NYT and State Secrets

[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 do ents, 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

[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 ins utions 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 do ents 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

[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 compe ive 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 bersome 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 head 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 ins utions 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

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_]

[xrayzebra]

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



White House

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. , 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. , 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, 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, 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]

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?" The first half of the column consists of throat-clearing pla udes, 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, 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 do ents 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 cons utional en lement 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?" 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 cons utionally 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". Bul , 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 head's widely publicized ideology of promoting the powers of the Executive way above those of the Legislative and Judidiciary, invalidating the paranoia of the Cons ution's checks and balances.

For head, 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, Lichtblau himself authored an article in the Times led, "U.S. Lacks Strategy to Curb Terror Funds." 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 ("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 ins utions 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 "s 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 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 s s, 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