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Bravo for the young Lt. Cotton. I too hope the NYT is held accountable. But
politics being politics I am afraid they wont.
I too say a big "thank you" for your courage and service to our country.
June 26, 2006
A word from Lt. Cotton
Lt. Tom Cotton writes this morning from Baghdad with a word for the New York Times:
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
========================
Way to go Lt. Cotton!!! I salute you and say a huge "thank you" for your service to our country!!
Bravo for the young Lt. Cotton. I too hope the NYT is held accountable. But
politics being politics I am afraid they wont.
I too say a big "thank you" for your courage and service to our country.
Darth head and Rove-r have beat the drums, the robots are rising up in unison.
==============
June 28, 2006
Damage Study Urged on Surveillance Reports
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, June 27 — Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, asked the director of national intelligence on Tuesday to assess any damage to American counterterrorism efforts caused by the disclosure of secret programs to monitor telephone calls and financial transactions.
Mr. Roberts,Republican of Kansas,
(
singled out The New York Times for an article last week that reported that the government was tracking money transfers handled by a banking consortium based in Belgium. The targeting of the financial data, which includes some Americans' transactions, was also reported Thursday by The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.
( when WSJ starts trashing a Repug administration (this isn't the first time), you know you're DOA
In his letter to John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, Mr. Roberts wrote that "we have been unable to persuade the media to act responsibly and to protect the means by which we protect this nation."
( how about persuading the WH to act responsibly rather than starting phony wars? )
He asked for a formal evaluation of damage to intelligence collection resulting from the revelation of the secret financial monitoring as well as The Times's disclosure in December of the National Security Agency's monitoring of phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans suspected of having links to Al Qaeda.
In London, meanwhile, a human rights group said Tuesday that it had filed complaints in 32 countries alleging that the banking consortium, known as Swift, violated European and Asian privacy laws by giving the United States access to its data.
Simon Davies, director of the group, Privacy International, said the scale of the American monitoring, involving millions of records, "places this disclosure in the realm of a fishing exercise rather than a legally authorized investigation."
The Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, has asked the Justice Ministry to investigate whether Swift violated Belgian law by allowing the United States government access to its data.
The American Civil Liberties Union has condemned the program, and a Chicago lawyer, Steven E. Schwarz, filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Swift on Friday alleging that it had violated United States financial privacy statutes.
President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and numerous Republicans in Congress have vigorously defended the financial tracking program as legal and valuable and condemned its public disclosure. They have suggested that the articles might tip off terrorists that their money transfers could be detected.
( Go ahead, punks, make my day. I'm feelin lucky. Prove it!)
Representative J. D. Hayworth, Republican of Arizona, circulated a letter to colleagues on Tuesday asking that The Times's Congressional press credentials be suspended.
Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said any effort to measure damage to intelligence collection would take some time.
"It's not as if the terrorists are going to say, 'Oops! Going to stop doing that,' " Mr. Snow said at a briefing. "But I think it is safe to say that once you provide a piece of intelligence, people on the other side act on it."
The electronic messaging system operated by Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, routes nearly $6 trillion a day in transfers among nearly 8,000 financial ins utions.
At a confirmation hearing on Tuesday for Henry M. Paulson Jr., the nominee for Treasury secretary, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, asked whether the monitoring might violate the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches. "I think you'll agree that we could fight terrorism properly and adequately without having a police state in America," Mr. Baucus said.
Mr. Paulson did not express an opinion on the propriety of the Swift monitoring but pledged to study it. "I am going to, if confirmed, be all over it, make sure I learn everything there is to learn, make sure I understand the law thoroughly," he said.
( Why work do your legal homework, asshole? Just as AG Gonzalez. Poco Al will give you whatever legal mis/interpretation/fantasy that head wants
Democratic staff members said they had pressed Treasury officials in recent days for a fuller accounting of which members of Congress were briefed on the program and whether notification requirements under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, invoked by President Bush days after Sept. 11, were met.
Treasury officials have told Congressional staff members that they briefed the full intelligence committees of both houses about a month ago, after inquiries by The Times, according to one Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. Some members were told of the program several years ago, but the Treasury Department has not provided a list of who was informed when, the aide said.
Democrats said they hoped to get a clearer idea of the legal foundations for the program, how it was monitored, and how long it will be allowed to continue under the president's invocation of emergency powers.
Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who serves on the House financial services committee, said Tuesday: "The administration is basing its actions on a 1970's law that never envisioned a state of perpetual emergency. It wasn't meant to become the status quo. That is why Congress needs to look at its current use."
Victor Comras, a former State Department official who served on a United Nations counterterrorism advisory group, pointed out on The Counterterrorism Blog that a 2002 United Nations report had noted with approval that the United States was monitoring international financial systems.
( wow, aren't we lucky the terrorists creative and discplined enough to blow up the WTC don't have a clue about SWIFT and EFT monitoring until this week?
While providing no details, the report mentioned Swift and similar organizations, saying "the United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify su ious transactions."
Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting from Brussels for this article, andCarl Hulse and Eric Lichtblau from Washington.
Typical boutons liberal regressive post. Looks like he would get tired of being
on the losing side. But some people enjoy agony.
