - lawfully and responsibly - to help protect the American people from the deadly threats of terrorists. I am deeply disappointed in the New York Times.

Sincerely,

[signed]

John W. Snow, Secretary

U.S. Department of the Treasury

[fyatuk]

Lastly, justifying this disclosure by citing the "public interest" in knowing information about this program means the paper has given itself free license to expose any covert activity that it happens to learn of - even those that are legally grounded, responsibly administered, independently overseen, and highly effective. Indeed, you have done so here.

Wonder if he realizes he implies there are illegal programs...

[Nesterofish]

Hey, I have a great idea. Let's let the NYT publish sotries about tropp movements. The public has a right to know. Oh wait, that's treason. This is too.

[boutons_]

"doesn't sound like keller knows what he's talking about"

The bold statements are coherent

Terror financiers use cash movement, just like drug gangs, (because they know EFT is traceable) but it's very difficult compared to EFT. In the cocaine 80s and early 90s the Federal Reserve in South Florida was inundated with billions in excess cash, due to drug trafficking and cash laundering thru Miami.

Banks have been required to report EFT movements of $10K+ for a couple decades, IIRC. Financial instruments of $10K+ must be declared at US customs. Terrists worth anything already know all these US and intl banking rules.

The NYT exposing the dubya EFT snooping doesn't tell the terrists anything they didn't already know, so no more US troops dead.

However, starting a bogus war DOES waste US troops, but the conservative knee-jerk high-dudgeon chorus remains silent about ACTUAL US military blood on dubya/dickhead's hands.

[xrayzebra]

the new york times is a lefty leftist rag written, edited and read by lefty leftists

nyt supports terrorism, hates freedom and doesn't even like the marines!

So it seems, so it seems.

[Crookshanks]

OH, THE HYPOCRISY OF THE NYT!!!
================================================== ========

Reader Douglas Rose has drawn our attention to this September 24, 2001 New York Times editorial ("Finances of Terror") (access limited to TimesSelect):

Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists.
The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies.

Osama bin Laden originally rose to prominence because his inherited fortune allowed him to bankroll Arab volunteers fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Since then, he has acquired funds from a panoply of Islamic charities and illegal and legal businesses, including export-import and commodity trading firms, and is estimated to have as much as $300 million at his disposal.

Some of these businesses move funds through major commercial banks that lack the procedures to monitor such transactions properly. Locally, terrorists can utilize tiny unregulated storefront financial centers, including what are known as hawala banks, which people in South Asian immigrant communities in the United States and other Western countries use to transfer money abroad. Though some smaller financial transactions are likely to slip through undetected even after new rules are in place, much of the financing needed for major attacks could dry up.

Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be accompanied by strong sanctions against doing business with financial institutions based in these nations. The Bush administration initially opposed such measures. But after the events of Sept. 11, it appears ready to embrace them.

The Treasury Department also needs new domestic legal weapons to crack down on money laundering by terrorists. The new laws should mandate the identification of all account owners, prohibit transactions with "shell banks" that have no physical premises and require closer monitoring of accounts coming from countries with lax banking laws. Prosecutors, meanwhile, should be able to freeze more easily the assets of suspected terrorists. The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold hearings this week on a bill providing for such measures. It should be approved and signed into law by President Bush.

New regulations requiring money service businesses like the hawala banks to register and imposing criminal penalties on those that do not are scheduled to come into force late next year. The effective date should be moved up to this fall, and rules should be strictly enforced the moment they take effect. If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one.

If America is going to wage a war against terrorism, it must indeed act on all fronts. In 2006, it needs to act on the home front and direct its attention to those whose war on the administration is unconstrained by the espionage laws of the United States.

Posted by Scott at 06:47 AM

Isn't this just like most libs? Bitch and moan that the Bush administration is not doing enough - then bitch and moan even more when they do like you ask!!!

[ChumpDumper]

Wake me when the indictments are sent to the papers who ran the story.

[boutons_]

"The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity"

Anybody seen these new laws? Any new regulations?

In context of this particular lying, incompetent WH, "just trust us (to whatever the fuck we want to do in fucking secret" has long been totally unaccpetable.

[exstatic]

The only people responsible for getting Marines killed look an awful lot like Bush and Cheney when they face a mirror.

[Ocotillo]

This is a non-story that the Republicans are stoking because it excites their base. The terrorists have long been aware this was going on and the administration has bragged of it in the past. The Rethugs are really trying to rally the base, gay marriage, flag burning, illegal immigrant hordes and now the NY Times. Can a Hillary attack be far behind?

[boutons_]

http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/06/27/bs060627.gif


http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/06/27/gm060627.gif

[Nbadan]

Wake me when the indictments are sent to the papers who ran the story.

Exactly, these 'so-called' state secrets had been reported before, just not by the NYTimes...

A Yahoo News article dated April 10, 2005 --since deleted -- repeats the info:


NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration is developing a plan to give the government access to possibly hundreds of millions of international banking records in an effort to trace and deter terrorist financing, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Citing interviews with government officials, the newspaper reported that the new initiative, conceived by a working group within the Treasury Department, would vastly expand government access to financial transactions via logs of international wire transfers into and out of U.S. banks.

The plan, still in the preliminary stages, grew out of a brief, little-noticed provision in the intelligence reform bill passed by Congress in December, the Times said. It would give the government tools to track leads on specific suspects and to analyze patterns in terrorist financing and other finance crimes, the officials said.

The newspaper reported that the officials, aware of concerns about privacy, want to include safeguards to prevent misuse of the enormous cache of financial records.

[Nbadan]

The Roveian attempt to swift-boat the NYT over it's disclosure of the SWIFT program continues...

By Patrick O’Connor and Jonathan Allen


House Republican leaders are expected to introduce a resolution today condemning The New York Times for publishing a story last week that exposed government monitoring of banking records.

The resolution is expected to condemn the leak and publication of classified documents, said one Republican aide with knowledge of the impending legislation.

The resolution comes as Republicans from the president on down condemn media organizations for reporting on the secret government program that tracked financial records overseas through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), an international banking cooperative.

Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.), working independently from his leadership, began circulating a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) during a late series of votes yesterday asking his leaders to revoke the Times’s congressional press credentials.

The Hill (http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/062806/nytimes.html)

[Nbadan]

However, once again, it's not like the NYT was reporting anything we didn't already know...

Terrorist funds-tracking no secret, some say
Cite White House boasts of tighter monitoring system
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | June 28, 2006


WASHINGTON -- News reports disclosing the Bush administration's use of a special bank surveillance program to track terrorist financing spurred outrage in the White Houseand on Capitol Hill, but some specialists pointed out yesterday that the government itself has publicly discussed its stepped-up efforts to monitor terrorist finances since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

On Monday, President Bush said it was "disgraceful" that The New York Times and other media outlets reported last week that the US government was quietly monitoring
international financial transactions handled by an industry-owned cooperative in Belgium called the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Communication, or SWIFT, which is controlled by nearly 8,000 institutions in 20 countries. The Washington Post, the Los
Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal also reported about the program.

The controversy continued to simmer yesterday when Senator Jim Bunning, a Republican of Kentucky, accused the Times of "treason," telling reporters in a conference call that it "scares the devil out of me" that the media would reveal such sensitive information.

Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, requested US intelligence agencies to assess whether the reports have damaged anti terrorism operations. And Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has urged Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to pursue "possible criminal prosecution" of the Times, which has reported on other secret government surveillance programs. The New York Times Co. owns The Boston Globe.

But a search of public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist- linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT.

Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/06/28/terrorist_funds_tracking_no_secret_some_say/)

[xrayzebra]

How many on the board have taken out their NYT subscription to show their
loyalty to the "real leaders of the country". Seems the NYT is the great "new
progressive party of the left". I'm sure all of you want to support it. And they
need all the help they can get. I understand OBL gets a group discount for his
training bases and intel people.

[boutons_]

July 1, 2006

Letter From Dean Baquet and Bill Keller

When Do We Publish a Secret?

By DEAN BAQUET, editor, The Los Angeles Times, and BILL KELLER, executive editor, The New York Times

SINCE Sept. 11, 2001, newspaper editors have faced excruciating choices in covering the government's efforts to protect the country from terrorist agents. Each of us has, on a number of occasions, withheld information because we were convinced that publishing it could put lives at risk. On other occasions, each of us has decided to publish classified information over strong objections from our government.

Last week our newspapers disclosed a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions. We did so after appeals from senior administration officials to hold the story. Our reports — like earlier press disclosures of secret measures to combat terrorism — revived an emotional national debate, featuring angry calls of "treason" and proposals that journalists be jailed along with much genuine concern and confusion about the role of the press in times like these.

We are rivals. Our newspapers compete on a hundred fronts every day. We apply the principles of journalism individually as editors of independent newspapers. We agree, however, on some basics about the immense responsibility the press has been given by the inventors of the country.

Make no mistake, journalists have a large and personal stake in the country's security. We live and work in cities that have been tragically marked as terrorist targets. Reporters and photographers from both our papers braved the collapsing towers to convey the horror to the world.

We have correspondents today alongside troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others risk their lives in a quest to understand the terrorist threat; Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journal was murdered on such a mission. We, and the people who work for us, are not neutral in the struggle against terrorism.

But the virulent hatred espoused by terrorists, judging by their literature, is directed not just against our people and our buildings. It is also aimed at our values, at our freedoms and at our faith in the self-government of an informed electorate. If the freedom of the press makes some Americans uneasy, it is anathema to the ideologists of terror.

Thirty-five years ago yesterday, in the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers, Justice Hugo Black wrote: "The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people."

As that sliver of judicial history reminds us, the conflict between the government's passion for secrecy and the press's drive to reveal is not of recent origin. This did not begin with the Bush administration, although the polarization of the electorate and the daunting challenge of terrorism have made the tension between press and government as clamorous as at any time since Justice Black wrote.

Our job, especially in times like these, is to bring our readers information that will enable them to judge how well their elected leaders are fighting on their behalf, and at what price.

In recent years our papers have brought you a great deal of information the White House never intended for you to know — classified secrets about the questionable intelligence that led the country to war in Iraq, about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, about the transfer of suspects to countries that are not squeamish about using torture, about eavesdropping without warrants.

As Robert G. Kaiser, associate editor of The Washington Post, asked recently in the pages of that newspaper: "You may have been shocked by these revelations, or not at all disturbed by them, but would you have preferred not to know them at all? If a war is being waged in America's name, shouldn't Americans understand how it is being waged?"

Government officials, understandably, want it both ways. They want us to protect their secrets, and they want us to trumpet their successes. A few days ago, Treasury Secretary John Snow said he was scandalized by our decision to report on the bank-monitoring program. But in September 2003 the same Secretary Snow invited a group of reporters from our papers, The Wall Street Journal and others to travel with him and his aides on a military aircraft for a six-day tour to show off the department's efforts to track terrorist financing. The secretary's team discussed many sensitive details of their monitoring efforts, hoping they would appear in print and demonstrate the administration's relentlessness against the terrorist threat.

How do we, as editors, reconcile the obligation to inform with the instinct to protect?

Sometimes the judgments are easy. Our reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, take great care not to divulge operational intelligence in their news reports, knowing that in this wired age it could be seen and used by insurgents.

Often the judgments are painfully hard. In those cases, we cool our competitive jets and begin an intensive deliberative process.

The process begins with reporting. Sensitive stories do not fall into our hands. They may begin with a tip from a source who has a grievance or a guilty conscience, but those tips are just the beginning of long, painstaking work. Reporters operate without security clearances, without subpoena powers, without spy technology. They work, rather, with sources who may be scared, who may know only part of the story, who may have their own agendas that need to be discovered and taken into account. We double-check and triple-check. We seek out sources with different points of view. We challenge our sources when contradictory information emerges.

Then we listen. No article on a classified program gets published until the responsible officials have been given a fair opportunity to comment. And if they want to argue that publication represents a danger to national security, we put things on hold and give them a respectful hearing. Often, we agree to participate in off-the-record conversations with officials, so they can make their case without fear of spilling more secrets onto our front pages.

Finally, we weigh the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing. There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public's interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information. We make our best judgment.

When we come down in favor of publishing, of course, everyone hears about it. Few people are aware when we decide to hold an article. But each of us, in the past few years, has had the experience of withholding or delaying articles when the administration convinced us that the risk of publication outweighed the benefits. Probably the most discussed instance was The New York Times's decision to hold its article on telephone eavesdropping for more than a year, until editors felt that further reporting had whittled away the administration's case for secrecy.

But there are other examples. The New York Times has held articles that, if published, might have jeopardized efforts to protect vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear material, and articles about highly sensitive counterterrorism initiatives that are still in operation. In April, The Los Angeles Times withheld information about American espionage and surveillance activities in Afghanistan discovered on computer drives purchased by reporters in an Afghan bazaar.

It is not always a matter of publishing an article or killing it. Sometimes we deal with the security concerns by editing out gratuitous detail that lends little to public understanding but might be useful to the targets of surveillance. The Washington Post, at the administration's request, agreed not to name the specific countries that had secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons, deeming that information not essential for American readers. The New York Times, in its article on National Security Agency eavesdropping, left out some technical details.

Even the banking articles, which the president and vice president have condemned, did not dwell on the operational or technical aspects of the program, but on its sweep, the questions about its legal basis and the issues of oversight.

We understand that honorable people may disagree with any of these choices — to publish or not to publish. But making those decisions is the responsibility that falls to editors, a corollary to the great gift of our independence. It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the government.

[boutons_]

June 30, 2006

Op-Ed Contributors

A Secret the Terrorists Already Knew

By RICHARD A. CLARKE and ROGER W. CRESSEY

COUNTERTERRORISM has become a source of continuing domestic and international political controversy. Much of it, like the role of the Iraq war in inspiring new terrorists, deserves analysis and debate. Increasingly, however, many of the political issues surrounding counterterrorism are formulaic, knee-jerk, disingenuous and purely partisan. The current debate about United States monitoring of transfers over the Swift international financial system strikes us as a case of over-reaction by both the Bush administration and its critics.

Going after terrorists' money is a necessary element of any counterterrorism program, as President Bill Clinton pointed out in presidential directives in 1995 and 1998. Individual terrorist attacks do not typically cost very much, but running terrorist cells, networks and organizations can be extremely expensive.

Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups have had significant fund-raising operations involving solicitation of wealthy Muslims, distribution of narcotics and even sales of black market cigarettes in New York. As part of a "follow the money" strategy, monitoring international bank transfers is worthwhile (even if, given the immense number of transactions and the relatively few made by terrorists, it is not highly productive) because it makes operations more difficult for our enemies. It forces them to use more cumbersome means of moving money.

Privacy rights advocates, with whom we generally agree, have lumped this bank-monitoring program with the alleged National Security Agency wiretapping of calls in which at least one party is within the United States as examples of our government violating civil liberties in the name of counterterrorism. The two programs are actually very different.

Any domestic electronic surveillance without a court order, no matter how useful, is clearly illegal. Monitoring international bank transfers, especially with the knowledge of the bank consortium that owns the network, is legal and unobjectionable.

The International Economic Emergency Powers Act, passed in 1977, provides the president with enormous authority over financial transactions by America's enemies. International initiatives against money laundering have been under way for a decade, and have been aimed not only at terrorists but also at drug cartels, corrupt foreign officials and a host of criminal organizations.

These initiatives, combined with treaties and international agreements, should leave no one with any presumption of privacy when moving money electronically between countries. Indeed, since 2001, banks have been obliged to report even transactions entirely within the United States if there is reason to believe illegal activity is involved. Thus we find the privacy and illegality arguments wildly overblown.

So, too, however, are the Bush administration's protests that the press revelations about the financial monitoring program may tip off the terrorists. Administration officials made the same kinds of complaints about news media accounts of electronic surveillance. They want the public to believe that it had not already occurred to every terrorist on the planet that his telephone was probably monitored and his international bank transfers subject to scrutiny. How gullible does the administration take the American citizenry to be?

( hmm, let's guess. As gullible as dubya when dickhead dictates the "truth" to dubya? )

Terrorists have for many years employed nontraditional communications and money transfers — including the ancient Middle Eastern hawala system, involving couriers and a loosely linked network of money brokers — precisely because they assume that international calls, e-mail and banking are monitored not only by the United States but by Britain, France, Israel, Russia and even many third-world countries.

While this was not news to terrorists, it may, it appears, have been news to some Americans, including some in Congress. But should the press really be called unpatriotic by the administration, and even threatened with prosecution by politicians, for disclosing things the terrorists already assumed?

In the end, all the administration denunciations do is give the press accounts an even higher profile. If administration officials were truly concerned that terrorists might learn something from these reports, they would be wise not to give them further attention by repeatedly fulminating about them.

There is, of course, another possible explanation for all the outraged bloviating. It is an election year. Karl Rove has already said that if it were up to the Democrats, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would still be alive. The attacks on the press are part of a political effort by administration officials to use terrorism to divide America, and to scare their supporters to the polls again this year.

The administration and its Congressional backers want to give the impression that they are fighting a courageous battle against those who would wittingly or unknowingly help the terrorists. And with four months left before Election Day, we can expect to hear many more outrageous claims about terrorism — from partisans on both sides. By now, sadly, Americans have come to expect it.

=======

Richard A. Clarke and Roger W. Cressey, counterterrorism officials on the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, are security consultants.

[Nbadan]

Here's the 2001 WH press release touting the same program that the WH is now saying was a secret...


We know that many of these individuals and groups operate primarily overseas, and they don't have much money in the United States. So we've developed a strategy to deal with that. We're putting banks and financial institutions around the world on notice, we will work with their governments, ask them to freeze or block terrorist's ability to access funds in foreign accounts. If they fail to help us by sharing information or freezing accounts, the Department of the Treasury now has the authority to freeze their bank's assets and transactions in the United States.

We have developed the international financial equivalent of law enforcement's "Most Wanted" list. And it puts the financial world on notice. If you do business with terrorists, if you support or sponsor them, you will not do business with the United States of America.

I want to assure the world that we will exercise this power responsibly. But make no mistake about it, we intend to, and we will, disrupt terrorist networks. I want to assure the American people that in taking this action and publishing this list, we're acting based on clear evidence, much of which is classified, so it will not be disclosed. It's important as this war progresses that the American people understand we make decisions based upon classified information, and we will not jeopardize the sources; we will not make the war more difficult to win by publicly disclosing classified information.

And, by the way, this list is just a beginning. We will continue to add more names to the list. We will freeze the assets of others as we find that they aid and abet terrorist organizations around the world. We've established a foreign terrorist asset tracking center at the Department of the Treasury to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks.

It will bring together representatives of the intelligence, law enforcement and financial regulatory agencies to accomplish two goals: to follow the money as a trail to the terrorists, to follow their money so we can find out where they are; and to freeze the money to disrupt their actions.

We're also working with the friends and allies throughout the world to share information. We're working closely with the United Nations, the EU and through the G-7/G-8 structure to limit the ability of terrorist organizations to take advantage of the international financial systems.

The United States has signed, but not yet ratified, two international conventions, one of which is designed to set international standards for freezing financial assets. I'll be asking members of the U.S. Senate to approve the U.N. Convention on Suppression of Terrorist Financing and a related convention on terrorist bombings; and to work with me on implementing the legislation.

White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/20010924-4.html)

Let's cut the spin, you would have to be an idiot if you didn't know that this program did exist, especially after the WH said it did in 2001. This wingnut attack on the NYTimes isn't about exposing a 'secret program' ,it's about intimidating the NYTimes and the rest of the press the way they intimidated CBS News after Dan Rather fell for Rove's trap.

[boutons_]

http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/07/02/wpnan060702.gif

[xrayzebra]

Here's the 2001 WH press release touting the same program that the WH is now saying was a secret...



