UPDATED: The Axis of Abuse: The NY Times and Washington, DC leakers
That’s what the Beltway game has become– irresponsible New York Times reporters and editors collaborating with agendaed “leakers.”
The exposure of the bank monitoring program on the front page of the June 23, 2006 NY Times is the latest abusive and dangerous example of this Beltway hustle. “Leakers” in this particular case is too weak a term– exposing the terrorist finance-monitoring operation information amounts to spying for terrorists. Bank records in Belgium recording international transactions are fair game for intelligence teams attempting to track terrorist finances and terrorist contacts. (The June 23 report was followed by this report on June 24, where Vice-President Dick Cheney “assailed” the Times for publishing the classified material despite requests by the government that it keep the operation secret.)
Lede from the June 23 article:
Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.
The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.
The story ran in the Washington Post, and Wall St Journal as well, but the NY Times broke it.
So why expose the operation? Why run this story? Why?
The simple power to do it is one explanation– but that’s the power of a bully. Outright arrogance is another explanation. Add greed and we have a “most likely” explanation. The NY Times obviously thinks it can get away with exposure and pay no penalty. In fact, stories like this sell newspapers. This is, however, manufactured sensationalism.
Bush Derangement Syndrome is another theory. I’ve heard arguments that the NY Times and other left-liberal media giants are the Democratic Party’s only remaining platforms of “national power” (they aren’t but “revelations” like this terrorist finance monitoring operation suggest the Times is looking for “Republican scandal” no matter the national cost). Bush Derangement Syndrome doesn’t explain the Wall St Journal– just “me too” follow-on behavior after the horse has escaped the barn.
The dirty secret of the newspaper business is that a large swath of newspaperpeople want to work at the Times, or they are Times alumni, or they think it’s simply smart to curry favor with the organization. Hence there is –if not a code of silence– a code of permission based on aspiration and admiration. There may also be a trace or two of fear.
There is much still to admire at the Times– correction, there are admirably talented people working at the Times producing worldclass work (John Burns is the world’s top foreign correspondent). However, editorial responsibility and judgment are seriously lacking. The Times’ editors appear to be wedded to the two “press templates” of Vietnam and Watergate. “Getting Bush” is this generation’s “Get Nixon.”
What should be done? The intel program has been compromised; loose lips have sunk this ship. Al Qaeda isn’t the smartest of enemies but many of its global financiers are sharp– they will change their m.o. US and coalition intelligence agencies will have to be creative and agile.
The Bush Administration should prosecute the leakers, but I don’t think the Administration has the spine for this. The Bush Administration could barely prosecute Sandy Berger for abuse of classified material that would have put a solder in jail. Here’s the political scenario: The Times and its allies would portray the prosecution as a “show trial” of constitutional and civil rights violations by Bush – especially if any charges are filed before November 2006. Of course, the Times’ gleeful pursuit of leakers in the Valerie Plame case now casts an expansive shadow of hypocrisy on the organization. If a shadow can stink, this shadow would stink.
A lot of what passes for reporting and analysis in Washington and New York is merely passing on government and academic gossip. That’s why the leap to leaks is but a nudge and a puddle jump. The government officials and employees participate; some of them are legitimate whistle blowers, but folks, those are rare and when they occur they are Pulitzer material. Most of the game is simply incestuous Beltway conversation and the rapacious media demand for a “headline.”
But some headlines hurt– they damage our government’s Job One: national security. Perhaps the Times’ editors don’t believe we are engaged in a global counter-terror war against Islamo-fascism. We are. At one time there was hole in south Manhattan they could not ignore. Five years on we have accomplished much –I suspect the heaviest lifting has been done (and I’ll be writing more about that later this summer). For America’s economic and media elites the war has been easy. As I’ve written time and again the Bush Administration’s greatest failure was to tap the American public’s post-9/11reservoir of willingness; however, just enough of the American public stepped forward. Since 9/11 American economic performance has been admirable (a comment I have not seen on the Times front page, but it is true). The US military has served with great distinction, despite major media attempts to “My Lai” Abu Ghraib and now Haditha. Moral compromise in war is inevitable; compromising legitimate intellgence operations is not. History may well conclude this is a war that didn’t need America’s media elites, and perhaps that suspicion curdles the gut of a couple of New York Times bigshots.
UPDATE:
StrategyPage (Jim Dunnigan) comes down hard, without naming names:
Trivializing the enemy is another dangerous journalistic tactic. Many of the Islamic terrorists are basically amateurs. The bunch rounded up in Miami recently are starting to be portrayed as victims, rather than threats. However, if one or two FBI supervisors had zigged instead of zagged back in early 2001, and the 19 or 20 911 terrorists would have been rounded up. It would have been very easy for enterprising journalists to portray this as an overreaction by the FBI. After all, who could take seriously this plan to simultaneously hijack four aircraft and crash them into buildings? It was all too absurd, and another example of the excessive police power of the government.