True Americans would understand that things need to be done for the security of our military and the integrity of our country. Let them tap my phones to find these religous s bag fanatics, I have nothing to hide.
"to find these religous s bag fanatics"
so naively trusting. Nobody is against preventing crime. The problem is abuse of such powers.
The Repugs, the WH, Rove, RNC are totally untrustworthy with unchecked power to snoop phones, email, bank accounts. Industrial espionage is VERY big business that nobody wants to talk about. I can corp campaign donors buying snooped info on compe ors.
Anybody who thinks the Rove and Repugs won't abuse snooping powers for partisan political gain is a babe in the woods. What a bunch of lying, incompetent s bags.
btw, Dems can't be trusted, either, but it's the Repugs running the federal govt now. The Dems will be victims, not perpertators.
Lt. Cotton isn't serving his country, he's serving the WH Repugs, who aren't serving the country's security interests by invading. Cotton is just another employee trying to do his job, but his job definition is ed over by the Repugs.
I agree. Wire tap, bug, monitor anything you like. Nothing to hide here. Bush has only 2 years to do something right.
What an asinine statement! Boutons, you have to be the most repulsive, hateful person on this board! I'd like for you to tell Lt. Cotton that to his face - I think he'd have something different to say on the subject!Lt. Cotton isn't serving his country
I just have such a hard time believing someone could as mean and hateful as you are and really believe what you say.
You mean like "freedom of the Press" crap. Is that what you mean
boutons?
Gee I thought you supported the troops, Mr. Liberal. You changed you
mind, what little you have left......pun intended.
Ah yes. That piddling Cons utional guarantee is "crap."
The NYT may have overstepped its bounds and exercised poor judgment, but anyone who thinks that there shouldn't be a free press in this country and that the press shouldn't be permitted to make decisions that are independent of government directive is, IMO, hostile to guarantees that are at the very heart of the civil liberties that the Bill of Rights was meant to protect.
Cotton knows damn well who his boss is, has NOTHING to do with me, and who is responsbile for wasting the lives of 2500+ of Cotton's colleagues.
Calling out dubya is hateful? GMAFB
How about you admitting that dubya(really head) has murdered 2500 of your beloved US military in Iraq with their bull Repug war?
dubya/ head/Repugs DO NOT EQUAL the USA, but poor ers like Cotton are sworn to letting dubya waste their lives.
Last edited by boutons_; 06-28-2006 at 01:43 PM.
If people were prosecuted for having poor judgement, then our president would not be named bush.
I would tell Cotton that I simpathize with his positon, but I don't expect him to rock the boat of his commander and chief.
Some of his grief is misplaced.
Ah yes, but who set the boundries? The press itself, as the NYT has or
the Congress or Courts? Where are those boundries? Care to explain all that
to me.
religious s bags? republicans or al-qaeda?
Charge the WSJ with treason or STFU about this.
The President has murdered no one and you know it. You are wrong
as two left feet. And you know it. The terrorist killed our men, pure
and simple and they damn well will kill you if they get half the chance.
And don't you ever, ever forget that fact.
Amazing that we hear the conservative 'selective outrage' once again but not a peep about the unecessary war in Iraq. I am still trying to figure out the Iraq war has anything to do with our freedom. Dumbya sure does talk about it ..
I consider the war a necessary evil. I have no outrage except for people
who think we aren't at war and never were. Your reasoning is way off
base. You think, if we hadn't gone into Iraq everything would be just
peachy creamy. Everyone would love us and we would live in harmony with
mother earth, gas prices would be low and on.....and on.....and on.....
I consider the war a necessary evil. I have no outrage except for people
who think we aren't at war and never were. Your reasoning is way off
base. You think, if we hadn't gone into Iraq everything would be just
peachy creamy. Everyone would love us and we would live in harmony with
mother earth, gas prices would be low and on.....and on.....and on.....
We are at war with Islamo facists..Iraq became a part of the war on terror only because & the boys said so. I am outraged that we are sacrificing our blood because it 'might' indirectly help the USA in the long run. I am not opposed to military action what I am opposed to is someone misleading me in oreder for me to support it. Agree with me or not but Iraq has become the "might', 'maybe','if' war. It might help the US if Iraq transforms into a democracy which 'may' help transform the Middle East and 'if' it does we will benefit. It started as an imminent threat war ..now you and all other conservatives have fallen in line and accepted the revised reasons as to why we invded Iraq..
The Cons ution is pretty much unequivocal in providing that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of the press. I'd say that the Founding Fathers very clearly took that question out of Congressional hands. Until someone suggests in a court in this country that the NYT has violated some other law, I'd think the Times' editorial decisions are its own -- and even if there's a lawsuit, the Times will likely have First Amendment protection, at least to some point.
Thus, to answer your question, it is the Times that sets the boundaries, just as the Framers of the Cons ution intended.
I think there are instances where leaking information to the Press should cons ute Treason. This instance, however, is not one of them. Anyone looking to use this report an impetus to re-examine the Press' moral duties in wartime Military coverage is jumping the gun.
Cotton is going to run for Congress.
Book it.
I'm not a politically savy person like some of you seem to be but in my opinion unless this affects you in some way, except for the price of oil, what does it matter to you why we're in Iraq, your not the one serving. I am active duty military and I know what I signed up for.
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