White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/20010924-4.html)

Let's cut the spin, you would have to be an idiot if you didn't know that this program did exist, especially after the WH said it did in 2001. This wingnut attack on the NYTimes isn't about exposing a 'secret program' ,it's about intimidating the NYTimes and the rest of the press the way they intimidated CBS News after Dan Rather fell for Rove's trap.

Okay dan, lets cut the spin. If everyone, everyone, knew that this was
going on and Keller admits that it wasn't illegal, which he has, then why
did he have to expose the details of the program.

Now I will ask you something else. Let's just give you the benefit of the
doubt, along with the NYT, that all Americans did know about the program.
How about the citizens of the other countries involved. Did they know
and should they have known? Now with the NYT revelations, and their
admission that it wasn't illegal, and all Americans already knew, why did
they feel the need to publish this bit of information? Can you answer that
question.

Could it just be that they could cause the citizens of other countries
to put enough pressure on their governments to stop any efforts on their
part to cooperate with the United States. Hmmmmmm, in short they want
to stop Bush for protecting the citizens of this country and make
our Government look like a bunch of Turkeys.

Yeah, lets cut the spin....okay?

[FromWayDowntown]

Now I will ask you something else. Let's just give you the benefit of the doubt, along with the NYT, that all Americans did know about the program. How about the citizens of the other countries involved. Did they know and should they have known?

The stories that Dan cites were all over the internets. I'm pretty sure that people outside the United States are able to access the internets, so I'm pretty sure that even non-Americans who bothered to stay apprised of such matters were aware that the United States government had begun this program.

I'm not really sure I see your point, though. The Times probably used poor judgment in running with the story for any number of reasons. So what?


Could it just be that they could cause the citizens of other countries to put enough pressure on their governments to stop any efforts on their part to cooperate with the United States. Hmmmmmm, in short they want to stop Bush for protecting the citizens of this country and make
our Government look like a bunch of Turkeys.

Yeah, lets cut the spin....okay?

So your contrived conspiracy theory is something other than spin?

[xrayzebra]

OMG, Now I have a consiparcy theory. Where did I say that? Pray tell.

And I love that you say. What is my point. Hell, you know the point. The
NYT the paper of wrecker-ed is the point of my post. Their owner has an axe
to grind and he has stepped in deep do-do. And the more he talks the deeper
he goes. The NYT doesn't have a leg to stand on and even the dimm-o-craps
know it.

The Editors must really be feeling proud of themselves. They take one of the
premiere papers and turn it into fish wrap. Sounds a whole like the old
San Antonio Light and what is happening to the San Antonio Express News.
It is only a matter of time.

[FromWayDowntown]

OMG, Now I have a consiparcy theory. Where did I say that? Pray tell.

Um, here:


Could it just be that they could cause the citizens of other countries to put enough pressure on their governments to stop any efforts on their part to cooperate with the United States. Hmmmmmm, in short they want to stop Bush for protecting the citizens of this country and make
our Government look like a bunch of Turkeys.

As for the rest:


And I love that you say. What is my point. Hell, you know the point. The NYT the paper of wrecker-ed is the point of my post. Their owner has an axe to grind and he has stepped in deep do-do. And the more he talks the deeper he goes. The NYT doesn't have a leg to stand on and even the dimm-o-craps know it.

You mean a leg other than the First Amendment? Just curious.

[Clandestino]

i'm just amazed about how everyone here "knows" everything about the terrorists and how they conduct business... also, those publishers...wow.. they(and you posters) should be helping bring them to justice if they(you) know so much instead of trying to alert the terrorists about covert operations that aren't harming anyone's civil liberties...

[George Gervin's Afro]

NY Times = red meat for radical GOP base. I am still amazed that the Wall Street JOurnal ran the same story and not one peep out of the 'selectively' outraged GOP

[xrayzebra]

NY Times = red meat for radical GOP base. I am still amazed that the Wall Street JOurnal ran the same story and not one peep out of the 'selectively' outraged GOP

George, you might want to read the story behind the story. And then you
would understand.

[George Gervin's Afro]

George, you might want to read the story behind the story. And then you
would understand.



We can try and analyze motives or who did what first but it's very simple. The GOP is antogonistic towards the NY Times and to explain that 'they reported it before the WSJ" is intelectually dishonest. The radical right is trying to put a stranglehold on the free press because they don't like how they report the news. Most of us can see what the outrage is for while other choose to see what they want to see.

[xrayzebra]

Then you find it quite alright that a newspaper, TV reporter or whoever to
publish the facts of any classified program, even tho it is legal and designed to
protect the country and it's citizens.

You find no problem with that, is that correct?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Then you find it quite alright that a newspaper, TV reporter or whoever to
publish the facts of any classified program, even tho it is legal and designed to
protect the country and it's citizens.

You find no problem with that, is that correct?


2 issues. We already told the world we would be incompetent if we did not moniter banking transactions. Now the charge has evolved into the NY Times released details on how the program worked. I am not in the banking inustry nor claim to know alot about their practices but I can guess on what the Govt can monitor. I don't need a newspaper to explain to me how things work nor do I believe the terrorists need the same.

This administration has gone out of it's way to strengthen the Presidency to a point that borders on arrogance and they do it without impunity. SOme of us never trusted bush so to see him do things in secret and then claim that he can do what he wants because of the war powers does not sit well with me or most of America. When you don't trust your govt or they are secretive like no other in history I expect the Congress to keep a check..guess what the GOP controlled congress has looked the other way. I find it quite convenient that whenever something comes to light with the administration they wrap themselves with the notion that 'it endangers national security'.Personally starting unecessary wars does quite bit of damage to the security of our country

So to answer your questions

[xrayzebra]

Well George, Mr. Bush and his administration are no more secret about their
business than any other government has been.

We are at war you know. We were before Iraq and will be after Iraq. Iraq war
will end someday for us. But the war will not, just that phase. Classified projects
have been going on for the whole of my life and will continue on after my life.

The fact that you don't trust Bush doesn't mean much of anything. I didn't like
Clinton, but it didn't change a thing. Trust him, hell I still don't trust him and still
find him a dishonest individual as well as most of his administration. History will
paint them, I think, as one of the most dishonest, crooked administrations
in the history of our country. But I would not condone anyone exposing any of
our intelligence techniques. And strangely, when he was caught, really invading
500 peoples privacy, by going over their FBI files in the White House, none of
the media seemed to have a problem with that. When the Congress tried to find
out who hired the man who had requested the files, no one knew who hired him
in the White House. And the media had no problem with that. Just blew it off
as a laughing matter.

Anyhow, you answered my question. It is a Bush program so therefore in your
mind it has to be suspect.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Well George, Mr. Bush and his administration are no more secret about their
business than any other government has been.

We are at war you know. We were before Iraq and will be after Iraq. Iraq war
will end someday for us. But the war will not, just that phase. Classified projects
have been going on for the whole of my life and will continue on after my life.

The fact that you don't trust Bush doesn't mean much of anything. I didn't like
Clinton, but it didn't change a thing. Trust him, hell I still don't trust him and still
find him a dishonest individual as well as most of his administration. History will
paint them, I think, as one of the most dishonest, crooked administrations
in the history of our country. But I would not condone anyone exposing any of
our intelligence techniques. And strangely, when he was caught, really invading
500 peoples privacy, by going over their FBI files in the White House, none of
the media seemed to have a problem with that. When the Congress tried to find
out who hired the man who had requested the files, no one knew who hired him
in the White House. And the media had no problem with that. Just blew it off
as a laughing matter.

Anyhow, you answered my question. It is a Bush program so therefore in your
mind it has to be suspect.


History will not be kind to this administration. You mention not trusting Clinton..There is 1 difference Clinton did not decide to wrap himself with the flag when confonted.

[Yonivore]

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/NYTSecretsS.jpg

Last week Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet and New York Times executive editor Bill Keller returned to the scene of the crime: "Why do we publish a secret?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/opinion/01keller.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin) The first half of the column consists of throat-clearing platitudes, the second half a remembrance of crimes past. If you're looking for a few words to defuse your anger over the irresponsibility of the Times Two, you came to the wrong place.

As a marker of the column's evasions, consider this from its throat-clearing first half:


Thirty-five years ago yesterday, in the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers, Justice Hugo Black wrote: "The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people."

As that sliver of judicial history reminds us, the conflict between the government's passion for secrecy and the press's drive to reveal is not of recent origin.
At issue in the Pentagon Papers case (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=403&invol=713), however, was the question of "prior restraint" --whether the government could prevent the publication of the information in issue, not whether the press stood beyond the law prohibiting the dissemination or publication of classified information within the ambit of the espionage laws of the United States. Baquet and Keller somehow omit any reference to passages such as this one from Justice White's opinion, which I believe accurately states the law:


[T]erminating the ban on publication of the relatively few sensitive documents the Government now seeks to suppress does not mean that the law either requires or invites newspapers or others to publish them or that they will be immune from criminal action if they do. Prior restraints require an unusually heavy justification under the First Amendment; but failure by the Government to justify prior restraints does not measure its constitutional entitlement to a conviction for criminal publication. That the Government mistakenly chose to proceed by injunction does not mean that it could not successfully proceed in another way.

When the Espionage Act was under consideration in 1917, Congress eliminated from the bill a provision that would have given the President broad powers in time of war to proscribe, under threat of criminal penalty, the publication of various categories of information related to the national defense. Congress at that time was unwilling to clothe the President with such far-reaching powers to monitor the press, and those opposed to this part of the legislation assumed that a necessary concomitant of such power was the power to "filter out the news to the people through some man." 55 Cong. Rec. 2008 (remarks of Sen. Ashurst). However, these same members of congress appeared to have little doubt that newspapers would be subject to criminal prosecution if they insisted on publishing information of the type Congress had itself determined should not be revealed. Senator Ashurst, for example, was quite sure that the editor of such a newspaper "should be punished if he did publish information as to the movements of the fleet, the troops, the aircraft, the location of powder factories, the location of defense works, and all that sort of thing." Id., at 2009.

The Criminal Code contains numerous provisions potentially relevant to these cases. Section 797 makes it a crime to publish certain photographs or drawings of military installations. Section 798, also in precise language, proscribes knowing and willful publication of any classified information concerning the cryptographic systems or communication intelligence activities of the United States as well as any information obtained from communication intelligence operations. If any of the material here at issue is of this nature, the newspapers are presumably now on full notice of the position of the United States and must face the consequences if they publish. I would have no difficulty in sustaining convictions under these sections on facts that would not justify the intervention of equity and the imposition of a prior restraint.

The same would be true under those sections of the Criminal Code casting a wider net to protect the national defense...

***

It is thus clear that Congress has addressed itself to the problems of protecting the security of the country and the national defense from unauthorized disclosure of potentially damaging information.
Yet Baquet and Keller claim a plenary power that places them beyond the reach of the criminal laws of the United States:


We understand that honorable people may disagree with any of these choices — to publish or not to publish. But making those decisions is the responsibility that falls to editors, a corollary to the great gift of our independence. It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the government.
The proposition that the Times Two have a right to disclose classified information subject to the Espionage Act is no more true of the Times Two than it is of any other citizen whose right of free speech is protected by the same First Amendment that protects the Times Two.

David Reinhard of the Portland Oregonian addressed a relevant question to Bill Keller this past week: "Who died and left you president of the United States?" (http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1151559267185130.xml?oregonian?yedcdr&coll=7) Reinhard wrote:


The issue is your decision to publish classified information that can only aid our enemies. The founders didn't give the media or unnamed sources a license to expose secret national security operations in wartime. They set up a Congress to pass laws against disclosing state secrets and an executive branch to conduct secret operations so the new nation could actually defend itself from enemies, foreign and domestic.

Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff -- but it's the kind of elementary stuff that can get lost in the heat of strong disagreements. And get more people killed in the United States or Iraq.

Not to worry, you tell us, terrorists already know we track their funding, and disclosure won't undercut the program. (Contradictory claims, but what the heck.) You at the Times know better. You know better than government officials who said disclosing the program's methods and means would jeopardize a successful enterprise. You know better than the 9/11 Commission chairmen who urged you not to run the story. Better than Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were briefed on the program. Better than the Supreme Court, which has held since 1976 that bank records are not constitutionally protected. Better than Congress, which established the administrative subpoenas used in this program.

Maybe you do. But whether you do or not, there's no accountability. If you're wrong and we fail to stop a terror plot and people die because of your story, who's going to know, much less hold you accountable? No, the government will be blamed -- oh, happy day, maybe Bush's White House! -- for not connecting dots or crippling terror networks. The Times might even run the kind of editorial it ran on Sept. 24, 2001. Remember? The one that said "much more is needed" to track terror loot, including "greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities"?

Keep up the good work -- for al-Qaida.

[boutons_]

The WH Repugs were handed STRONG EVIDENCE of 9/11 "airplanes into buildings" in the summer of 2001, but dubya called "that's just the intelligence people covering their asses", did not direct FBI/NSA/CIA to lift the issue to the highest level.

The WH spin after 9/11 was that "nobody could have foreseen 9/11". Bulshit, the truth will come out.

Now, the Repugs say they MUST aggressively ferret out private information to find terrorists, because what the pre-9/11 intelligence was insufficient. There was absolutely no discussion by the Repugs before 9/11 of national security, it was off their radar. The ONLY action the Repugs took between Jan and Sep 2001 was to ramrod through the most unfair tax cuts in US history, tax cuts being the ONLY reason the Repugs sought control of government.

The Repugs are fully responsible for failing to stop 9/11. They were running the national security apparatus for 8 months before 9/11, NOT Clinton.

What we really have is dickhead's widely publicized ideology of promoting the powers of the Executive way above those of the Legislative and Judidiciary, invalidating the paranoia of the Constitution's checks and balances.

For dickhead, 9/11, along with his phony Iraq war, are nothing but extremely expensive pretexts for pushing his ideology that Executive should have unchecked, royal powers.

The entire right-wing response to NYT, WSJ, and LAT is nothing but smokescreen and diversion from the ongoing Repug disaster in Iraq.

[Yonivore]

The New York Times undertook to blow what it called, in its headline, the "secret" international terrorist financing tracking program, for reasons that it never has been able to explain. Initially, there was no doubt about the fact that the Times was exposing a secret; reporter Eric Lichtblau used that word to describe the SWIFT program something like twelve times in the body of the Times' article. But when the Times unexpectedly found itself under heavy criticism for damaging national security, it took the nearest port in a storm, and claimed that the SWIFT program wasn't a secret after all. Everyone knew about it! Which, of course, left people scratching their heads over the story's page one, above the fold placement.

It turns out, though, that there was at least one guy who didn't know about the SWIFT program--Eric Lichtblau. In November 2005, as noted this morning by Villainous Company (http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2006/07/nytimes_contrad.html), Lichtblau himself authored an article in the Times titled, "U.S. Lacks Strategy to Curb Terror Funds." (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30610FA3F550C7A8EDDA80994DD4044 82) In that article, Lichtblau, obviously unaware of the SWIFT program, wrote that progress in identifying sources of terrorist funding had been poor, and that the administration:


"...is now developing a program to gain access to and track potentially hundreds of millions of international bank transfers into the United States.

But experts in the field say the results have been spotty, with few clear dents in Al Qaeda's ability to move money and finance terrorist attacks.
Apparently those "experts in the field" didn't know about the SWIFT program either, even though it had been going on for years, as Lichtblau later reported, nor did they evidently know about its role in capturing the most wanted terrorist in Southeast Asia, Hambali.

So much for the "everybody knew about it" defense. Note, too, what the two Lichtblau articles say about the editorial policies of the Times: if the administration allegedly lacks a strategy, it should be criticized for that. If it turns out that it had a strategy all along, and the strategy was a successful one, then the administration should be criticized for keeping it a secret.

If Lichtblau had an ounce of integrity or self-respect, he would resign in disgrace, along with Bill Keller and Pinch Sulzberger.

[Yonivore]

Anyone recall this September 24, 2001 New York Times editorial (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F6071EFF3F5E0C778EDDA00894D94044 82) ("Finances of Terror"):


Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists.

The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies.
Gee, Seems they were in favor of the SWIFT program in 2001.


Osama bin Laden originally rose to prominence because his inherited fortune allowed him to bankroll Arab volunteers fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Since then, he has acquired funds from a panoply of Islamic charities and illegal and legal businesses, including export-import and commodity trading firms, and is estimated to have as much as $300 million at his disposal.

Some of these businesses move funds through major commercial banks that lack the procedures to monitor such transactions properly. Locally, terrorists can utilize tiny unregulated storefront financial centers, including what are known as hawala banks, which people in South Asian immigrant communities in the United States and other Western countries use to transfer money abroad. Though some smaller financial transactions are likely to slip through undetected even after new rules are in place, much of the financing needed for major attacks could dry up.

Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be accompanied by strong sanctions against doing business with financial institutions based in these nations. The Bush administration initially opposed such measures. But after the events of Sept. 11, it appears ready to embrace them.

The Treasury Department also needs new domestic legal weapons to crack down on money laundering by terrorists. The new laws should mandate the identification of all account owners, prohibit transactions with "shell banks" that have no physical premises and require closer monitoring of accounts coming from countries with lax banking laws. Prosecutors, meanwhile, should be able to freeze more easily the assets of suspected terrorists. The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold hearings this week on a bill providing for such measures. It should be approved and signed into law by President Bush.

New regulations requiring money service businesses like the hawala banks to register and imposing criminal penalties on those that do not are scheduled to come into force late next year. The effective date should be moved up to this fall, and rules should be strictly enforced the moment they take effect. If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one.
So, what changed?

[Yonivore]

This is a letter to the editor, shared with Powerline (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014515.php) blog, that will probably not be published in either of the Times Two.


Dear Messrs. Keller, Lichtblau & Risen:

Congratulations on disclosing our government's highly classified anti-terrorist-financing program (June 23). I apologize for not writing sooner. But I am a lieutenant in the United States Army and I spent the last four days patrolling one of the more dangerous areas in Iraq. (Alas, operational security and common sense prevent me from even revealing this unclassified location in a private medium like email.)

Unfortunately, as I supervised my soldiers late one night, I heard a booming explosion several miles away. I learned a few hours later that a powerful roadside bomb killed one soldier and severely injured another from my 130-man company. I deeply hope that we can find and kill or capture the terrorists responsible for that bomb. But, of course, these terrorists do not spring from the soil like Plato's guardians. No, they require financing to obtain mortars and artillery shells, priming explosives, wiring and circuitry, not to mention for training and payments to locals willing to emplace bombs in exchange for a few months' salary. As your story states, the program was legal, briefed to Congress, supported in the government and financial industry, and very successful.

Not anymore. You may think you have done a public service, but you have gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis here. Next time I hear that familiar explosion -- or next time I feel it -- I will wonder whether we could have stopped that bomb had you not instructed terrorists how to evade our financial surveillance.

And, by the way, having graduated from Harvard Law and practiced with a federal appellate judge and two Washington law firms before becoming an infantry officer, I am well-versed in the espionage laws relevant to this story and others -- laws you have plainly violated. I hope that my colleagues at the Department of Justice match the courage of my soldiers here and prosecute you and your newspaper to the fullest extent of the law. By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.

Very truly yours,

Tom Cotton
Baghdad, Iraq

[George Gervin's Afro]

This is a letter to the editor, shared with Powerline (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014515.php) blog, that will probably not be published in either of the Times Two.


what does iraq have anything to do with the war on terror? other the bush stating it is... so how does this banking story (already let out of the bag by bush) affec what is going on in iraq? care to delve into this question? this letter writer is obviously a partisan with an agenda.. of course the folks who have come out of bush's adminiatration have all stated we were going into iraq no matter what and were cast aside by people like you who simply labled them as partisans with an agenda..so what is the differecne now? can i dismiss the letter writer as a partisan hack?