Treason aside, these tactics of destruction by revelation, and trivializing the threat, do provide substantial benefits to the enemy. While the most professional and experienced terrorists were always aware of things like traffic analysis and CIA access to international wire transfer data, most al Qaeda activists do not. But now they do, and the implications have been spelled out for them, in great deal, by helpful journalists. This influences future reporting, which will tend to avoid connecting the dots between these revelations and the success of some future terror attack. A sort of unconscious professional courtesy. There is one new element; net based journalists. That includes widely read bloggers and reports like this. But that only keeps the crimes visible, it doesn’t do much to punish the guilty, or stop the assistance these traitors are giving to those who would kill them, and us.
These traitors will continue to get away with it. Unless their activities are shown to assist terrorists in a particularly direct and obvious way, scary stories about potential perils will continue to protect those attacking the counter-terrorism effort. By blurring the line between legitimate dissent and active assistance to the enemy, political opportunism has sunk to new lows.
Read the entire StrategyPage post.
UPDATE 2: The relevant quote vis a vis Abu Ghraib, etc, from my September 25, 2001 column: “Every war is complex, chaotic, physically and emotionally debilitating and — no matter how right the cause — at some point morally compromised. This war will be no different.” What I didn’t see was major US media compromising counter-terror intelligence operations. Perhaps I should have.
[…] The Axis of Abuse: The NY Times and Washington, DC leakers […]
Pingback by Jack’s Newswatch — 6/25/2006 @ 10:35 am
[…] Update! Via Glenn: “Because the war on terror is fought in a peacetime atmosphere, treason can be presented as dissent, and you can get away with it. By blurring the line between legitimate dissent and active assistance to the enemy, political opportunism has sunk to new lows.” Indeed it has. Read the rest. And a true-and-blue note from Austin Bay: The Bush Administration should prosecute the leakers, but I don’t think the Administration has the spine for this. The Bush Administration could barely prosecute Sandy Berger for abuse of classified material that would have put a solder in jail. Here’s the political scenario: The Times and its allies would portray the prosecution as a “show trial” of constitutional and civil rights violations by Bush – especially if any charges are filed before November 2006. […]
Pingback by Cold Fury » Blog Archive » Arrest these traitors now — 6/25/2006 @ 11:27 am
How to stop the New York Times II … (UPDATED)… So Patterico has canceled his subscription to the LA Times, Marc Dansinger does too. Several bloggers have indicated they have canceled their subscriptions to the New York Times. Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO’s The Corner has decided not to re-up her week…
Trackback by Squiggler — 6/25/2006 @ 12:55 pm
A Free Press and Treason… A lot of people in the blogosphere, primarily from the right, are quite upset by the New York Times’ latest scoop. Austin Bay speculates as to the Times’ motives, for example, while Jim Dunnigan asserts that the Times’ editors are……
Trackback by Andrew Olmsted dot com — 6/25/2006 @ 1:06 pm
Enemies Are Reading…… The New York Times.* It’s the paper preferred by more terrorists. See original WWII posters (Click image to enlarge) Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror The NY Times reports: Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool…
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Pingback by NoisyRoom.net » UPDATED: The Axis of Abuse: The NY Times and Washington, DC leakers — 6/25/2006 @ 1:57 pm
Timetables and Leaks, Cutting and Running… Well, with the Democrat efforts to force an arbitrary timetable to “cut and run” out of Iraq mostly dead, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the DOD have both offered plans for withdrawal, plans that actually deal with the situation on the grou…
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The Gray Lady Turns Another Trick… so deranged are the folks at the Gray Lady with their hatred of George Bush that they have repeatedly endangered anti-terrorism efforts by thoughtless, nay, preening disclosure of important facts. The latest, apparently, are classified estimates rega…..
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[…] Private Snafu How about a nice big glass… Rep. King: Prosecute the Times (video) Austin Bay: Axis of Abuse Bill Keller, blabbermouth A soldier responds WaPo weighs in […]
Pingback by Hot Air » Blog Archive » MSM Blabbermouths — 6/26/2006 @ 4:19 am
The media seems to think that the intelligence community and the Department of Defense, when under a Republican administration, are more dangerous enemies than a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or a Kim Jong-Il. The good news is that the mainstream media is nowhere near as powerful as it was in the 1968-1975 timeframe. The bad news is that the New York Times, sensing a losso of power, is trying to do everything it can to regain that power, regardless of the cost to the country.