[Yonivore]

what does iraq have anything to do with the war on terror? other the bush stating it is... so how does this banking story (already let out of the bag by bush) affec what is going on in iraq? care to delve into this question?
I'll let none other than the New York Times answer your questions...

They recently published an interesting account (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) of the recent crackdown on al Qaeda in Iraq, (you know, the global terrorists in Iraq), including those responsible for the Samarra mosque bombing back on the 29th of June. From the Times:


An Iraqi affiliated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia led the team that carried out the February bombing of a golden-domed Shiite shrine, unleashing waves of sectarian violence that still convulse Iraq today, an Iraqi security official said on Wednesday.

The insurgent, Haitham al-Badri, is in hiding in Iraq and being sought by government forces, said the official, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser.

Mr. Badri also personally killed Atwar Bahjat, an Iraqi reporter for the network Al Arabiya who was abducted and murdered after traveling to Samarra, the site of the Askariya shrine, on the day it was bombed, Mr. Rubaie said. Two of Ms. Bahjat's colleagues were also killed in that ambush.

Mr. Rubaie said the Iraqi government learned the details of the shrine bombing after the capture a few days ago of Yusri Fakher Muhammad Ali (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/muhammad_ali/index.html?inline=nyt-per), also known as Abu Qudama, a Tunisian militant who confessed to be a member of Mr. Badri's team. Mr. Ali, who entered Iraq in November 2003, also said the assault team consisted of four Saudis and two Iraqis in addition to himself and Mr. Badri, Mr. Rubaie said. ...
That a native Iraqi was behind the bombing will come as a shock to many in and of itself. But, there's more. Who is Haitham al-Badri, the Iraqi who tried to incite sectarian violence by destroying such a holy shrine? From the Times:


Mr. Badri was born in Samarra and comes from a predominantly Sunni tribe in Salahuddin Province, the home region of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Rubaie said. He had ties to Mr. Hussein's government and was a member of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna before joining Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Ansar al-Sunna is a particularly violent religious group that was founded in the far north after the American invasion, but has since recruited members from all across Iraq.

What's that? Yet another one of Saddam's goons went on to lead al Qaeda in Iraq? But I thought, according to the Times, this type of cooperation was an impossibility.

That Badri was one of Saddam's goons should come as no surpise. Many of "Zarqawi's" and "al Qaeda's" top operatives inside Iraq were former officers in either Saddam's military or intelligence services.

Just as Saddam ordered, many of Iraq's senior military and intelligence personnel joined or aided Zarqawi's jihad. Many of the more prominent supporters and members of Zarqawi's al Qaeda branch, in fact, came from the upper echelon of Saddam's regime. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/851eqmjk.asp) (aka the "King of Clubs") and his sons allied with Zarqawi, as did members of Muhammad Hamza Zubaydi's (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/08/AR2005050800755.html) (aka the "Queen of Spades") family. Zarqawi's allies included Muhammed Hila Hammad Ubaydi (http://www.mnf-iraq.com/Releases/Apr/060406a.htm), who was an aide to Saddam's chief of staff of intelligence, and some of his more lethal operatives served as officers in Saddam's military, including Abu Ali, "Al-Hajji" Thamer Mubarak (http://thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com/2005/12/zarqawis-cell.html) (whose sister attempted a martyrdom operation in Jordan), Abu-Ubaidah, and Abdel Fatih Isa (http://thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com/2006/05/no-connection-heremove-along.html).

THESE BAATHISTS, and others, have spilled much blood in Zarqawi's name. Their attacks were among "Zarqawi's" most successful, including an assault on the Abu Ghraib prison and the first attack on the U.N.'s headquarters. The latter strike was among al Qaeda's earliest, killing Sergio de Mello (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2146395.stm), the U.N.'s special representative in Baghdad, in August 2003.

Now, in addition to the Abu Ghraib prison assault and the first attack on the U.N.'s headquarters, we know that the Samarra bombing was also orchestrated by a former agent of Saddam.

So, I wonder, will the New York Times do a big investigative report on all of these agents of Saddam who work with al Qaeda? Don't hold your breath. Did the Times step back and ask, how is it that terrorists like al-Badri went from Saddam's regime to al Qaeda?

this letter writer is obviously a partisan with an agenda.. of course the folks who have come out of bush's adminiatration have all stated we were going into iraq no matter what and were cast aside by people like you who simply labled them as partisans with an agenda..so what is the differecne now? can i dismiss the letter writer as a partisan hack?
No, you can't. Because, as has been demonstrated; the War on Terror and the War in Iraq are one in the same.

[George Gervin's Afro]

I'll let none other than the New York Times answer your questions...

They recently published an interesting account (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/world/middleeast/29iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) of the recent crackdown on al Qaeda in Iraq, (you know, the global terrorists in Iraq), including those responsible for the Samarra mosque bombing back on the 29th of June. From the Times:


That a native Iraqi was behind the bombing will come as a shock to many in and of itself. But, there's more. Who is Haitham al-Badri, the Iraqi who tried to incite sectarian violence by destroying such a holy shrine? From the Times:



What's that? Yet another one of Saddam's goons went on to lead al Qaeda in Iraq? But I thought, according to the Times, this type of cooperation was an impossibility.

That Badri was one of Saddam's goons should come as no surpise. Many of "Zarqawi's" and "al Qaeda's" top operatives inside Iraq were former officers in either Saddam's military or intelligence services.

Just as Saddam ordered, many of Iraq's senior military and intelligence personnel joined or aided Zarqawi's jihad. Many of the more prominent supporters and members of Zarqawi's al Qaeda branch, in fact, came from the upper echelon of Saddam's regime. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/851eqmjk.asp) (aka the "King of Clubs") and his sons allied with Zarqawi, as did members of Muhammad Hamza Zubaydi's (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/08/AR2005050800755.html) (aka the "Queen of Spades") family. Zarqawi's allies included Muhammed Hila Hammad Ubaydi (http://www.mnf-iraq.com/Releases/Apr/060406a.htm), who was an aide to Saddam's chief of staff of intelligence, and some of his more lethal operatives served as officers in Saddam's military, including Abu Ali, "Al-Hajji" Thamer Mubarak (http://thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com/2005/12/zarqawis-cell.html) (whose sister attempted a martyrdom operation in Jordan), Abu-Ubaidah, and Abdel Fatih Isa (http://thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com/2006/05/no-connection-heremove-along.html).

THESE BAATHISTS, and others, have spilled much blood in Zarqawi's name. Their attacks were among "Zarqawi's" most successful, including an assault on the Abu Ghraib prison and the first attack on the U.N.'s headquarters. The latter strike was among al Qaeda's earliest, killing Sergio de Mello (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2146395.stm), the U.N.'s special representative in Baghdad, in August 2003.

Now, in addition to the Abu Ghraib prison assault and the first attack on the U.N.'s headquarters, we know that the Samarra bombing was also orchestrated by a former agent of Saddam.

So, I wonder, will the New York Times do a big investigative report on all of these agents of Saddam who work with al Qaeda? Don't hold your breath. Did the Times step back and ask, how is it that terrorists like al-Badri went from Saddam's regime to al Qaeda?

No, you can't. Because, as has been demonstrated; the War on Terror and the War in Iraq are one in the same.


were they (the insurgents) in iraq before we started the unecessary war? if they were not then we helped create the situation that allows them to flourish and kill innocent people.. so you are agreeing with me now that prior to our invading Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror.. let me guess you are going to find an article that cites a guy who was there and met this other guy who knew saddam's favorite nephew.. why is saddam's former agent a terrorist now?


Can you find me an article the shows definitive proof of saddam's interaction with Osama and Al-Qaeda prior to the Iraq war? Hell how about prior to 9/11?

[RandomGuy]

If Lichtblau had an ounce of integrity or self-respect, he would resign in disgrace, along with Bill Keller and Pinch Sulzberger.

I would agree, if you could name a right-wing journalist that has ever done similar.

[RandomGuy]

Since you can't, I will go ahead and call your hyphocritical bluff. (snorts) Extremist ideologes.... :rolleyes

[FromWayDowntown]

Hmmm, the existence of Saddam loyalists in the midst of a group fighting against the American forces in Iraq and the new Iraqi government forces is somehow evidence that links global terrorism to pre-invasion Iraq?

From their end, it seems much more like political and personal expediency than evidence of a long-running conspiratorial relationship between Saddam and al Queda -- even if Saddam ordered that association (curiously, an assertion for which there's been no proof offered here).

From the United States' end, it seems like still another post hoc rationalization for a war that may have created more enemies than it eliminated.

[Yonivore]

Hmmm, the existence of Saddam loyalists in the midst of a group fighting against the American forces in Iraq and the new Iraqi government forces is somehow evidence that links global terrorism to pre-invasion Iraq?

From their end, it seems much more like political and personal expediency than evidence of a long-running conspiratorial relationship between Saddam and al Queda -- even if Saddam ordered that association (curiously, an assertion for which there's been no proof offered here).

From the United States' end, it seems like still another post hoc rationalization for a war that may have created more enemies than it eliminated.
It wasn't too long ago that it was an article of faith that the Iraqi Ba'athists and al Qaeda would never join forces...EVER! Now, you're telling me that it is a given that they'd do so?

Seems to me that you agree with what I said back when the invasion occurred, al Qaeda and the Ba'athists are conspiring because the enemy of my enemy is my friend mentality. However, when stated before there was proof of collaberation, the Left said it couldn't happen and that there was NO al Qaeda in Iraq, period, end of argument.

It's okay, you're just a few years behind.

[Yonivore]

were they (the insurgents) in iraq before we started the unecessary war? if they were not then we helped create the situation that allows them to flourish and kill innocent people.. so you are agreeing with me now that prior to our invading Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror.. let me guess you are going to find an article that cites a guy who was there and met this other guy who knew saddam's favorite nephew.. why is saddam's former agent a terrorist now?


Can you find me an article the shows definitive proof of saddam's interaction with Osama and Al-Qaeda prior to the Iraq war? Hell how about prior to 9/11?
Obviously you're forgetting the documented meetings that took place, between the Ba'athist regime and al Qaeda, in Sudan and other places (Bali, I believe) -- prior to the invasion and as far back as 1998 which would place them before September 11.

Do your research.

[RandomGuy]

Hmmm, the existence of Saddam loyalists in the midst of a group fighting against the American forces in Iraq and the new Iraqi government forces is somehow evidence that links global terrorism to pre-invasion Iraq?

From their end, it seems much more like political and personal expediency than evidence of a long-running conspiratorial relationship between Saddam and al Queda -- even if Saddam ordered that association (curiously, an assertion for which there's been no proof offered here).

From the United States' end, it seems like still another post hoc rationalization for a war that may have created more enemies than it eliminated.

You beat me to it.

Once again, it looks like the right in the form of Yonivore has taken logical fallacy to a new high.

Evidence of cooperation NOW is NOT evidence of cooperation before 2003.

This is the equivilant of saying "It is raining on July 4th this year, so it was raining on July 4 in 2002."

[RandomGuy]

Obviously you're forgetting the documented meetings that took place, between the Ba'athist regime and al Qaeda, in Sudan and other places (Bali, I believe) -- prior to the invasion and as far back as 1998 which would place them before September 11.

Do your research.


I have done the research. You have low-level meetings that are the equivilant of mail-clerks of IBM and Apple meeting for lunch.

The evidence is simply not there for any kind of meaningful cooperation, no matter how much you will cherry-pick and magnify what IS there.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Obviously you're forgetting the documented meetings that took place, between the Ba'athist regime and al Qaeda, in Sudan and other places (Bali, I believe) -- prior to the invasion and as far back as 1998 which would place them before September 11.

Do your research.


didn't think you could find any. So now we invaded Iraq, not because of stockpiles of wmds, because meetings took place. No collaberation just meetings... as I stated previously we created the situation in Iraq under the guise of protecting our freedom.. pathetic.

[Yonivore]

It was Kuala Lumpur. Here, read this:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/152lndzv.asp

[Yonivore]

didn't think you could find any. So now we invaded Iraq, not because of stockpiles of wmds, because meetings took place. No collaberation just meetings... as I stated previously we created the situation in Iraq under the guise of protecting our freedom.. pathetic.
Well, we weren't invited to the meeting nor given minutes. So, what do you think was discussed between two factions that, according to the left, would never have a relationship?

Read the article in my previous post.

[RandomGuy]

http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/TMW07-05-06.jpg

[FromWayDowntown]

It wasn't too long ago that it was an article of faith that the Iraqi Ba'athists and al Qaeda would never join forces...EVER! Now, you're telling me that it is a given that they'd do so?

Seems to me that you agree with what I said back when the invasion occurred, al Qaeda and the Ba'athists are conspiring because the enemy of my enemy is my friend mentality. However, when stated before there was proof of collaberation, the Left said it couldn't happen and that there was NO al Qaeda in Iraq, period, end of argument.

It's okay, you're just a few years behind.

I'm not sure who's article of faith that was.

Governmental overthrows do make strange bedfellows. It makes perfect sense to me that an unprovoked invasion that deposes a dictator might send the dictator's henchmen scurrying to find new allies, even if the resulting alliance might be one that had never been thought possible before. That's essentially all that you've proven; it does nothing whatsoever to prove that there was any pre-invasion collaboration between the Iraqi government and al Queda in any meaningful sense.

[George Gervin's Afro]

It was Kuala Lumpur. Here, read this:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/152lndzv.asp


--related to Mohammed Atta's visits to Prague; portions of the debriefings of Faruq Hijazi, former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence, who met personally with bin Laden at least twice, and an evaluation of his credibility


Atta never went to Prague.. how much more debunked 'evidence' are you going to use?

[RandomGuy]

http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/TMW06-14-06.jpg

[Yonivore]

--related to Mohammed Atta's visits to Prague; portions of the debriefings of Faruq Hijazi, former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence, who met personally with bin Laden at least twice, and an evaluation of his credibility


Atta never went to Prague.. how much more debunked 'evidence' are you going to use?
Do us all a favor because, this argument has been had over and over again -- many times before your 416 posts came along -- and read the entire article; including quotes from mainstream media in the mid-90's and statements from the Clinton administration that, at the time, said there was absolutely no doubt there was a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq.

There's this, from the article:


"...the same Richard Clarke who would one day claim that there was 'absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever,' told the Washington Post that the U.S. government was 'sure' that Iraq was behind the production of the chemical weapons precursor at the al Shifa plant. 'Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at al Shifa or what happened to it,' wrote Post reporter Vernon Loeb, in an article published January 23, 1999. 'But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to al Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts, and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.'"

[Yonivore]

Newsweek magazine ran an article in its January 11, 1999, issue headed "Saddam + Bin Laden?" "Here's what is known so far," it read:


"Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas--assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. U.S. sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last summer."

[Yonivore]

Four days later, on January 15, 1999, ABC News reported that three intelligence agencies believed that Saddam had offered asylum to bin Laden:


"Intelligence sources say bin Laden's long relationship with the Iraqis began as he helped Sudan's fundamentalist government in their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. . . . ABC News has learned that in December, an Iraqi intelligence chief named Faruq Hijazi, now Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be welcome in Baghdad.

[Yonivore]

By mid-February 1999, journalists did not even feel the need to qualify these claims of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. An Associated Press dispatch that ran in the Washington Post ended this way: "The Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against Western powers."

All these happened before September 11, 2001 and also before George W. Bush was President.

Would you claim that Bush and Clinton are in cahoots?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Well then include the media in getting it wrong as well.. by the way do you think if I took the time I could find articles that refute the one's you do? of course I could but I am not going to waste my time because it still does not take away the fact that bush started an unecessary war..

[George Gervin's Afro]

By mid-February 1999, journalists did not even feel the need to qualify these claims of an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. An Associated Press dispatch that ran in the Washington Post ended this way: "The Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against Western powers."

All these happened before September 11, 2001 and also before George W. Bush was President.

Would you claim that Bush and Clinton are in cahoots?


clinton didn't invade iraq on one premise to then revise the premise when hew was dead wrong.. 2527 dead wrongs as a matter of fact

[ChumpDumper]

Hey! Holiday's over.

Are the indictments out now?

[Yonivore]

clinton didn't invade iraq on one premise to then revise the premise when hew was dead wrong.. 2527 dead wrongs as a matter of fact
Okay, you're jumping around. Let's focus here.

Was there or was there not an established relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq, dating back to as far as 1994, or beyond?

Because, there are many references from within the Clinton Administration alone that state otherwise. What Clinton did or didn't with that information has no bearing on whether the relationship existed or not.

[Yonivore]

Hey! Holiday's over.

Are the indictments out now?
Have the statute of limitations expired?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Okay, you're jumping around. Let's focus here.

Was there or was there not an established relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq, dating back to as far as 1994, or beyond?

Because, there are many references from within the Clinton Administration alone that state otherwise. What Clinton did or didn't with that information has no bearing on whether the relationship existed or not.


focus. My point is Iraq was not a part of the war on terror until we invaded.

[DarkReign]

Jesus-fucking-Christ, Yoni!

Just make a fucking link to the material you site everyday. Why is that a problem for you? You go thru all the trouble of quoting and bolding and italicizing, but you cant open and close an URL tag?

[ChumpDumper]

Have the statute of limitations expired?Are they in the pipeline behind Joe Wilson's?

[Yonivore]

Jesus-fucking-Christ, Yoni!

Just make a fucking link to the material you site everyday. Why is that a problem for you? You go thru all the trouble of quoting and bolding and italicizing, but you cant open and close an URL tag?
I did link to the article and he didn't read it. I was just posting excerpts.

So, Jesus-fucking-Christ, can't you people just admit that you're wrong.

Can't you just admit that your memories are so fucking short that Richard Clarke can say there was a connection in 1998 and then claim there wasn't in 2005 and you're too stupid to call him on it?

[Yonivore]

Are they in the pipeline behind Joe Wilson's?
I don't know, maybe the NYTimes will find a leaker to clue you in.

[Yonivore]

Well then include the media in getting it wrong as well..
Media quoting Clinton administration officials, you mean. Officials that have changed there story since, by the way.


by the way do you think if I took the time I could find articles that refute the one's you do?
I don't know, try me. I'd love to see an authoritative refutation of just this one article from the Weekly Standard. Go ahead, if you can.


of course I could but I am not going to waste my time because it still does not take away the fact that bush started an unecessary war..
It might help your case if you did.

[ChumpDumper]

I don't know, maybe the NYTimes will find a leaker to clue you in.Hey we're at war now. You're a coward if you let these traitors run free.

What's the holdup?

[Yonivore]

focus. My point is Iraq was not a part of the war on terror until we invaded.
And mine was that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda that made it a part of the war on terror. Oh, and backed up by sources from the Clinton administration.

You know, the President that signed a policy stating that regime change, in Iraq, was the official U. S. objective there. That guy.

[Yonivore]

Hey we're at war now. You're a coward if you let these traitors run free.

What's the holdup?
Apparently the damage is done, maybe they'll lead to those who leaked the information if given the chance.

[ChumpDumper]

Apparently the damage is done, maybe they'll lead to those who leaked the information if given the chance.The damage is done? That's all you got? No punishment? Not much of a "law and order" guy, are you? If you think a crime has been committed, indict. What are you afraid of?

[Yonivore]

The damage is done? That's all you got? No punishment? Not much of a "law and order" guy, are you? If you think a crime has been committed, indict. What are you afraid of?
Like I said, have the statute of limitations run out?

First, you're treating me as if I were in a position to make that decision. (But, if I were, I would prosecute). Second, you believe this administration needs to work according to your time-table. Too bad, you're just going to have to be frustrated on that, I believe.

[George Gervin's Afro]

And mine was that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda that made it a part of the war on terror. Oh, and backed up by sources from the Clinton administration.

You know, the President that signed a policy stating that regime change, in Iraq, was the official U. S. objective there. That guy.

The one who thought better of invading the country? I would hope that your boy bush would have more up to date intel than what slick willy used but considering you base your whole argument on what clinton said I guess you think the guys is not as dishonest as most of your cohorts.. you are a fan of clintons now?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Media quoting Clinton administration officials, you mean. Officials that have changed there story since, by the way.


I don't know, try me. I'd love to see an authoritative refutation of just this one article from the Weekly Standard. Go ahead, if you can.


It might help your case if you did.


Wow you used conservative websites to justify bush's rationale for going war..Let me guess you can find many Fox News articles to back it up huh?

[George Gervin's Afro]

I did link to the article and he didn't read it. I was just posting excerpts.

So, Jesus-fucking-Christ, can't you people just admit that you're wrong.

Can't you just admit that your memories are so fucking short that Richard Clarke can say there was a connection in 1998 and then claim there wasn't in 2005 and you're too stupid to call him on it?


what if we had more up to date information than you used? Is that possible? Is it possible that Bush had information that refuted his rationlae for war? Is it possible he withheld more up to date information than what clinton used 1998? Now I am surprised that you support invading a country using 5 yr old intel.. I would hope the president had a little more up to date info..

[Yonivore]

what if we had more up to date information than you used? Is that possible? Is it possible that Bush had information that refuted his rationlae for war? Is it possible he withheld more up to date information than what clinton used 1998? Now I am surprised that you support invading a country using 5 yr old intel.. I would hope the president had a little more up to date info..
I used information from the 90's to refute the claim that there has never been a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq. Many, you have trouble staying on topic, don't you?

Do you have proof that he had intelligence that refuted the belief that al Qaeda and Iraq had a relationship?

[Yonivore]

Wow you used conservative websites to justify bush's rationale for going war..Let me guess you can find many Fox News articles to back it up huh?
Newsweek, ABC, and NPR are hardly "conservative" sources.

[xrayzebra]

what does iraq have anything to do with the war on terror? other the bush stating it is... so how does this banking story (already let out of the bag by bush) affec what is going on in iraq? care to delve into this question? this letter writer is obviously a partisan with an agenda.. of course the folks who have come out of bush's adminiatration have all stated we were going into iraq no matter what and were cast aside by people like you who simply labled them as partisans with an agenda..so what is the differecne now? can i dismiss the letter writer as a partisan hack?

Go get your hair trimmed so you can get your head out of your butt. NYT
is wrong as two left feet. You know it, the NYT knows it and everyone
else knows it. So stop the Bush administration BS.

[Yonivore]

The one who thought better of invading the country? I would hope that your boy bush would have more up to date intel than what slick willy used but considering you base your whole argument on what clinton said I guess you think the guys is not as dishonest as most of your cohorts.. you are a fan of clintons now?
So, upon what evidence did Richard Clarke change his tune about al Qaeda and Iraq? Or, about Iraq having WMD's for that matter?

Then, show me what changed the minds of Madelaine Albright and others from the Clinton administration that were, until after the invasion, equally convinced of Iraq's weapons and of their relationship with al Qaeda.

[xrayzebra]

Jesus-fucking-Christ, Yoni!

Just make a fucking link to the material you site everyday. Why is that a problem for you? You go thru all the trouble of quoting and bolding and italicizing, but you cant open and close an URL tag?

What damn link. How many do you want. You don't read or what. DR
are you that dense. No, you aren't. You just don't want to admit you are
wrong. And you are.

[ChumpDumper]

Like I said, have the statute of limitations run out?

First, you're treating me as if I were in a position to make that decision. (But, if I were, I would prosecute). Second, you believe this administration needs to work according to your time-table. Too bad, you're just going to have to be frustrated on that, I believe.:lol

The clock is ticking.

The only legal action Bushie is going to take is pardoning Scooter on his last day in office, maybe along with some Enron goofs -- some posthumous.

Book it.

[FromWayDowntown]

Go get your hair trimmed so you can get your head out of your butt. NYT
is wrong as two left feet. You know it, the NYT knows it and everyone
else knows it. So stop the Bush administration BS.

Frankly, I suspect the NYT has been hiding Saddam's WMD's and has tapes of all of the conversations between Iraqi government officials and al Queda operatives. The NYT also probably has "writers" who are serving as snipers and making IED's in various Iraqi provinces.

:rolleyes

[xrayzebra]

All you bunch that want to trash the Bush administration keep running the same
old BS by everyone and it has all been established as BS. It wont fly folks. You
got caught doing the same old junk. Iraq was up to their eyebrows in the whole
thing. '

And now you want to invade N. Korea. And for what. Are they involved in
all this?

What a bunch you all are. If you had a brain you would take it out and play with
it.

[George Gervin's Afro]

So, upon what evidence did Richard Clarke change his tune about al Qaeda and Iraq? Or, about Iraq having WMD's for that matter?

Then, show me what changed the minds of Madelaine Albright and others from the Clinton administration that were, until after the invasion, equally convinced of Iraq's weapons and of their relationship with al Qaeda.


Well considering they were out of office and were not privy to the Daily Presidential briefs I cannot show you.. You what amazes me is the Bush can end all of this 'lying' about Iraq if he just came out and said to the American people that Congress had everything he had when they voted for the war.. looked straight into the camera and publicly stated that he gave them every bit of evidence he had both pro and con... funny how he hasn't .. Please take notice that when he comments on the intel he goes out of his way to say congress saw what he saw.. not that they saw everything he did.. very nuanced..

[Yonivore]

Well considering they were out of office and were not privy to the Daily Presidential briefs I cannot show you..
So, while they were in office nad privvy to the information they believed Iraq had WMD's and a relationship with al Qaeda? But, after they no longer had access to the intelligence they were certain that no WMD's existed and that there never was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq? Wow, that's some logic you're employing there.


You what amazes me is the Bush can end all of this 'lying' about Iraq if he just came out and said to the American people that Congress had everything he had when they voted for the war..
He said that.


looked straight into the camera and publicly stated that he gave them every bit of evidence he had both pro and con... funny how he hasn't ..
No, not funny -- since he's already said it.


Please take notice that when he comments on the intel he goes out of his way to say congress saw what he saw.. not that they saw everything he did.. very nuanced..
Huh?

[George Gervin's Afro]

So, while they were in office nad privvy to the information they believed Iraq had WMD's and a relationship with al Qaeda? But, after they no longer had access to the intelligence they were certain that no WMD's existed and that there never was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq? Wow, that's some logic you're employing there.


He said that.


No, not funny -- since he's already said it.


Huh?

Yeah actually things can change/.. The UN Inspectors also said he did not have wmds after Clinton left.. oh wait that does not benefit your argument..



OH I see now your going to play stupid.. please find me any link that says bush gave congress everything he had ..save your time because you won't

[Yonivore]

Yeah actually things can change/.. The UN Inspectors also said he did not have wmds after Clinton left.. oh wait that does not benefit your argument..
How would the inspectors know if they had been absent from Iraq since before Clinton left office?

OH I see now your going to play stupid.. please find me any link that says bush gave congress everything he had ..save your time because you won't
From a November 11, 2005 speech:


"While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction. Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.' That's why more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.”
But seriously, explain to me the nuance of your statement...

Please take notice that when he comments on the intel he goes out of his way to say congress saw what he saw.. not that they saw everything he did.. very nuanced..
How is congress seeing what he saw not the same as congress seeing everything he saw?

I don't get it.

[George Gervin's Afro]

"While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction. Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.' That's why more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.”



One problem with this statement which proves he's a liar or stupid:

The first phase of the Senate Intelligence report determined, by the unanimous 17-0 vote that Garrett referenced, that intelligence assessments were not tainted by "pressure" that analysts received from policymakers, but it did not investigate whether the Bush administration misused that intelligence. The committee postponed analysis of the latter, more volatile question until after the 2004 presidential election, pledging to include it in phase two of the report. The Robb-Silberman report similarly excluded examination of the use of intelligence, noting: "[W]e were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community."

[Yonivore]

"While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction. Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.' That's why more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.”



One problem with this statement which proves he's a liar or stupid:

In his March 3 Wall Street Journal opinion column, deputy editorial page editor Daniel Henninger asserted, "nothing has been more destructive to Washington's current ability to function than the belief that 'Bush lied' about WMD" in Iraq, then claimed that the notion "was refuted by the Robb-Silberman Commission." In fact, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction -- co-chaired by former Sen. Charles Robb (D-VA) and Republican attorney and former judge Laurence H. Silberman -- did not investigate whether President Bush or members of his administration misled the public about Iraq intelligence. Nor, for that matter, has any other governmental entity to date. Rather, as Media Matters for America has previously noted (here and here), the Robb-Silberman Commission concluded that "[t]he Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure" in the buildup to the Iraq war, though even that conclusion has been disputed by some senior intelligence officials.
Do you want to explain how that proves anything other than the Robb-Silberman Commission concluded that "[t]he Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure" in the buildup to the Iraq war and that your source disputes that conclusion?

And, seriously, I really would like an explanation to your "nuanced" view of the President's claim that Congress saw the intelligence he saw.

That begs for an explanation because, in my reading of it, you appear to be saying the same thing in both ends of the sentence.

[George Gervin's Afro]

"While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development and possession of weapons of mass destruction. Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security.' That's why more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.”



One problem with this statement which proves he's a liar or stupid:

The first phase of the Senate Intelligence report determined, by the unanimous 17-0 vote that Garrett referenced, that intelligence assessments were not tainted by "pressure" that analysts received from policymakers, but it did not investigate whether the Bush administration misused that intelligence. The committee postponed analysis of the latter, more volatile question until after the 2004 presidential election, pledging to include it in phase two of the report. The Robb-Silberman report similarly excluded examination of the use of intelligence, noting: "[W]e were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community."


what congressional investigation cleared bush? bush was referring to a bi-partisan investiagtion that cleared him of misusing intel? which one?

[Yonivore]

One problem with this statement which proves he's a liar or stupid:

The first phase of the Senate Intelligence report determined, by the unanimous 17-0 vote that Garrett referenced, that intelligence assessments were not tainted by "pressure" that analysts received from policymakers, but it did not investigate whether the Bush administration misused that intelligence. The committee postponed analysis of the latter, more volatile question until after the 2004 presidential election, pledging to include it in phase two of the report. The Robb-Silberman report similarly excluded examination of the use of intelligence, noting: "[W]e were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community."
Ooops, you changed your last paragraph.

So, now, you're basing your opinion on whether or not the President lied on information not available to you?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Ooops, you changed your last paragraph.

So, now, you're basing your opinion on whether or not the President lied on information not available to you?



That has been my point! He did not release all of the information he had.. hence he lied!
Bush stated that he was cleared of this when he was never investigated... that's wierd?

This goes back to my statement saying that Bush has not once stated that He gave congress all he had...

[Yonivore]

what congressional investigation cleared bush? bush was referring to a bi-partisan investiagtion that cleared him of misusing intel? which one?
Okay, let's connect some dots, shall we? Just two -- I like to keep it simple for the simpletons in here.

Dot #1) Congress, including more than 100 Democrats voted in favor of using force in Iraq based on the same intelligence the President had.

Dot #2) Robb-Silberman concluded the President didn't exert any political pressure on the intelligence community to make the intelligence appear a certain way.

So, if Congress concluded force was warranted and the President didn't influence the presentation of the intelligence used to draw that conclusion, my guess is that the intelligence said that Iraq posed a thread.

[Yonivore]

That has been my point! He did not release all of the information he had.. hence he lied!
That would suggest you're a member of Congress. Who ever said the American People saw the intelligence upon which Congress and the Administration acted?



Bush stated that he was cleared of this when he was never investigated... that's wierd?
No, he said the commission found the administration hadn't tried to influence the intelligence community. Which they did find.


This goes back to my statement saying that Bush has not once stated that He gave congress all he had...
I'm still waiting for you to nuance that statement.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Okay, let's connect some dots, shall we? Just two -- I like to keep it simple for the simpletons in here.

Dot #1) Congress, including more than 100 Democrats voted in favor of using force in Iraq based on the same intelligence the President had.

Dot #2) Robb-Silberman concluded the President didn't exert any political pressure on the intelligence community to make the intelligence appear a certain way.

So, if Congress concluded force was warranted and the President didn't influence the presentation of the intelligence used to draw that conclusion, my guess is that the intelligence said that Iraq posed a thread.


or he simply withheld info that would undercut his his rationale rushing into the unecessary war... information that he did not release to congress...

maybe he found more up to date intel and not the 1998 stuff you keep whoring..and he did not want to release it..if you omit information consciously then that would amount to not elling the whole truth..

[Yonivore]

or he simply withheld info that would undercut his his rationale rushing into the unecessary war... information that he did not release to congress...

maybe he found more up to date intel and not the 1998 stuff you keep whoring..and he did not want to release it..if you omit information consciously then that would amount to not elling the whole truth..
Your premise is conjecture without support.

[George Gervin's Afro]

That would suggest you're a member of Congress. Who ever said the American People saw the intelligence upon which Congress and the Administration acted?


No, he said the commission found the administration hadn't tried to influence the intelligence community. Which they did find.


I'm still waiting for you to nuance that statement.


is there a difference in the following statements

Congress saw what I saw when they made their decision.. meaning we both saw the same stuff..but i didn't release all of it..so they saw what he saw...

as opposed to stating congress had everything i had to make this decision.. 2 similar statements but both mean 2 different things..

he wasn't lying when he made the first comment becuase they did see what he saw however it does not mean they saw everything he had to show.. meaning he could have withheld info...

please don't tell me this administration is not very careful what they say and how they say it.. as i mentioned before if he makes the second comment he puts his neck on the line and basically says he gave them everything..end of story..non-issue

[George Gervin's Afro]

Your premise is conjecture without support.

well then i guess we have to assume he gave congress the latest intel and info he had at has his disposal..but he won't publicly say it

humor me.. if he did willfully withheld info that would under cut his rationale for war would you have a problem with it?

[Yonivore]

is there a difference in the following statements

Congress saw what I saw when they made their decision.. meaning we both saw the same stuff..but i didn't release all of it..so they saw what he saw...

as opposed to stating congress had everything i had to make this decision.. 2 similar statements but both mean 2 different things..

he wasn't lying when he made the first comment becuase they did see what he saw however it does not mean they saw everything he had to show.. meaning he could have withheld info...
Maybe in George Gervin's Afro World because, I still don't seen the difference except for your extraordinary inference that he withheld information. That would necessarily mean he saw something that Congress did not and would therefore make the statement false.

But, you have fun in semantic world because there are George W. Bush critics that make better arguments than you and, on stuff that is relevant...such as the legitimacy of the war and such.


please don't tell me this administration is not very careful what they say and how they say it.. as i mentioned before if he makes the second comment he puts his neck on the line and basically says he gave them everything..end of story..non-issue
Tell me an administration that isn't careful what they say...particularly when economic and physical security, not to mention geopolitical equilibrium, often hang on the words of world leaders, particularly the President of the United States.

But, if you're applying the Clinton "that would depend on what the meaning of 'is' is" model, then no, I disagree that this administration parses its language that way.

He said that Congress saw what he saw and came to the same conclusion he did. I don't see how you wiggle that into an admission of witholding information.

[Phil E.Buster]

the NYT didn't publish anything that wasn't already known.

[Yonivore]

well then i guess we have to assume he gave congress the latest intel and info he had at has his disposal..but he won't publicly say it
As I've already stated, he did say exactly that...on numerous occassions. Are you retarded? Seriously, I'm growing impatient. You can join the ranks of Random Guy and Bouton on my ignore list and it won't give me one minute of heartburn.


humor me.. if he did willfully withheld info that would under cut his rationale for war would you have a problem with it?
That's a no win hypothetical. Anyone should have a problem if the President withheld information from Congress that was relevant to the passage of use of force legislation.

Where we differ is that you're predisposed to believe he did -- absent any evidence to the contrary -- and I'm predisposed to believe he didn't with all known facts supporting my position.

[Yonivore]

the NYT didn't publish anything that wasn't already known.
Really? How come the author of the article called it secret and, further, showed no hint of knowing about it in November of 2005? How come many in Congress were not aware of SWIFT? And, why did its existence have to be leaked by traitors?

That's a lame cop out.

Did they know we were attempting to track their finances? Sure. Did they know how we were doing it? No...not until last week.

[George Gervin's Afro]

[QUOTE=Yonivore]As I've already stated, he did say exactly that...on numerous occassions. Are you retarded? Seriously, I'm growing impatient. You can join the ranks of Random Guy and Bouton on my ignore list and it won't give me one minute of heartburn.


That's a no win hypothetical. Anyone should have a problem if the President withheld information from Congress that was relevant to the passage of use of force legislation.

Where we differ is that you're predisposed to believe he did -- absent any evidence to the contrary -- and I'm predisposed to believe he didn't with all known facts supporting my position.

Well why then did bush use information that he knew was ruled , at the minimum, not reliable? I mean all I hear is that we did not go into Iraq for wmds alone there were other reasons... one was aluminum tubes that the white house was told flat out they could not be used in a nuclear capicity..they simply were not big enough... ok most people would say ok well this fell through..Bush used the intel anyway as part of his justification for the need to go to war... he was told the tubes COULD NOT be used yet he decided to anyway..so that would beg the question if the case was so solidd why use knowingly bad info... please don't tell me that i'm wrong.. you choose to ignore all of the obvious contradicions about why we went to war..

DO I have proof he withheld information? No but that does make you right ? Hey if you are going to believe Bush gave them all of the information without proof then I can assume he did not.

[Yonivore]

[QUOTE=Yonivore]As I've already stated, he did say exactly that...on numerous occassions. Are you retarded? Seriously, I'm growing impatient. You can join the ranks of Random Guy and Bouton on my ignore list and it won't give me one minute of heartburn.


That's a no win hypothetical. Anyone should have a problem if the President withheld information from Congress that was relevant to the passage of use of force legislation.

Where we differ is that you're predisposed to believe he did -- absent any evidence to the contrary -- and I'm predisposed to believe he didn't with all known facts supporting my position.

Well why then did bush use information that he knew was ruled , at the minimum, not reliable? I mean all I hear is that we did not go into Iraq for wmds alone there were other reasons... one was aluminum tubes that the white house was told flat out they could not be used in a nuclear capicity..they simply were not big enough... ok most people would say ok well this fell through..Bush used the intel anyway as part of his justification for the need to go to war... he was told the tubes COULD NOT be used yet he decided to anyway..so that would beg the question if the case was so solidd why use knowingly bad info... please don't tell me that i'm wrong.. you choose to ignore all of the obvious contradicions about why we went to war..

DO I have proof he withheld information? No but that does make you right ? Hey if you are going to believe Bush gave them all of the information without proof then I can assume he did not.
d'okie dokie. Have fun.

[Yonivore]

Now, back to reality

The American Spectator (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10043) interviewed officials from the Treasury and Judiciary Departments on the SWIFT terrorist finance tracking leak. Here are some highlights:


"We thought that once the reporters and editors understood that one, these were not warrantless searches, and two, that this was a successful program that had netted real bad guys, and three, that it was a program that was helping us with current, ongoing cases, they would agree to hold off or just not do a story," says the U.S. Treasury official. "But it became clear that nothing we said was going sway them. Whomever they were talking to, whoever was leaking the stuff, had them sold on this story."