Comment by Harold C. Hutchison — 6/26/2006 @ 6:54 am
Yet the NYTimes heartily endorsed Clinton’s ESCHELON program. http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5150 http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/cyber/articles/27network.html /quote “The Times actually defended the existence of Echelon when it reported on the program following the Australians’ revelations. “Few dispute the necessity of a system like Echelon to apprehend foreign spies, drug traffickers and terrorists….†And the Times article quoted an N.S.A. official in assuring readers “…that all Agency activities are conducted in accordance with the highest constitutional, legal and ethical standards.†Of course, that was on May 27, 1999 and Bill Clinton, not George W. Bush, was president. Even so, the article did admit that “…many are concerned that the system could be abused to collect economic and political information.†/end quote
Comment by Sharpshooter — 6/26/2006 @ 9:56 am
Comment by Sharpshooter — 6/26/2006 @ 10:04 am
New York Times’ Counter Intelligence Program Killing terrorists is easy; however, finding them is hard. Capturing them after they destroy the Sear’s Tower can’t be counted as a success; they have to be stopped before they act. Intelligence programs are the only way to do this. The New York Times is acting as a counter intelligence organization for Al Queda. The NYT has disclosed the NSA’s Al Queda surveillance program, the program incarcerating high level Al Queda leaders, and now the use of SWIFT to track Al Queda funding. These actions by the NYT will kill people. It’s time to give the NYT and other members of the press a message. No one elected you, you are not above the law; and acting as a counter intelligence agency for Al Queda will land you in jail. The Supreme Court does not allow the Executive Branch to stop the press from printing a story; however, the constitution does not protect the press from prosecution when the press breaks the law. Mr. Keller, Mr. Risen, and Mr. Lichthblau should be arrested for aiding and abetting Al Queda; lets see whether or not 12 US citizens are willing to put them in jail for a long time. If they are granted bail, they should be immediately taken before a grand jury and asked for the names of their sources. If they refuse, they should be put in jail until they answer. The leakers should go to jail for a very long time, as in at least 10 years. If the NYT persists in its illegal behavior after this warning shot, the NYT should be prosecuted just as Arthur Andersen was prosecuted for breaking the law. Current DOJ rules prevent questioning reporters except as a last resort. This needs to be changed when national security is at stake. Reporters who compromise national security should be questioned as a first resort and if they refuse to answer, they should be jailed until they do. It time for the Attorney General to stand up and be counted. This has to stop NOW.
Comment by Stephen DuVal — 6/26/2006 @ 11:46 am
Great analysis… exept that you let the WSJ off with a ‘me too’… the news pages of the WSJ are every bit as baised towards the left as the NYT and LAT… the latest analysis of left leaning newpapers put the WJS as the most left. The only thing conservative about the Journal is it’s editorial page.
Comment by Bob Roof — 6/26/2006 @ 12:50 pm
Great analysis… except you let the WSJ off with a ‘me too’… the news pages of the WSJ are every bit as baised towards the left as the NYT and LAT… the latest analysis of left leaning newpapers put the WJS as the most left. The only thing conservative about the Journal is it’s editorial page.
Comment by Bob Roof — 6/26/2006 @ 12:50 pm
Nearly two weeks have passed since the Keller/Sulzberger axis followed their December 2005 aiding-and-abetting with this latest subversion. Bush remained passive then; he maintains silence on the beheadings of captive American servicemen; and my guess he will sit back and let this pass. By now, as many have suggested, he should have: a) Revoked NYT press accreditations; b) Mounted intensive investigations into the identities of treacherous leakers; c) Dragged Sulzberger and Keller et.al. in handcuffs from their air-conditioned offices as Giuliani notoriously did with so-called “insider-traders” on Wall Street. Why Bush or Rove should shrink from “media confrontation” is beyond most thinking citizens. Last December’s incident has probably cost lives; this latest treachery will cost more. Does the Administration care that more will be lost next time? However many have died due to Keller, Sulzberger, and their ilk, surely our Commander in Chief will not sit still to up the total? Yet so far… nothing. The operative statute is very plain; the offense is undeniable. Bush at his inaugural swore to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Well– is this a traffic ticket? If he and Gonzalez have not acted yet, we suspect they never will. And next time, by double precedent, the compounded treason will also go unnoticed. It cannot, cannot, be simply politics that drives this dangerous passivity. What is going on?
Comment by John Blake — 6/27/2006 @ 1:59 pm
[…] Bush and Cheney struck back against the New York Times’ public espionage. The Times’ executive editor Bill Keller issued this letter in an effort to defend the decision to sell a few extra newspapers by endangering American lives. Hugh Hewitt demolishes it here. The conservative blogosphere piles on: Instapundit, Powerline, and Austin Bay weigh in. Michelle Malkin prints a response from Treasury Secretary John Snow. […]
Pingback by We Should Live - Ben Bateman » NYT to USA: Drop Dead — 6/27/2006 @ 6:19 pm
[…] Here’s my Axis of Abuse post from two weeks ago. And the subsequent column. […]
Pingback by Austin Bay Blog » UPDATED: Bush versus the NY Times — 7/9/2006 @ 12:00 pm
[…] UPDATE: (6/24) Austin Bay: The Axis of Abuse: NYT and The D.C. Leakers Squiggler: “How To Stop The NY Times…” Flopping Aces: “The Self-Absorbed Media” Dr. Sanity: “The Narcisstic Underground” […]
Pingback by California Conservative » Enemies Are Reading… — 10/22/2006 @ 4:08 pm
[…] Heh. As if Al Qaeda needed help. […]
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