To that end, the Justice Department has quietly and unofficially begun looking into possible sources for the leak. "We don't think it's someone currently employed by the government or involved in law enforcement or the intelligence community," says another Justice source. "That stuff about 'current and former' sources just doesn't wash. No one currently working on terrorism investigations that use SWIFT data would want to leak this or see it leaked by others. We think we're looking at fairly high-ranking, former officials who want to make life difficult for us and what we do for whatever reasons."
Sounds like another case of Democrat holdovers in the federal bureaucracy putting party ahead of country. Here's more:


As for the ongoing investigations that the two Times papers were told of, only time will tell if they have been damaged by the reporting. "Let's put it this way, some of these folks probably aren't using their banks anymore, so who knows," says the Treasury source. "Using banks for transfers was easier for them to move funds faster, especially if it was in a part of the world that was heavily Muslim and they thought the money wouldn't draw as much attention there. But groups like al Qaeda aren't about to put expediency before their goals of destroying us, so they will do what they have to do to protect their financing and their operatives. We know that, we just wish the New York Times and Los Angeles Times cared, too."
Democrats in the federal bureaucracy collude with Democrats in the press to undermine American foreign policy, hoping thereby to benefit their party. It's one of the most important stories of the last four years, and so far, at least, there isn't a single Democrat of national stature who has spoken out against this unholy alliance.

[boutons_]

bullshit.

Any terrorist charged wth moving funds knows about SWIFT. Only participant banks and member orgs can move funds through SWIFT. Anybody/terrorist can't do it by himself. The SWIFT address of the recipient bank and the recipient account must be given, as anybody who wired funds overseas knows. SWIFT has been cooperating for tracking drug money, funds hiding/tax evasion/offshore shit since the inception of SWIFT.

The NYT/WSJ/LAT revealed nothing that any terrorist wouldn't already know and/or suspect was the case.

For the "evidence" for the Repug war in Iraq, the WH suppressed serious doubts by the intelligence community about the evidence showed to Congress.

The situation was very much "The Repug WH has decided it is going to invade Iraq. Congress, there is no doubt about the evidence we choose to show you. Slam dunk, cakewalk, etc"

There were serious doubts in the intelligence community about:

1. the African yellowcake

2. the aluminum tubes as nuclear centrifuges

3. the mobile bio labs (Powell slimed his own career with his trip to the UN with this lie)

4. that Saddam was behind/involved in the WTC attack

5. no WMD had been found the inspectors, and that was the case after the invasion, so the inspectors were giving the correct, true story.

dickhead went viciously after Wilson because Wilson dared to expose the yellowcake bullshit.

[RandomGuy]

I would further point out that the Bush administration itself trumpeted its efforts in tracking terrorist finances. Kind of hard to "leak" public information...

[RandomGuy]

Democrats in the federal bureaucracy collude with Democrats in the press to undermine American foreign policy, hoping thereby to benefit their party. It's one of the most important stories of the last four years, and so far, at least, there isn't a single Democrat of national stature who has spoken out against this unholy alliance.

A grand conspiracy theory if I ever saw one.

[RandomGuy]

Here again, we have very quick use of the word "traitor" and such.

The vitriol leveled at anybody who dares question the administrations/GOP motives or actions is very troubling.

I would have some amount of respect for Yoni's demagogery if it were tempered by the admitting that maybe, just maybe, it is possible to have principled reasons for opposing the administration.

In Yoni's imaginary world, only traitors with malice in their hearts could/would be troubled by an administration's ever-increasing police powers, and immoral policies.

To be truly patriotic, we have to trust unreservedly the executive branch with no checks on each new usurped power, and no consequences for willfully ignoring laws duly passed by the legislative branch.

If a Democrat had done anything similar, everyone here can know for a 100% certainty that Yoni would be screaming bloody murder about it, and blaming Democrats for "covering up" these programs.

The interests of good government should call for the american public to know ANYTIME our government is collecting information on us.

I would pose the question to Yoni (who I know has me on "ignore" because he knows he can't win an argument with me):

Where DO you draw the line on the executive branchs' powers?

Unlimited detention without trials of US citizens deemed "enemy combatants"?
Torture?

These things harm us much more in the long run than any modicum of information that might escape us by their use.

[DarkReign]

Here again, we have very quick use of the word "traitor" and such.

The vitriol leveled at anybody who dares question the administrations/GOP motives or actions is very troubling.

I would have some amount of respect for Yoni's demagogery if it were tempered by the admitting that maybe, just maybe, it is possible to have principled reasons for opposing the administration.

In Yoni's imaginary world, only traitors with malice in their hearts could/would be troubled by an administration's ever-increasing police powers, and immoral policies.

To be truly patriotic, we have to trust unreservedly the executive branch with no checks on each new usurped power, and no consequences for willfully ignoring laws duly passed by the legislative branch.

If a Democrat had done anything similar, everyone here can know for a 100% certainty that Yoni would be screaming bloody murder about it, and blaming Democrats for "covering up" these programs.

The interests of good government should call for the american public to know ANYTIME our government is collecting information on us.

I would pose the question to Yoni (who I know has me on "ignore" because he knows he can't win an argument with me):

Where DO you draw the line on the executive branchs' powers?

Unlimited detention without trials of US citizens deemed "enemy combatants"?
Torture?

These things harm us much more in the long run than any modicum of information that might escape us by their use.

-RandomGuy
__________________________________________________ _

No more ignore.

EDITED for clarity

[Yonivore]

No more ignore.
Okay, fine...

Where did the NYTimes article question the administration's motives? Seriously, what was the purpose of running the story on SWIFT? They admit it was legal and it was effective. What possible public interest outweighed disclosing a legal and effective counter-terrorism program?

[DarkReign]

Okay, fine...

Where did the NYTimes article question the administration's motives? Seriously, what was the purpose of running the story on SWIFT? They admit it was legal and it was effective. What possible public interest outweighed disclosing a legal and effective counter-terrorism program?

Hey, dont direct it at me. RG thinks you have him on ignore. So I quoted his post so that you could see it (i thought his point was valid).

Dont look at me like I am going to defend his position. I would fail miserably.

[Yonivore]

Hey, dont direct it at me. RG thinks you have him on ignore. So I quoted his post so that you could see it (i thought his point was valid).

Dont look at me like I am going to defend his position. I would fail miserably.
I do have RG on ignore. I was addressing one of his points.

[ChumpDumper]

How will you know if he responds?

[Yonivore]

How will you know if he responds?
I don't care if he responds; I did it for the benefit of Dark Reign who, because he thought a valid point had been made, saw fit to quote Random Guy and bait me with the statement, "no more ignore."

By the way, DR; which point was valid?

[DarkReign]

Im sorry, I did say "point". I should have said "question".



Where DO you draw the line on the executive branchs' powers?

Unlimited detention without trials of US citizens deemed "enemy combatants"?
Torture?

[Yonivore]

Im sorry, I did say "point". I should have said "question".



Where DO you draw the line on the executive branchs' powers?

Unlimited detention without trials of US citizens deemed "enemy combatants"?
Torture?


The line is drawn by the U. S. Constitution and the disagreements should be handled by the courts, not the media.

Where do you draw the line for unelected, non-government outlets such as the New York Times to make determinations on what should be kept secret?

Because, as the Supreme Court pointed out in the Pentagon Papers case, the government has no authority to exercise prior restraint on the media; but, at the same time, the media has no authority to publish in violation of statutes that would prohibit such revelations.

In other words, the government can't stop you from violating the law by publishing secrets but, they can prosecute you.

[boutons_]

"but, they can prosecute you."

As with both Dick Nixon and the current dickhead, the decision to prosecute will be a personal or political issue, NOT a national security issue.

[RandomGuy]

What if the government chooses to keep something secret that is highly illegal, and that a vast majority of Americans might object to?

Like selling weapons to Iran?

Does the press THEN have the right to tell us?

Or should illegal acts be shielded by arbitrary secrecy as well?

[RandomGuy]

Aren't the American people themselves the ultimate authority on what is best for us?

I find it highly ironic that someone who probably hates paying taxes "at the barrel of a gun", would suddenly turn around and trust the same government with his rights.

[RandomGuy]

The government of china thinks that keeping information on pollution or AIDS is a state secret and regularly jails its citizens for speaking out about such things.

Do we give our government the same kinds of powers to wave their hands and say "this is secret" (because we find it embarassing)?

[RandomGuy]

The line is drawn by the U. S. Constitution and the disagreements should be handled by the courts, not the media.

Where do you draw the line for unelected, non-government outlets such as the New York Times to make determinations on what should be kept secret?

Because, as the Supreme Court pointed out in the Pentagon Papers case, the government has no authority to exercise prior restraint on the media; but, at the same time, the media has no authority to publish in violation of statutes that would prohibit such revelations.

In other words, the government can't stop you from violating the law by publishing secrets but, they can prosecute you.

How can "the courts" actually draw the line if the executive branch can wave its magic secrecy wand and deny access to enough information for the courts to reach a ruling?

[Ignored no more]

What if the government chooses to keep something secret that is highly illegal, and that a vast majority of Americans might object to?

Like selling weapons to Iran?

Does the press THEN have the right to tell us?

Aren't the American people themselves the ultimate authority on what is best for us? If we don't know about the government spying on us, how can we give consent?

Or should illegal acts be shielded by arbitrary secrecy as well?

The government of china thinks that keeping information on pollution or AIDS is a state secret and regularly jails its citizens for speaking out about such things.

Do we give our government the same kinds of powers to wave their hands and say "this is secret" (because we find it embarassing)?

How can "the courts" actually draw the line if the executive branch can wave its magic secrecy wand and deny access to enough information for the courts to reach a ruling?

[ChumpDumper]

Ignored no more
Believe.

Position: Volatile Forward
Team: San Antonio Spurs
vBookie Cash: $500
Post Count: 1

:lmao :elephant

[Yonivore]

What if the government chooses to keep something secret that is highly illegal, and that a vast majority of Americans might object to?
Is the SWIFT program illegal?


Like selling weapons to Iran?
No, they shouldn't be able to keep crimes secret.


Does the press THEN have the right to tell us?
Was the SWIFT program illegal?


Aren't the American people themselves the ultimate authority on what is best for us?
How do you tell only those Americans that won't betray the country? Besides, we elect our government to act in our best interest. If you force the government to debate every decision with 300 million Americans before they take action, we're toast. That's why we're a Representative Republic and not a true Democracy.


If we don't know about the government spying on us, how can we give consent?
Actually, you have given consent...in the form of the various legislations, passed by your elected representatives, and enacted by your elected President, that allow for various types of warrantless searches and seizures of varying significance.

Disagreements over the reach and authority of these laws is settled by the courts, not by public opinion.


Or should illegal acts be shielded by arbitrary secrecy as well?
Your characterization of "arbitrary" is not supported by any facts. I think the secrecy of the SWIFT and the NSA Programs was carefully considered and supported by the administration.

I still don't hear any Congressmen screaming for a halt to any of these programs. They only cry about potential abuses for which there is no evidence.

Is scoring political partisan points against a President you hate worth compromising valuable intelligence assets?


The government of china thinks that keeping information on pollution or AIDS is a state secret and regularly jails its citizens for speaking out about such things.

Do we give our government the same kinds of powers to wave their hands and say "this is secret" (because we find it embarassing)?
Nope. And, none of the programs leaked to the NYTimes are of that nature.


How can "the courts" actually draw the line if the executive branch can wave its magic secrecy wand and deny access to enough information for the courts to reach a ruling?
Where has this occurred?

Back on ignore.

[FromWayDowntown]

Nope. And, none of the programs leaked to the NYTimes are of that nature.

You continue to insist on that as truth, but there continues to be debate over the President's rather troubling (and unprecedented) claim that Article II was somehow the trump card that made the NSA Surveillance program legal (constitutional). I realize that your strategy in taking a position on that program is to ignore the well-reasoned counter-arguments as the fanatical ravings of those who do nothing other than oppose this President, but for those who bring even a marginally objective mind to the issue, it's far from settled in any legal sense.

If you're sincere about allowing courts to decide if governmental programs are legal and sincere about your belief that government should not be able to hide its illegal acts from the press, you'd have to concede, I think, that the press acts well within its purview to expose programs that might be illegal so that legality in those situations might be challenged in the courts. Otherwise, you create a very handy little Catch-22 -- new programs that have not yet been declared illegal shall not be exposed, making it highly unlikely that their legality will ever be litigated because they've not been exposed.

[Guru of Nothing]

You continue to insist on that as truth, but there continues to be debate over the President's rather troubling (and unprecedented) claim that Article II was somehow the trump card that made the NSA Surveillance program legal (constitutional). I realize that your strategy in taking a position on that program is to ignore the well-reasoned counter-arguments as the fanatical ravings of those who do nothing other than oppose this President, but for those who bring even a marginally objective mind to the issue, it's far from settled in any legal sense.

If you're sincere about allowing courts to decide if governmental programs are legal and sincere about your belief that government should not be able to hide its illegal acts from the press, you'd have to concede, I think, that the press acts well within its purview to expose programs that might be illegal so that legality in those situations might be challenged in the courts. Otherwise, you create a very handy little Catch-22 -- new programs that have not yet been declared illegal shall not be exposed, making it highly unlikely that their legality will ever be litigated because they've not been exposed.

WWXRAYZEBRAD?

[Ignore-o-tron]

Funny you should mention the NSA program of ignoring the courts to do wiretapping at will.

This is pretty straightforward. We are a nation of laws and the President is ignoring those laws because "wants to".

Here is the Law that Bush ordered broken, because he felt like it and the penalties that are proscribed for it...

The Law (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sec_50_00001802----000-.html)

a)(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that—

The penalty (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sec_50_00001809----000-.html)

TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 36 > SUBCHAPTER I > § 1809 Prev | Next
§ 1809. Criminal sanctions
Release date: 2005-03-17

(a) Prohibited activities
A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally—
(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute; or
(2) discloses or uses information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized by statute.
(b) Defense
It is a defense to a prosecution under subsection (a) of this section that the defendant was a law enforcement or investigative officer engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction.
(c) Penalties
An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.
(d) Federal jurisdiction
There is Federal jurisdiction over an offense under this section if the person committing the offense was an officer or employee of the United States at the time the offense was committed.

Bush's alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. "I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president," Sen. Bill Frist declared of Bill Clinton's efforts to conceal an illicit sexual liaison. "No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country," Rep. Tom DeLay asserted. "The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door," warned Rep. Henry Hyde, one of Clinton's chief accusers. In the face of Bush's more definitive dismissal of federal law, the silence from these quarters is deafening. (recent rolling stone article)[/QUOTE]

[Ya Vez]

what is an executive order?

[xrayzebra]

Funny you should mention the NSA program of ignoring the courts to do wiretapping at will.

This is pretty straightforward. We are a nation of laws and the President is ignoring those laws because "wants to".

Here is the Law that Bush ordered broken, because he felt like it and the penalties that are proscribed for it...

The Law (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sec_50_00001802----000-.html)


The penalty (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sec_50_00001809----000-.html)

Bush's alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. "I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president," Sen. Bill Frist declared of Bill Clinton's efforts to conceal an illicit sexual liaison. "No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country," Rep. Tom DeLay asserted. "The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door," warned Rep. Henry Hyde, one of Clinton's chief accusers. In the face of Bush's more definitive dismissal of federal law, the silence from these quarters is deafening. (recent rolling stone article)[/QUOTE]


I am not really sure what you are trying to say here. You quote a law
that gives Bush or any President the authority to use electronic
surveillance and then turn around say he broke the law.

What am I missing?

[Yonivore]

Reports are out this morning that the FBI has foiled a terrorist plot (http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/433227p-364959c.html) to bomb the Holland Tunnel in NY City and send a deluge of water into parts of Manhatten.


The FBI has uncovered what officials consider a serious plot by jihadists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in hopes of causing a torrent of water to deluge lower Manhattan, the Daily News has learned.

The terrorists sought to drown the Financial District as New Orleans was by Hurricane Katrina, sources said. They also wanted to attack subways and other tunnels.
Most disturbing is this terrorist action here in the US has all the characteristics of having been stopped using the very same programs the NY Times has crippled in its mindless and treasonous attacks on the Bush administration.

Monitoring communications includes monitoring the overseas access to internet chat rooms. One can see the now exposed monitoring of the terrorists’ finances and NSA monitoring of overseas terrorists in the information being provided - meaning they may have had to act now because the terrorists were adjusting their tactics:


Counterterrorism officials are alarmed by the “lone wolf” terror plot because they allegedly got a pledge of financial and tactical support from Jordanian associates of top terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before he was killed in Iraq, a counterterrorism source told The News.
The tactical support is going to come through communications. The plot could have easily been initially detected when this “lone wolf” made contact with the Jordanian terrorists who could have been under NSA surveillance. Since the FBI is involved, the next logical sequence of events would be the NSA providing the lead to the FBI who then took it to the FISA court to make the person the target of surveillance here in the US once they decided it was a serious enough of a threat. It seems clear the authorities had to move before they wanted to for some reason or another:


The News has learned that at the request of U.S. officials, authorities in Beirut arrested one of the alleged conspirators, identified as Amir Andalousli, in recent months. Agents were scrambling yesterday to try to nab other suspects, sources said.

They didn’t indicate how many people were the target of the international dragnet but said they were scattered all over the world.

“This is an ongoing operation,” one source said.
U.S. agents were allowed to take part in the interrogation of Andalousli, a source said.

There were three ongoing investigations that were impacted by the NY Times’ traitorous exposure of the SWIFT program which was used to track terrorists cells around the world (not here in the US, by the way). It is highly possible the terrorists were adapting and disappearing from the radar screens of the international law enforcement agencies, so action now was required. The word ’scrambling’ is not something we want to see when dealing with terrorist threats.

Is the NY Times a danger to Americans in its lust for money and partisan payback on Bush? I’ll let you decide whether they think so based on the plans of these terrorists:


The plotters wanted to detonate a massive amount of explosives inside the Holland Tunnel to blast a hole that would destroy the tunnel, everyone in it, and send a devastating flood shooting through the streets of lower Manhattan.

It is assumed by officials the thugs would try to use vehicles packed with explosives.

Sources said that New York City officials believed the plan could conceivably work with enough explosives placed in the middle of the tunnel, which runs underneath the river bed, a source said.

But others doubted the plot was feasible.

“You are talking major, major explosives and knowledge of blast effect to make this happen,” said another senior counterterrorism source.
The efforts to try and play this down by anyone, but especially by the left, is abhorent. Picture you and your family driving through a tunnel or under a bridge when terrorists try this kind of action. Even localized death and destruction is unacceptable losses. If NY City needed a reminder of the stakes the NY Times is playing with (their Pulitzers vs NYC lives) there is no better example. Just imagine if this had slipped by because we had been blinded to the terrorist’s actions.

So, now we know why NY Rep Peter King was so angry at the NY Times (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060707/ap_on_re_us/new_york_tunnels_plot) when they published the SWIFT story. And we have more proof that authorities may have had to move quicker than they wanted to (losing leads to other terrorist support chains) due to the NY Times:


Rep. Peter King (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., said that federal law enforcement and New York police have been monitoring a plot to attack New York’s mass transit system for at least eight months.

“There was nothing imminent, but it was being monitored for long period time,” said King, who said he has received regular intelligence briefings on the alleged plot as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

King said he had been unable to publicly disclose the plot because to do so would risk the investigation.

“This is ongoing, that’s why I’ve said nothing about it until now,” King said. “It would have been better if this had not been disclosed.”
We can all thank the egomaniacs at the NY Times for this mess.

And, now, CNN is reporting this group of international terrorists had been under investigation for a year or mo (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/07/tunnel.plot/)re, meaning this definitely predates the NY Times SWIFT and NSA stories.


CNN security analyst Pat D’Amuro characterized the plot as “a real threat” that “was in the early stages.”

A former high-ranking FBI official, D’Amuro said an FBI-Lebanese investigation “that goes back over a year” first revealed the plan.

The news comes on the first anniversary of the London bombings in which four suicide bombers targeted the city’s transportation system and killed 52 people.
That means the NY Times stories exposing our anti-terrorism defences did threaten this ongoing investigation. We have the NSA monitoring the overseas communications (and probably the overseas chat room), and then we have the FBI following the leads to the jihadists here. And there was financial tracking from elements in Jordan. How is the NY Times going to dismiss the fact this investigation was definitely at risk of being lost through their carelessness and cavalier attitudes?

I hope Sulzberger and Miller rot in hell.

[boutons_]

"NY Times stories exposing our anti-terrorism defences did threaten this ongoing investigation"

total reaching bullshit.

For the millionth time, terrorists already knew SWIFT and almost any other financial conduits were being monitored, at least since the 1980s for drug and tax evasion. Pussy eater insults and under-estimates the intelligence and discipline terrorists have demonstrated.

I use to think pussy licker was intelligent, serious, but just wrong, but now his desperate reaching to justify Iraq with trivial ratshit that doesn't add up to 2500+ US military dead and a $1T wasted, nor the incompetence of the Iraq war, is quickly changing "intelligent" to typical right-wing dumbshit.

Expect more bogus announcements like the Miami 7 and the NY tunnel plots to accelerate in the run up to November mid-terms, as Rove and the Repugs run on their "national security record" while slandering the Dems as traitors, and hoping people forget the WTC attack occurred under the national security responsiblity of the Repugs.

[Yonivore]

You continue to insist on that as truth, but there continues to be debate over the President's rather troubling (and unprecedented) claim that Article II was somehow the trump card that made the NSA Surveillance program legal (constitutional). I realize that your strategy in taking a position on that program is to ignore the well-reasoned counter-arguments as the fanatical ravings of those who do nothing other than oppose this President, but for those who bring even a marginally objective mind to the issue, it's far from settled in any legal sense.

If you're sincere about allowing courts to decide if governmental programs are legal and sincere about your belief that government should not be able to hide its illegal acts from the press, you'd have to concede, I think, that the press acts well within its purview to expose programs that might be illegal so that legality in those situations might be challenged in the courts. Otherwise, you create a very handy little Catch-22 -- new programs that have not yet been declared illegal shall not be exposed, making it highly unlikely that their legality will ever be litigated because they've not been exposed.
Nice of you to skip over and not address the remainder of my post but, that's okay.

Now, when I said, "Nope. And, none of the programs leaked to the NYTimes are of that nature," to which your above diatribe purports to respond, I was referring to your previous assertion that keeping the NSA and SWIFT programs a secret was akin to, in your words:


"The government of china thinks that keeping information on pollution or AIDS is a state secret and regularly jails its citizens for speaking out about such things.

"Do we give our government the same kinds of powers to wave their hands and say "this is secret" (because we find it embarassing)?"
It is my response that No, the government wasn't keeping these programs secret because they represented an embarrassment to the government but, that they were keeping them secret because their disclosure would aid the enemy.

I see the distinction...maybe you don't. I can't speak to your intellect.

As for your response above, I think the security of the nation requires this debate -- whatever its merits -- to be had after hostilities are over unless you or anyone else can produce an American citizen that was harmed by the execution of these vital intelligence programs...which have probably saved untold American lives, including those who would have been in the Holland Tunnel when the terrorists, thwarted this week (by such programs), executed their plot.

And, along that same line of reasoning, let me add some thoughts regarding the Supreme Court's actions during a time of war. Referring to The Los Angeles Times column by Boalt Hall Professor John Yoo on the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision: "The high court's Hamdan power grab." (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-yoo7jul07,0,3547342.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions) Yoo writes:


What makes this war different is not that the president acted while Congress watched but that the Supreme Court interfered while fighting was ongoing. Given its seizure of control over some of society's most contentious issues, such as abortion, affirmative action and religion, maybe the court's intervention should come as no surprise. But its effort to inject the Geneva Convention into the war on terrorism — even though the treaties do not include international conflict with non-states that violate every rule of civilized warfare — smacks of judicial micromanagement. The Supreme Court has never before imposed its preferred interpretation of a treaty governing warfare on the president during war, and Geneva has never been understood to give enemy combatants rights in our courts.

The court displays a lack of judicial restraint that would have shocked its predecessors. In World War II, the Supreme Court established precedents directly to the contrary. To evade these previous rulings, the court misread a law ordering it not to decide Guantanamo Bay cases, narrowed the very same authorization to use military force that it had read broadly just two years ago, ignored centuries of practice by presidents and Congress on military commissions and intruded into the executive's traditional national security prerogatives. Justices used to appreciate the inherent uncertainties and dire circumstances of war, and the limits of their own abilities. No longer.
I challenge anyone to point to a time when the Supreme Court has acted in such a manner as this.

Charles Krauthammer's column complements Yoo's: "Emergency over, saith the Court." (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/emergency_over_saith_the_court.html) I guess the Holland Tunnel plotters didn't get the memo.

And, At NRO, Matthew Franck adds an important qualification (http://bench.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjhmMGNlMWY0N2I1Zjc5MmRiNmY3MGYwZWQwMzcxNjg=) to Krauthammer's column regarding the damage the Court did in Hamdan.

[FromWayDowntown]

Nice of you to skip over and not address the remainder of my post but, that's okay.

Frankly, the part I quoted was the only part that was relevant to the point I was making.

I didn't post the other matters that you attribute to me in the remainder of your "response," so I have no idea why it is that you are trying to argue with me about those things. My point, stated simply, is that there is an inherent (and eventually irresolvable) tension between your claimed willingness to let the courts sort out the legality of particular programs and your apparent unwillingness to recognize the Constitutional right of the press to report matters that it is perfectly legal to report.

The legality of the NSA program has been anything but conclusively established -- despite your willingness to ignore the arguments that run contrary to yours. I've never once postulated that the NSA program was intended to be kept secret because it was potentially embarassing -- that would be a facile argument, I think.

I have, however, consistently hypothesized that there are at least facets of the NSA program that are unconstitutional. The arguable unconstitutionality of those parts of the program would seem, according to your own admissions, to give the NYT a perfect right to report on a potentially illegal program.

My post simply posited that if you think it's somehow unjustifiable to report that program under those circumstances, you've created a Catch-22 in which information embargoes are favored over free reporting. That strikes me as being antithetical to the First Amendment.

[Yonivore]

...your apparent unwillingness to recognize the Constitutional right of the press to report matters that it is perfectly legal to report.
That's where your premise fails.

It's not perfectly legal to report on national secrets. There's a law against it.

The New York Times did worse. They reported secrets they merely thought might be abused -- without providing any proof that they were.

In an earlier post, I agreed that the government had no authority to exercise prior restraint on the media; however, the media had no authority to violate the law either.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Reports are out this morning that the FBI has foiled a terrorist plot (http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/433227p-364959c.html) to bomb the Holland Tunnel in NY City and send a deluge of water into parts of Manhatten.


Most disturbing is this terrorist action here in the US has all the characteristics of having been stopped using the very same programs the NY Times has crippled in its mindless and treasonous attacks on the Bush administration.

Monitoring communications includes monitoring the overseas access to internet chat rooms. One can see the now exposed monitoring of the terrorists’ finances and NSA monitoring of overseas terrorists in the information being provided - meaning they may have had to act now because the terrorists were adjusting their tactics:


The tactical support is going to come through communications. The plot could have easily been initially detected when this “lone wolf” made contact with the Jordanian terrorists who could have been under NSA surveillance. Since the FBI is involved, the next logical sequence of events would be the NSA providing the lead to the FBI who then took it to the FISA court to make the person the target of surveillance here in the US once they decided it was a serious enough of a threat. It seems clear the authorities had to move before they wanted to for some reason or another:


U.S. agents were allowed to take part in the interrogation of Andalousli, a source said.

There were three ongoing investigations that were impacted by the NY Times’ traitorous exposure of the SWIFT program which was used to track terrorists cells around the world (not here in the US, by the way). It is highly possible the terrorists were adapting and disappearing from the radar screens of the international law enforcement agencies, so action now was required. The word ’scrambling’ is not something we want to see when dealing with terrorist threats.

Is the NY Times a danger to Americans in its lust for money and partisan payback on Bush? I’ll let you decide whether they think so based on the plans of these terrorists:


The efforts to try and play this down by anyone, but especially by the left, is abhorent. Picture you and your family driving through a tunnel or under a bridge when terrorists try this kind of action. Even localized death and destruction is unacceptable losses. If NY City needed a reminder of the stakes the NY Times is playing with (their Pulitzers vs NYC lives) there is no better example. Just imagine if this had slipped by because we had been blinded to the terrorist’s actions.

So, now we know why NY Rep Peter King was so angry at the NY Times (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060707/ap_on_re_us/new_york_tunnels_plot) when they published the SWIFT story. And we have more proof that authorities may have had to move quicker than they wanted to (losing leads to other terrorist support chains) due to the NY Times:


We can all thank the egomaniacs at the NY Times for this mess.

And, now, CNN is reporting this group of international terrorists had been under investigation for a year or mo (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/07/tunnel.plot/)re, meaning this definitely predates the NY Times SWIFT and NSA stories.


That means the NY Times stories exposing our anti-terrorism defences did threaten this ongoing investigation. We have the NSA monitoring the overseas communications (and probably the overseas chat room), and then we have the FBI following the leads to the jihadists here. And there was financial tracking from elements in Jordan. How is the NY Times going to dismiss the fact this investigation was definitely at risk of being lost through their carelessness and cavalier attitudes?

I hope Sulzberger and Miller rot in hell.

And I hope all the unecessary war whores rot in hell right next to bush who is ultimately responsible for 50,000 dead innocent iraqis and 2500 + dead GIs..

[Yonivore]

And I hope all the unecessary war whores rot in hell right next to bush who is ultimately responsible for 50,000 dead innocent iraqis and 2500 + dead GIs..
That's a reasoned response. Apparently, you're not following this thread (http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45533).

[FromWayDowntown]

And, along that same line of reasoning, let me add some thoughts regarding the Supreme Court's actions during a time of war. Referring to The Los Angeles Times column by Boalt Hall Professor John Yoo on the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision: "The high court's Hamdan power grab." (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-yoo7jul07,0,3547342.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions) Yoo writes:


What makes this war different is not that the president acted while Congress watched but that the Supreme Court interfered while fighting was ongoing. Given its seizure of control over some of society's most contentious issues, such as abortion, affirmative action and religion, maybe the court's intervention should come as no surprise. But its effort to inject the Geneva Convention into the war on terrorism — even though the treaties do not include international conflict with non-states that violate every rule of civilized warfare — smacks of judicial micromanagement. The Supreme Court has never before imposed its preferred interpretation of a treaty governing warfare on the president during war, and Geneva has never been understood to give enemy combatants rights in our courts.

The court displays a lack of judicial restraint that would have shocked its predecessors. In World War II, the Supreme Court established precedents directly to the contrary. To evade these previous rulings, the court misread a law ordering it not to decide Guantanamo Bay cases, narrowed the very same authorization to use military force that it had read broadly just two years ago, ignored centuries of practice by presidents and Congress on military commissions and intruded into the executive's traditional national security prerogatives. Justices used to appreciate the inherent uncertainties and dire circumstances of war, and the limits of their own abilities. No longer.

Quoting John Yoo as being dissatisfied with the Hamdan decision is like quoting a police officer who is upset that his apprehended suspect wasn't convicted. Professor Yoo is, quite likely, the person responsible for formulating the Administration's arguments concerning the manner in which the Gitmo prisoners are held and handled. Of course he thinks the decision is wrong -- the Court rejected his argument!!

Here's (http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/06/hamdan-as-democracy-forcing-decision.html) at least one equally-credentialed commentator who thinks that the Court got it right legally and from a policy standpoint, while doing nothing that is harmful to the President's ability to prosecute this war:


Hamdan as a Democracy-Forcing Decision

JB

The key to understanding Hamdan is that the Court did not tell the President that he could under no circumstances create military tribunals with very limited procedural guarantees (in this case, without any right to know what the charges are or the right to know what evidence is being used against you). Rather, the Court told the President that under Article 36 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, he could not do so. That is because Article 36 of the UCMJ requires that the rules for military commissions be roughly the same as those for courts martial (which generally are used for offenses committed by our own soldiers). The UCMJ also requires that military commissions comport with the laws of war, which include the Geneva Conventions. Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, in turn, requires that people like Hamdan be tried by "regularly constituted court[s] affording all the judicial guarantees . . . recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." As Justice Kennedy's concurrence points out, the latter requirement dovetails to some degree with the UCMJ's requirement of uniformity between what we do for our own soldiers and what we do for people like Hamdan. The courts have to be regularly constituted, i.e., they can't be special purpose fly-by-night courts with their own made up procedures, and the procedures have to comport with basic guarantees of fairness, as, one presumes, our court martial system does.

The reason why the President is bound by these requirements is because Congress passed the UCMJ and because the UCMJ uses the laws of war-- which include the Geneva Conventions-- as a benchmark for procedures in military commissions. So when Congress acts under its constitutional authority to regulate military justice, as it has throughout the country's history, the President must abide by those regulations. Presumably, then, the Court has rejected the Article-II-on-steroids theory that John Yoo and others have offered-- that Congress may never interfere with the President's views about how best to run the military (even and including Presidential decisions to torture detainees, which was the subject of the infamous OLC torture memo). Hamdan holds that the President may not disregard the UMCJ even if it limits his discretion regarding how to deal with persons captured on the battlefield.

But note: If Congress decides to alter the UCMJ and override the Geneva Conventions, the President can have his military tribunals with procedures as unfair as he wants. But that would require that Congress publicly decide (1) that it no longer wanted to abide by the principle of uniformity announced in the UCMJ, (2) that it no longer required that military commissions abide by the laws of war, or, finally, (3) that Congress no longer considered the Geneva Conventions binding on the United States. Taking any of those steps is possible-- particularly the first two-- but doing so requires that Congress make a public statement to this effect and pass new legislation. The President, in turn, can withdraw the United States from the Geneva Conventions, but for political and military reasons alike, there is almost no chance that he would do that.

What the Court has done is not so much countermajoritarian as democracy forcing. It has limited the President by forcing him to go back to Congress to ask for more authority than he already has, and if Congress gives it to him, then the Court will not stand in his way. It is possible, of course, that with a Congress controlled by the Republicans, the President might get everything he wants. However this might be quite unpopular given the negative publicity currently swirling around our detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay. By forcing the President to ask for authorization, the Court does two things. First, it insists that both branches be on board with what the President wants to do. Second, it requires the President to ask for authority when passions have cooled somewhat, as opposed to right after 9/11, when Congress would likely have given him almost anything (except authorization for his NSA surveillance program, but let's not go there!). Third, by requiring the President to go to Congress for authorization, it gives Congress an opportunity and an excuse for oversight, something which it has heretofore been rather loathe to do on its own motion.

I repeat: nothing in Hamdan means that the President is constitutionally forbidden from doing what he wants to do. What the Court has done, rather is use the democratic process as a lever to discipline and constrain the President's possible overreaching. Given this Administration's history, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Balkin or Yoo?


I challenge anyone to point to a time when the Supreme Court has acted in such a manner as this.

The Youngstown Steel Seizure cases come to mind.

[George Gervin's Afro]

That's a reasoned response.


As was wishing the author's of NY Times article to rot in hell.

[FromWayDowntown]

That's where your premise fails.

It's not perfectly legal to report on national secrets. There's a law against it.

The New York Times did worse. They reported secrets they merely thought might be abused -- without providing any proof that they were.

In an earlier post, I agreed that the government had no authority to exercise prior restraint on the media; however, the media had no authority to violate the law either.

But then you create a complete and utter logical fallacy -- if the program is illegal, it can't be reported upon because it is deemed to be a national secret; but the program won't be deemed to be illegal until it is reported, which won't happen because it's a national secret.

That's exactly my premise, though I'm hardly surprised that your objective self finds that premise to be unconvincing.

It strikes me as bizzare beyond bizzare to claim that there is some impediment to reporting about "national secrets" that run afoul of the law. I'd be interested in seeing authority to say that reporting an illegal program that is deemed secret by the sitting administration is somehow treasonous. Not Yonivore on Everything; not some like-minded blogger -- real authority like a law or a court decision reaching that conclusion.

[Yonivore]

Balkin or Yoo?
I think the President would most closely identify with Balkin on this subject. I believe the administration is asking Congress to change UCMJ in order to accommodate the court's concern.


The Youngstown Steel Seizure cases come to mind.
Which the court cited in the Hamden decision. Good eye. Any others?

[George Gervin's Afro]

But then you create a complete and utter logical fallacy -- if the program is illegal, it can't be reported upon because it is deemed to be a national secret; but the program won't be deemed to be illegal until it is reported, which won't happen because it's a national secret.

That's exactly my premise, though I'm hardly surprised that your objective self finds that premise to be unconvincing.

It strikes me as bizzare beyond bizzare to claim that there is some impediment to reporting about "national secrets" that run afoul of the law. I'd be interested in seeing authority to say that reporting an illegal program that is deemed secret by the sitting administration is somehow treasonous. Not Yonivore on Everything; not some like-minded blogger -- real authority like a law or a court decision reaching that conclusion.


Simply stated it's having it both ways. That way you can bash the 'liberal' media and score political points with your base. A win -win for the Republicans

[FromWayDowntown]

I think the President would most closely identify with Balkin on this subject. I believe the administration is asking Congress to change UCMJ in order to accommodate the court's concern.

I doubt that. Yoo is the advocate for the unified executive and has crafted the frequently-failing arguments that the Administration has used in defending its means of prosecuting this war. If the President identified most closely with Balkin, he made a very curious decision by enlisting Professor Yoo to express those notions, since Balkin and Yoo are largely not in agreement on these Constitutional issues.


Which the court cited in the Hamden decision. Good eye. Any others?

Is it not sufficient precedent until its happened 3 or 4 times? For crissakes, it's not as though this is a matter that has recurred with any great frequency in the nation's history -- indeed, that's part of the reason why Hamdan even went before the Supreme Court.

[Yonivore]

But then you create a complete and utter logical fallacy -- if the program is illegal, it can't be reported upon because it is deemed to be a national secret; but the program won't be deemed to be illegal until it is reported, which won't happen because it's a national secret.

That's exactly my premise, though I'm hardly surprised that your objective self finds that premise to be unconvincing.

Who made the press a part of the judicial system?

The leakers in the NSA have avenues to report illegal activity through the Department of Justice and their own agencies, as well as Congressional oversight committees. There is nothing mentioned in any of the articles that these traitors availed themselves of those avenues before leaking it to the press.


It strikes me as bizzare beyond bizzare to claim that there is some impediment to reporting about "national secrets" that run afoul of the law.
There's no evidence any of these program did run afoul of the law. There is, in your own words, much disagreement over whether or not any of the leaked programs violated any laws.


I'd be interested in seeing authority to say that reporting an illegal program that is deemed secret by the sitting administration is somehow treasonous. Not Yonivore on Everything; not some like-minded blogger -- real authority like a law or a court decision reaching that conclusion.
You're characterization of the program as being "illegal" notwithstanding, I give you Justice Byron White in his opinion in the Pentagon Papers (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=403&invol=713) case:


[T]erminating the ban on publication of the relatively few sensitive documents the Government now seeks to suppress does not mean that the law either requires or invites newspapers or others to publish them or that they will be immune from criminal action if they do. Prior restraints require an unusually heavy justification under the First Amendment; but failure by the Government to justify prior restraints does not measure its constitutional entitlement to a conviction for criminal publication. That the Government mistakenly chose to proceed by injunction does not mean that it could not successfully proceed in another way.

When the Espionage Act was under consideration in 1917, Congress eliminated from the bill a provision that would have given the President broad powers in time of war to proscribe, under threat of criminal penalty, the publication of various categories of information related to the national defense. Congress at that time was unwilling to clothe the President with such far-reaching powers to monitor the press, and those opposed to this part of the legislation assumed that a necessary concomitant of such power was the power to "filter out the news to the people through some man." 55 Cong. Rec. 2008 (remarks of Sen. Ashurst). However, these same members of congress appeared to have little doubt that newspapers would be subject to criminal prosecution if they insisted on publishing information of the type Congress had itself determined should not be revealed. Senator Ashurst, for example, was quite sure that the editor of such a newspaper "should be punished if he did publish information as to the movements of the fleet, the troops, the aircraft, the location of powder factories, the location of defense works, and all that sort of thing." Id., at 2009.

The Criminal Code contains numerous provisions potentially relevant to these cases. Section 797 makes it a crime to publish certain photographs or drawings of military installations. Section 798, also in precise language, proscribes knowing and willful publication of any classified information concerning the cryptographic systems or communication intelligence activities of the United States as well as any information obtained from communication intelligence operations. If any of the material here at issue is of this nature, the newspapers are presumably now on full notice of the position of the United States and must face the consequences if they publish. I would have no difficulty in sustaining convictions under these sections on facts that would not justify the intervention of equity and the imposition of a prior restraint.

The same would be true under those sections of the Criminal Code casting a wider net to protect the national defense...

***

It is thus clear that Congress has addressed itself to the problems of protecting the security of the country and the national defense from unauthorized disclosure of potentially damaging information.
Authoritative enough for you?

[Yonivore]

On April 27, 1961 President John Kennedy gave a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

He addressed the issue of the press's role in preserving national security in the Cold War. President Kennedy lamented the fact that secret information about America's covert operations had routinely appeared in American newspapers, to be read by friend and foe alike. He noted that the Communists had openly boasted of gaining information from American newspapers that they would otherwise have had to use spies to attempt to steal. And he called on newspapers not to publish stories based on the single test, Is it news? but rather to add a second test: How does it affect national security?

The speech can be both read and listened to in its entirety here (http://millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/diglibrary/prezspeeches/kennedy/jfk_1961_0427.html). The speech is around 19 minutes long.

I would encourage you to listen to the entire speech. It is, in several ways, a relic of a better time.

[Yonivore]

I doubt that. Yoo is the advocate for the unified executive and has crafted the frequently-failing arguments that the Administration has used in defending its means of prosecuting this war. If the President identified most closely with Balkin, he made a very curious decision by enlisting Professor Yoo to express those notions, since Balkin and Yoo are largely not in agreement on these Constitutional issues.
Well, I said on this subject but, you're getting pretty adept at using generalizations.

In some of his latest statements, he seems to, if not agree, understand the Balkin position and, as I point out below, welcomes the courts direction in this matter.


Is it not sufficient precedent until its happened 3 or 4 times? For crissakes, it's not as though this is a matter that has recurred with any great frequency in the nation's history -- indeed, that's part of the reason why Hamdan even went before the Supreme Court.
Hey, I gave you credit. I still think Congress will address the shortcomings identified in Hamden and give the executive the tribunals it desires. The President has all but thanked the Supreme Court for giving them a roadmap by which to achieve this.

[FromWayDowntown]

Hey, I gave you credit. I still think Congress will address the shortcomings identified in Hamden and give the executive the tribunals it desires. The President has all but thanked the Supreme Court for giving them a roadmap by which to achieve this.

Then why on Earth is Professor Yoo whining about the outcome?

[Yonivore]

Then why on Earth is Professor Yoo whining about the outcome?
I don't know, that's a side issue that is now being addressed. But, you're detracting from the larger issue; that being the treasonous behavior of the New York Times and how it has damaged our capabilities to successfully prosecute the war on terrorism...and, threatens to continue doing so until they're reigned in.

[RandomGuy]

I hope Sulzberger and Miller rot in hell.


http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/TMW07-05-06.jpg


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Talk about reinforcing a stereotype...

[FromWayDowntown]

You're characterization of the program as being "illegal" notwithstanding, I give you Justice Byron White in his opinion in the Pentagon Papers (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=403&invol=713) case:


Authoritative enough for you?

Justice White's opinion, while undoubtedly persuasive to some, is not the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States -- it provides the reasoning of only Justice White and, by extension, Justice Potter Stewart, who was the other Justice to agree with Justice White's view.

His is a concurring opinion in that case and, as such, has limited precedential value beyond its potential ability to persuade others that he might be right. If this case were litigated to the Supreme Court, neither the Supreme Court nor any other court would be compelled to follow Justice White's opinion because it's not precedent.

Since it's not precedent, it is not, in any circumstance, authoritative.

[FromWayDowntown]

On April 27, 1961 President John Kennedy gave a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

He addressed the issue of the press's role in preserving national security in the Cold War. President Kennedy lamented the fact that secret information about America's covert operations had routinely appeared in American newspapers, to be read by friend and foe alike. He noted that the Communists had openly boasted of gaining information from American newspapers that they would otherwise have had to use spies to attempt to steal. And he called on newspapers not to publish stories based on the single test, Is it news? but rather to add a second test: How does it affect national security?

The speech can be both read and listened to in its entirety here (http://millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/diglibrary/prezspeeches/kennedy/jfk_1961_0427.html). The speech is around 19 minutes long.

I would encourage you to listen to the entire speech. It is, in several ways, a relic of a better time.

I'm not sure why you would cite to that -- President Kennedy's speech, by its own admission, tells us that at the very least, this sort of reporting is not new and hasn't (apparently) been prosecuted on the grounds that you claim should be employed here.

That President Kennedy thought it might be harmful to his effort is not in any material sense different than President Bush's thought that the NYT's reporting is harmful to the prosecution of his war. But, as is true over most of the history of this Republic, the President's thoughts on what should or should not be done are not conclusive on the rest of society.

It is worth noting, too, that somehow, despite President Kennedy's lamentations of press overreaching, the United States of America won the Cold War.

[Yonivore]

Justice White's opinion, while undoubtedly persuasive to some, is not the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States -- it provides the reasoning of only Justice White and, by extension, Justice Potter Stewart, who was the other Justice to agree with Justice White's view.

His is a concurring opinion in that case and, as such, has limited precedential value beyond its potential ability to persuade others that he might be right. If this case were litigated to the Supreme Court, neither the Supreme Court nor any other court would be compelled to follow Justice White's opinion because it's not precedent.

Since it's not precedent, it is not, in any circumstance, authoritative.
So, obviously you have a counter to that opinion that states if prior restraint cannot be exercised, then the paper can legally publish?

[Yonivore]

I'm not sure why you would cite to that -- President Kennedy's speech, by its own admission, tells us that at the very least, this sort of reporting is not new and hasn't (apparently) been prosecuted on the grounds that you claim should be employed here.

That President Kennedy thought it might be harmful to his effort is not in any material sense different than President Bush's thought that the NYT's reporting is harmful to the prosecution of his war. But, as is true over most of the history of this Republic, the President's thoughts on what should or should not be done are not conclusive on the rest of society.

It is worth noting, too, that somehow, despite President Kennedy's lamentations of press overreaching, the United States of America won the Cold War.
Thanks to Ronald Reagan.

[FromWayDowntown]

So, obviously you have a counter to that opinion that states if prior restraint cannot be exercised, then the paper can legally publish?

I don't need a counter to it. Justice White's opinion is one position. Another is that Justice White's opinion is untenable. There are other shades between those extremes. The citation to Justice White's concurrence, though, only proves to me that the issue is one that has not been decided one way or the other. A concurring opinion in which only one other Justice joined is hardly the law of the land.

[Yonivore]

I don't need a counter to it. Justice White's opinion is one position. Another is that Justice White's opinion is untenable. There are other shades between those extremes. The citation to Justice White's concurrence, though, only proves to me that the issue is one that has not been decided one way or the other. A concurring opinion in which only one other Justice joined is hardly the law of the land.
But, there is no position that states the publisher cannot be prosecuted and, just because the government did not prosecute, does not mean the violations were any less illegal.

[FromWayDowntown]

Thanks to Ronald Reagan.

Of course, right from page 1 of the conservative playbook. You're right -- and amazingly, President Reagan was able to win the Cold War in spite of the press.

The point is that even reporting that appeared over-zealous to some did not compromise the ability of the United States to prosecute and eventually win a rather amorphous war.

[FromWayDowntown]

But, there is no position that states the publisher cannot be prosecuted and, just because the government did not prosecute, does not mean the violations were any less illegal.

Fine, prosecute them. Find a law that permits a prosecution and see if you can get a conviction. Good luck. Most legal analysts that I've heard opine on this issue think that the chances of obtaining a criminal conviction of the NYT or any of its employees are about equal to the chances of hell freezing over.

[xrayzebra]

http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/TMW07-05-06.jpg


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Talk about reinforcing a stereotype...

OMG, now RG is using butons and SA210 thingy. Posting cartoons.

[Yonivore]

Fine, prosecute them. Find a law that permits a prosecution and see if you can get a conviction. Good luck. Most legal analysts that I've heard opine on this issue think that the chances of obtaining a criminal conviction of the NYT or any of its employees are about equal to the chances of hell freezing over.
I believe you're what Vladimir Lenin once called a "useful idiot."

Your opposition to President Bush and all things his administration is trying to do is, in large part, serving the interests of our enemies. Way to go.

I'm still waiting on the name of one American citizen that has been harmed by the NSA or SWIFT programs.

[FromWayDowntown]

I believe you're what Vladimir Lenin once called a "useful idiot."

Hey, you've at least recognized my utility!! I've accomplished something here.

I'm not sure why the suggestion that the NYT hasn't violated any law is one that leads you to such witty suggestions about my character or intellect, but if that's the best you've got, by gum, you've stung me. Ouch!


Your opposition to President Bush and all things his administration is trying to do is, in large part, serving the interests of our enemies. Way to go.

I'm still waiting on the name of one American citizen that has been harmed by the NSA or SWIFT programs.

Look, I don't oppose anything that President Bush has done in prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. While I disagree with the decision to invade Iraq, I also don't oppose anything that President Bush has done in prosecuting this war, to the extent that he has followed the law. I don't oppose the notion that the President might seek to have the law changed in order to make his prosecution of the war easier, so long as those changes to the law do not interfere with established Constitutional and legal rights possessed by citizens. At this point, I would join with the President in opposing a scheduled withdrawal from Iraq. On all of those points, I'm decidedly with the President.

What I do oppose is the notion that there is some "no harm, no foul" notion in the law that absolves the President of the need to abide by the Constitution in all circumstances -- even in formulating foreign policy and even if prosecuting a war. Does the oath of office -- you know, that declaration that the President will support and defend the Constitution of the United States -- mean anything anymore? Should we change it to "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, except in times that I deem to be emergencies or to the extent that my lawyers might be able to formulate an argument to circumvent well-established Constitutional principles?" That might be more appropriate.

[Yonivore]

Hey, you've at least recognized my utility!!
I recognized it a long time ago.

Unless you can produce an American citizen that has been harmed by any of these programs I'm going to say that, while there may be reasonable disagreement over the President's exercise of authority in these programs, that they are questions that should wait until after hostilities have cease or, at the very least, until you have a harmed party, with standing, that can bring suit.

Otherwise, you're just screeching in the wind and undermining the prosecution of a war.

[Yonivore]

Look, I don't oppose anything that President Bush has done in prosecuting the war in Afghanistan.
Whoa! I almost let this go.

What makes you think the NSA and SWIFT programs are something the President has done to advance our objectives in the war in Afghanistan?

[FromWayDowntown]

Unless you can produce an American citizen that has been harmed by any of these programs I'm going to say that, while there may be reasonable disagreement over the President's exercise of authority in these programs, that they are questions that should wait until after hostilities have cease or, at the very least, until you have a harmed party, with standing, that can bring suit.

No harm, no foul?

It's interesting to read a proposal that the Constitution be so lightly disregarded.

[FromWayDowntown]

Whoa! I almost let this go.

What makes you think the NSA and SWIFT programs are something the President has done to advance our objectives in the war in Afghanistan?

I don't. I said quite unequivocally that I support the action the President has taken in Afghanistan. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

[Yonivore]

I don't. I said quite unequivocally that I support the action the President has taken in Afghanistan. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
The action in Afghanistan involves the use of and is dependent upon intelligence programs such as SWIFT and the NSA Surveillance programs.

[Yonivore]

No harm, no foul?

It's interesting to read a proposal that the Constitution be so lightly disregarded.
I don't think the Constitution has been lightly disregarded; either in the Article II powers of the President or the Fourth Amendment protections against UNREASONABLE searches or seizures.

It's not a "no harm, no foul" position, it's a position that recognizes there are disagreements over this but, unless it's causing harm, let's resolve the disagreement at a time when our bickering doesn't undermine a valuable intelligence asset during a time of war.

I know, it's not as "catchy" as no harm, no foul; but, it's my position. And, the position of many.

[Yonivore]

Again, what public interest was served by the New York Times leak of the SWIFT Program?

[Yonivore]

I'm still trying to understand the public interest served by revealing the SWIFT program.

The New York Times would now have us believe that everyone but you and me knew about the “closely held” SWIFT surveillance program. Well, you, me, and Hambali the Bali Bomber, whom we arrested in 2003 (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/washington/22cnd-intel.html?pagewanted=6&ei=5070&en=c96f530192e24b9f&ex=1152072000):

Among the successes was the capture of a Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort, several officials said. The Swift data identified a previously unknown figure in Southeast Asia who had financial dealings with a person suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda; that link helped locate Hambali in Thailand in 2003, they said.
Let’s look at the public record and put a name to one of those “persons”, shall we? I happened upon this CBC broadcast (http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/jabarah/singapore.html) story about the strange journeys of an apparent Al-Qaeda bag man, Canadian Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, who helped Hambali plan the Bali nightclub bombing in 2002:

In November 2001, Jabarah went to City One Plaza in Kuala Lumpur several times to meet al-Qaeda’s chief financial officer in Southeast Asia. He received $10,000 US on each visit, which he transferred to the men who were to carry out the bombings.
***
After the arrests in Singapore, Hambali met with Jabarah in Thailand, says Rohan Gunaratna. Hambali knew how important Jabarah was and that he would be identified and picked up if he remained in Southeast Asia.

Hambali urged Jabarah to leave Southeast Asia immediately for the Middle East, which he did.

According to the FBI Interrogation report, Hambali gave Mohammed Mansour Jabarah a critical piece of information in that Bangkok meeting. He said that Al Qaeda would now move on to attacking undefended targets such as “nightclubs frequented by Westerners” in Indonesia and elsewhere.

“Why did Hambali tell this information to Jabarah?” says Gunaratna. “Because Jemaah Islamiyah was dependant on al-Qaeda money, and that money, $70,000 was provided to Jemaah Islamiyah by al-Qaeda through Jabarah.”
It looks like Jabarah and the unnamed Al-Qaeda money man in Kuala Lumpur may have been the other two parties identified by Swift surveillance, and that Jabarah was the “link” who met with Hambali in Thailand and tipped off the authorities. In which case that makes at least four terrorists identified by the program.

The fourth being (according to Risen and Lichtblau) Uzair Paracha, a Pakistani man arrested in Manhattan in 2003 (http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/04/alqaeda.suspect/) and thought to be a financial conduit for Al-Qaeda. Curiously, authorities attributed Paracha’s arrest to information received from the interrogation of Al-Qaeda mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed*, and not to the surveillance of the Swift data, the closely-held open secret that everybody knew about, except for you, me, and four terrorists (apparently including Al-Qaeda’s chief financial officer in Southeast Asia, whom you would think would know about this sort of thing if anybody would.)

Oh, maybe we should make that five, because Paracha’s father Saifullah Paracha (http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:U_EekydzrlcJ:dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp%3Fpage%3Dstory_12-2-2005_pg7_30+saifullah+paracha&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=18), was arrested in Thailand and is now in Guantanamo:

According to American investigators, Saifullah Paracha, 58, who is being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba for suspected terrorist ties, urged Al Qaeda operatives to acquire nuclear weapons for use against US troops. The allegation, contained in documents filed recently in US District Court in Washington, also identifies Saifullah Paracha, who has an import business in New York, as a participant in a plot to smuggle explosives into the United States and to help Al Qaeda hide “large amounts of money,” according to newspaper reports.
So maybe the authorities thought that if the program had already caught three money men, a courier, and a major terrorist organizer there might be one or two more Al-Qaeda operatives somewhere in the world who hadn’t gotten the memo about the Swift program surveillance…and so it might be a good idea to keep it a secret.

Then, if you watched the "Vent," by Michelle Malkin, I linked to in another thread you find out not only were the Parachas financing terror, they were helping terrorist Majid Khan return illegally into the country to carry out the gas station bombing. Paracha Jr. even posed as Khan on the phone to INS and picked up Khan’s mail in Baltimore.

In other words, SWIFT monitoring not only led to the arrests of the five or six terrorists detailed here, but if it brought Uzair Paracha to light…

…then SWIFT monitoring disrupted a terrorist attack on the United States.

But the terrorists won’t be so careless next time. Thanks, New York Times!

You know, looking back over that CBC story linked above, I notice that Mohammed Mansour Jabarah’s brother Abdul Rahman Jabarah was also an Al Qaeda operative who was killed by Saudi police in 2003. His father told him in 2002 that the Canadian police were looking for him. Since Mohammed Jabarah was apparently discovered through Swift monitoring, and was being tracked and followed, and both brothers were wanted by the time they met in Dubai in January 2002, it seems logical that Swift surveillance of one Jabarah brother led to the revelation of the other as well—bringing the total to six terrorists probably identified and/or stopped by the secret Swift program. How many more leads these six that we know about turned up, we’ll never know—especially since all of their associates are now busily covering their tracks now that they realize how the Infidel Crusader CIA has been tracking them down and picking them off.

[boutons_]

"Thanks, New York Times!"

and WSJ, the fucking hippies!

Have any of you ever wired money overseas? ime, a simple phone call to my bank the in US or other countries is not enough. There must be a face-to-facd, or a fax or other backing document and and verifications before the bank will execute the transfer order.

Could any terrorist, charged with handling al-Quaida funds, be so stupid and uninstructed by the al-Qaida leaders, and already living a paranoid life in the shadows, as NOT to know every that EFT was not being recorded and monitored?

If any terrorist were so stupid, he is now necessarily informed ONLY because of the press? GMAFB

The right-wingers are trying extremely desparately to blow this affair up as a fog to try cover all all the horrible news from Iraq, still bloodily in its eternal "last throes" of insurgency, sectarian civil war, infiltrated Iraqi police/army, and a defunct, still-born Iraqi government.

[Yonivore]

::bump::

[xrayzebra]

"Thanks, New York Times!"

and WSJ, the fucking hippies!

Have any of you ever wired money overseas? ime, a simple phone call to my bank the in US or other countries is not enough. There must be a face-to-facd, or a fax or other backing document and and verifications before the bank will execute the transfer order.

Could any terrorist, charged with handling al-Quaida funds, be so stupid and uninstructed by the al-Qaida leaders, and already living a paranoid life in the shadows, as NOT to know every that EFT was not being recorded and monitored?

If any terrorist were so stupid, he is now necessarily informed ONLY because of the press? GMAFB

The right-wingers are trying extremely desparately to blow this affair up as a fog to try cover all all the horrible news from Iraq, still bloodily in its eternal "last throes" of insurgency, sectarian civil war, infiltrated Iraqi police/army, and a defunct, still-born Iraqi government.

Or go to the nearest money exchange guy and he will handle it for a
slight fee. There is a name for these folks, but cant think of it right
off hand. Banks aren't the only way to handle international transfer of
funds.

[Yonivore]

Or go to the nearest money exchange guy and he will handle it for a
slight fee. There is a name for these folks, but cant think of it right
off hand. Banks aren't the only way to handle international transfer of
funds.
Yeah, the Muslims have a fairly intricate system of moving money back and forth.

And, yes boutons, they're that stupid. Read some of the posts, we actually captured a fairly big terrorist using SWIFT.

But, that's really all beside the point because, I'm only really wanting the answer to one question.

What public interest was served by revealing the SWIFT program after the government made a case for not doing so?

[RandomGuy]

OMG, now RG is using butons and SA210 thingy. Posting cartoons.

I might do otherwise, but Yoni has me on ignore because he knows that I will kick his rhetorical ass.

SOOOOO I will simply stick to satirizing him, and showing him for the fool that he is.

[RandomGuy]

Yeah, the Muslims have a fairly intricate system of moving money back and forth.

And, yes boutons, they're that stupid. Read some of the posts, we actually captured a fairly big terrorist using SWIFT.

But, that's really all beside the point because, I'm only really wanting the answer to one question.

What public interest was served by revealing the SWIFT program after the government made a case for not doing so?

Ignoring the bit about the administration bragging about the program long before the story?

[RandomGuy]

Further, as Media Matters for America previously noted, the cooperative effort to track terrorist financing between the banking consortium known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) and the U.S. government was a matter of public record long before the Times detailed the Treasury program, and government officials have previously stated that a shift had been observed in the way terror suspects moved money. Levey, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, testified before Congress on September 22, 2004, that the government had begun "working closely" with the international Financial Action Task Force to interdict terrorist organizations' increased use of cash. 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.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200606290006

[RandomGuy]

But Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9/11 commission and former Democratic senator from Nebraska, took a different view, saying that if the news reports drive terrorists out of the banking system, that could actually help the counterterrorism cause.

"If we tell people who are potential criminals that we have a lot of police on the beat, that's a substantial deterrent," said Mr. Kerrey, now president of New School University. If terrorists decide it is too risky to move money through official channels, "that's very good, because it's much, much harder to move money in other ways," Mr. Kerrey said.

[RandomGuy]

There is growing debate about whether the disclosures aided terrorists or added to the government's burden. Victor Comras, a retired diplomat and consultant on terrorism financing, said he finds it "doubtful" that the disclosure had much impact because many terrorists have taken steps in recent years to mask their transactions, aware they might be under surveillance.

"I can understand why people are upset when any classified information is leaked, but I wouldn't call this a major damage to our national security or to the war on terror," Comras said in an interview. "A terrorist would have to be pretty dumb not to know that this was happening."

[RandomGuy]

Quite frankly, I don't really mind the SWIFT program. It seems to be a fairly good thing from all that I have read.

It is the illegal wire taps that piss me off, and quite frankly scare the bejeesus out of me for the simple fact that the administration has proven itself to not care about the law. Nixon thought he was above the law too, and executive overreaching should worry anybody with common sense.

It only takes one fire at the Reichstag (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire)... Machtergreifung (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machtergreifung) anyone?

[jochhejaam]

I might do otherwise, but Yoni has me on ignore because he knows that I will kick his rhetorical ass.
I'm sure everyone is impressed by your internet forum machismo.

[RandomGuy]

I'm sure everyone is impressed by your internet forum machismo.


Why thank you. :lol

[Yonivore]

I'm sure everyone is impressed by your internet forum machismo.
Oh yeah. I'm impressed.

[gtownspur]

It's the Tom Tommorrow Cartoons we should worry about.

[RandomGuy]

Oh yeah. I'm impressed.


(amused)

It was very obvious bait. I would love to actually mull things over in a more grown up fashion.

BUT

The ignore thing makes it hard to make a point. It is the equivalent of putting ones fingers in ones ears, closing one's eyes and saying "NYA-LA-LA-LA, I can't hear you."

As I said, if there is no engagement, there is only satire. Or maybe the creation of a few alter-egos :angel

[gtownspur]

(amused)

It was very obvious bait. I would love to actually mull things over in a more grown up fashion.

BUT

The ignore thing makes it hard to make a point. It is the equivalent of putting ones fingers in ones ears, closing one's eyes and saying "NYA-LA-LA-LA, I can't hear you."

As I said, if there is no engagement, there is only satire. Or maybe the creation of a few alter-egos :angel


I don't know why Yoni ignores you, but i noticed that it could be that when you debate, you are a very pretentious person and are very ingenious.

[Yonivore]

I don't know why Yoni ignores you, but i noticed that it could be that when you debate, you are a very pretentious person and are very ingenious.
Ingenious? Are you sure you know the definition of that word?

I put him on ignore because he epitomizes my signature.

[gtownspur]

i meant ingenouis

[RandomGuy]

i meant ingenouis

(respectfully)

dis·in·gen·u·ous

( lacking in candor; also : giving a false appearance of simple frankness )

I think that is the word you were looking for.

[RandomGuy]

I don't know why Yoni ignores you, but i noticed that it could be that when you debate, you are a very pretentious person and are very ingenious.

I try to be intellectually honest, and demand as much. If that is pretentious, then I am guilty as charged.

I value good critical thinking. Again, if that is pretentious, I will admit to it.

Honestly, I have in the past been less than mature in my posts. I am working on being a bit more above name calling, etc.

I doubt Yoni would ever to the same, tho'. I think his thinking and methods of dealing with the world are a bit more ossified at a rather immature level.

[gtownspur]

I try to be intellectually honest, and demand as much. If that is pretentious, then I am guilty as charged.

I value good critical thinking. Again, if that is pretentious, I will admit to it.

Honestly, I have in the past been less than mature in my posts. I am working on being a bit more above name calling, etc.

I doubt Yoni would ever to the same, tho'. I think his thinking and methods of dealing with the world are a bit more ossified at a rather immature level.


Well i must say, that you've muched improved in this area, but you sometimes resort back to your old ways. ( i though am not claiming the moral high ground here, i sometimes lose my patience with peeps)

What i noticed from yoni, is that after he gets personally attacked, he just goes on with the subject at hand, and doesn't try to inflame anyone. If him posting info that are opposed to ohters is considered immature, then we as a forum have lost it.

[Yonivore]

doh! He had me until paragraph 4.

[boutons_]

Have dubya/dickhead/rove announced a prosecurtorial team to go after NYT, WSJ, LAT for treason? Maybe they're holding the legal attack until closer to the mid-terms with this purely political issue. It's not a NatSec issue.

[Yonivore]

part of me hopes the big newspaper companies take a hit
They are taking a hit. Circulation is dropping like a rock.

[xrayzebra]

Or running poll after poll and making that the lead story of the day.

[FromWayDowntown]

I'm still trying to understand the public interest served by revealing the SWIFT program.

The New York Times would now have us believe that everyone but you and me knew about the “closely held” SWIFT surveillance program. Well, you, me, and Hambali the Bali Bomber, whom we arrested in 2003 (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/washington/22cnd-intel.html?pagewanted=6&ei=5070&en=c96f530192e24b9f&ex=1152072000):

Let’s look at the public record and put a name to one of those “persons”, shall we? I happened upon this CBC broadcast (http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/jabarah/singapore.html) story about the strange journeys of an apparent Al-Qaeda bag man, Canadian Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, who helped Hambali plan the Bali nightclub bombing in 2002:

It looks like Jabarah and the unnamed Al-Qaeda money man in Kuala Lumpur may have been the other two parties identified by Swift surveillance, and that Jabarah was the “link” who met with Hambali in Thailand and tipped off the authorities. In which case that makes at least four terrorists identified by the program.

The fourth being (according to Risen and Lichtblau) Uzair Paracha, a Pakistani man arrested in Manhattan in 2003 (http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/04/alqaeda.suspect/) and thought to be a financial conduit for Al-Qaeda. Curiously, authorities attributed Paracha’s arrest to information received from the interrogation of Al-Qaeda mastermind Khaled Sheikh Mohammed*, and not to the surveillance of the Swift data, the closely-held open secret that everybody knew about, except for you, me, and four terrorists (apparently including Al-Qaeda’s chief financial officer in Southeast Asia, whom you would think would know about this sort of thing if anybody would.)

Oh, maybe we should make that five, because Paracha’s father Saifullah Paracha (http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:U_EekydzrlcJ:dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp%3Fpage%3Dstory_12-2-2005_pg7_30+saifullah+paracha&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=18), was arrested in Thailand and is now in Guantanamo:

So maybe the authorities thought that if the program had already caught three money men, a courier, and a major terrorist organizer there might be one or two more Al-Qaeda operatives somewhere in the world who hadn’t gotten the memo about the Swift program surveillance…and so it might be a good idea to keep it a secret.

Then, if you watched the "Vent," by Michelle Malkin, I linked to in another thread you find out not only were the Parachas financing terror, they were helping terrorist Majid Khan return illegally into the country to carry out the gas station bombing. Paracha Jr. even posed as Khan on the phone to INS and picked up Khan’s mail in Baltimore.

In other words, SWIFT monitoring not only led to the arrests of the five or six terrorists detailed here, but if it brought Uzair Paracha to light…

…then SWIFT monitoring disrupted a terrorist attack on the United States.

But the terrorists won’t be so careless next time. Thanks, New York Times!

You know, looking back over that CBC story linked above, I notice that Mohammed Mansour Jabarah’s brother Abdul Rahman Jabarah was also an Al Qaeda operative who was killed by Saudi police in 2003. His father told him in 2002 that the Canadian police were looking for him. Since Mohammed Jabarah was apparently discovered through Swift monitoring, and was being tracked and followed, and both brothers were wanted by the time they met in Dubai in January 2002, it seems logical that Swift surveillance of one Jabarah brother led to the revelation of the other as well—bringing the total to six terrorists probably identified and/or stopped by the secret Swift program. How many more leads these six that we know about turned up, we’ll never know—especially since all of their associates are now busily covering their tracks now that they realize how the Infidel Crusader CIA has been tracking them down and picking them off.

In the spirit of giving credit to those who actually concoct arguments:Patterico's Pontification (7/3/06) (http://patterico.com/2006/07/03/4818/see-dubya-which-terrorists-knew-what-about-terror-finance-monitoring/)

[Yonivore]

In the spirit of giving credit to those who actually concoct arguments:Patterico's Pontification (7/3/06) (http://patterico.com/2006/07/03/4818/see-dubya-which-terrorists-knew-what-about-terror-finance-monitoring/)
Now, care to respond to the argument?

[FromWayDowntown]

I think the FIrst Amendment freedom of the press is far from unlimited, but it's also far from limiting. And I don't think the First Amendment serves only to protect the press; it would be a fairly unique right if that had been the case. The First Amendment protects the American people by assuring that their right to know what the government is doing will always be protected. There will certainly be tensions between the right of the people to know (and the right of the press to publish) information and the desire of government to keep certain matters secret. But that tension is diminished pretty significantly when the matter to be publicized is one that is already a matter of public record, even if only obscurely public.

In a general sense, there is a public interest in knowing if the government is acting in a fashion that might be illegal. I don't know that I trust either the NYT or the Bush Administration to make dispositive decisions about whether a particular program is or is not legal. As such, the possibility that the government might be breaking the law will always be a matter that warrants media attention. That's particularly true where the government has already made even general disclosures about that program; if the specifics make the program illegal, it's antithetical to the First Amendment to say that the program should remain shrouded in secrecy because the government would prefer it that way.

As to the specifics of the SWIFT story -- I'll reiterate my previous statements that there's a strong argument that the NYT made a poor editorial decision. Nevertheless, there's also some suggestion that if exposing the program limits the desire of would-be terrorists to easily transfer money across international borders and compels them to seek means that are far less convenient or efficient, it might be that exposure will actually prove to be innocuous or perhaps even helpful to limiting terror attacks. The less streamlined the means for disseminating the money necessary to conduct a terror attack, the more likely that funding an attack will be foiled at some point along the way. Like I say, I'm not defending the NYT -- I think it probably made a poor decision; but I'm not convinced that the consequences of that bad decision will be as dire as your previously-anonymous bloggers are suggesting.

[Yonivore]

I think the FIrst Amendment freedom of the press is far from unlimited, but it's also far from limiting. And I don't think the First Amendment serves only to protect the press; it would be a fairly unique right if that had been the case. The First Amendment protects the American people by assuring that their right to know what the government is doing will always be protected. There will certainly be tensions between the right of the people to know (and the right of the press to publish) information and the desire of government to keep certain matters secret. But that tension is diminished pretty significantly when the matter to be publicized is one that is already a matter of public record, even if only obscurely public.

As to the particulars of the SWIFT story -- in a general sense, there is a public interest in knowing if the government is acting in a fashion that might be illegal. I don't know that I trust either the NYT or the Bush Administration to make dispositive decisions about whether a particular program is or is not legal. As such, the possibility that the government might be breaking the law will always be a matter that warrants media attention. That's particularly true where the government has already made even general disclosures about that program; if the specifics make the program illegal, it's antithetical to the First Amendment to say that the program should remain shrouded in secrecy because the government would prefer it that way.

I'll reiterate that there's a strong argument that the NYT made a poor editorial decision. Nevertheless, there's also some suggestion that if exposing the program limits the desire of would-be terrorists to easily transfer money across international borders and compels them to seek means that are far less convenient or efficient, it might be that exposure will actually prove to be innocuous or perhaps even helpful to limiting terror attacks. The less streamlined the means for disseminating the money necessary to conduct a terror attack, the more likely that funding an attack will be foiled at some point along the way. Like I say, I'm not defending the NYT -- I think it probably made a poor decision; but I'm not convinced that the consequences of that bad decision will be as dire as your previously-anonymous bloggers are suggesting.
Neither the New York Times nor the administration, nor anyone since, has suggested the SWIFT program was illegal.

So, again, I ask; what public interest was served by exposing it?

[FromWayDowntown]

Neither the New York Times nor the administration, nor anyone since, has suggested the SWIFT program was illegal.

So, again, I ask; what public interest was served by exposing it?



As to the specifics of the SWIFT story -- I'll reiterate my previous statements that there's a strong argument that the NYT made a poor editorial decision.

[Yonivore]

And, in doing so, exposed an important intelligence asset that was legal, effective, and vital.

What was their motive and what public interest was served? The administration spent weeks, from the Treasury Secretary on down, pleading with the Times not to publish. What possibly motivated them to do so?

That's the story here. I believe the New York Times is bent on damaging this administration and undermining the war. Cost be damned.

[FromWayDowntown]

And, in doing so, exposed an important intelligence asset that was legal, effective, and vital.

And? What do you propose should be done about it?


What was their motive and what public interest was served? The administration spent weeks, from the Treasury Secretary on down, pleading with the Times not to publish. What possibly motivated them to do so?

That's the story here. I believe the New York Times is bent on damaging this administration and undermining the war. Cost be damned.

You and your ghost writers assume a sinister intent. I and others think there was a poor editorial decision. I'm sure you won't be happy until the Times has been forced to shut it's doors. I'm certain that the Times serves public purposes that are significant, even if the editorial process is somewhat cavalier.

I'd think those 4 sentences sum up the argument. You'll now call me unpatriotic or sympathetic to terrorists and I'll ignore your name calling. is there anything else you want to find and quote here to make a point that is different?

:)

[Yonivore]

And? What do you propose should be done about it?
They should be tried.


You and your ghost writers assume a sinister intent. I and others think there was a poor editorial decision. I'm sure you won't be happy until the Times has been forced to shut it's doors. I'm certain that the Times serves public purposes that are significant, even if the editorial process is somewhat cavalier.

I'd think those 4 sentences sum up the argument. You'll now call me unpatriotic or sympathetic to terrorists and I'll ignore your name calling. is there anything else you want to find and quote here to make a point that is different?
:)
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014702.php

[FromWayDowntown]

They should be tried.

Then prosecute them. The choice is really up to this Administration -- it has control of the Justice Department. So, get it done.

Good luck.


http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014702.php

Then prosecute them.

[Yonivore]

Then prosecute them. The choice is really up to this Administration -- it has control of the Justice Department. So, get it done.

Good luck.

Then prosecute them.
I hope they do.

[FromWayDowntown]

I hope they do.

Well, and now this thread would seem to be done.

I think we've changed the world.

[Yonivore]

Well, and now this thread would seem to be done.

I think we've changed the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbaya

[RandomGuy]

Well i must say, that you've muched improved in this area, but you sometimes resort back to your old ways. ( i though am not claiming the moral high ground here, i sometimes lose my patience with peeps)

What i noticed from yoni, is that after he gets personally attacked, he just goes on with the subject at hand, and doesn't try to inflame anyone. If him posting info that are opposed to ohters is considered immature, then we as a forum have lost it.

The part I find immature (in an intellectual sense, not emotional one) is that he has never admitted that he was wrong about anything that I have noticed, and tries to put forth unsubstantiated opinion peices as "fact".

To be intellectually honest is to admit when others might have a point, or might look at evidence and reasonably reach a conclusion different than your own.

There are lots of good resources for learning good critical thinking skills, and I encourage anybody to read them.

[xrayzebra]

And pop goes the weasel. Poor old NYT, there going through some tough times.
I wonder why?

Print this article Close This Window
NYT to cut paper size and close plant
Tue Jul 18, 2006 7:36 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co. <NYT.N> plans to narrow the size of its flagship newspaper and close a printing plant, resulting in the loss of 250 jobs, the company said in a story posted on its Web site late on Monday.

The changes, set to take place in April 2008, include the closure of a printing plant in Edison, New Jersey. The company will sublet the plant and consolidate its regional printing facilities at a plant in Queens, the paper said.

The newspaper will be narrower by 1 1/2 inches. The redesign will result in the loss of 250 production jobs, the company said.

The New York Times said it expected the changes to result in savings of $42 million.

The narrower format, offset by some additional pages, will reduce the space the paper has for news by 5 percent, Executive Editor Bill Keller said in the article.

The Times will join a list of several other papers from The Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times that have reduced their size as they cut newsprint and other production costs and try to stem a loss of readers and advertising to the Internet and other media.

Separately, Chief Financial Officer Leonard Forman will retire in 2007 after the company names a successor, another article posted on the Times Web site said.

Forman was president of The New York Times Co. Magazine Group from 1998 until it was sold in 2001, the biography on the company's Web site says. He was senior vice president for corporate development, new ventures and electronic businesses from 1996 to 1998.

He also worked for the Times Co. as director of corporate planning and chief economist from 1974 to 1986.

©

================================================== ===========

Think the liberal rags will learn. I don't.

[FromWayDowntown]

Think the liberal rags will learn. I don't.

Learn what? That day-old news is difficult to sell when up-to-the-minute news is available for free from a variety of sources and that the paradigm of the newspaper is becoming obsolete whether the paper has a political bent or not? Gosh, that's a huge lesson.

You assume that this is somehow related to the stories that have been garnering so much attention. I'd assume that this was an inevitable consequence of the changing paradigm for news delivery.

[RandomGuy]

I find the conservative jihad against the NYT disturbing.

[boutons_]

"conservative jihad against the NYT"

absolutely anyting, any diversionary smoke and fog, to push the Iraq fiasco off the radar.

There's only one issue today that should be occupying the USA and that's Iraq.

The Repugs must be thrilled that Hezbollah and Israel have captured the 24 x 7 coverage to distract from the full-blown Iraq civil war.