(2006-06-24) A secret New York Times program for fighting the war on the war on terror represents a radical expansion of executive editor authority according to a legal analyst who studied the parameters of the intel sifting and sharing program that the Times uses to disseminate U.S. national security information to international terror groups.
Unhindered by the courts or the Congress, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller continues his campaign for greater personal power to unilaterally prosecute the anti-anti-terror battle, according to the unnamed analyst.
Its unprecedented that a single man should have so much control over the lives of millions of Americans with no Constitutional checks and balances, the source added. Bill Keller does as he pleases, providing crucial intel to al Qaeda, which for all intents and purposes, is his own private militia.
A spokesman for Mr. Keller insisted that he needs broad executive editor powers in order to protect our loved ones from those who would threaten them by sifting their banks records, listening to their overseas phone calls, or interfering with their religious obligations.
The case for prosecuting the New York Times. by Gabriel Schoenfeld
Can journalists really be prosecuted for publishing national security secrets? In the wake of a series of New York Times stories revealing highly sensitive counterterrorism programs, that question is increasingly the talk of newsrooms across the country, and especially one newsroom located on West 43rd Street in Manhattan.
Last December, in the face of a presidential warning that they would compromise ongoing investigations of al Qaeda, the Times revealed the existence of an ultrasecret terrorist surveillance program of the National Security Agency and provided details of how it operated. Now, once again in the face of a presidential warning, the Times has published a front-page article disclosing a highly classified U.S. intelligence program that successfully penetrated the international bank transactions of al Qaeda terrorists.
Although the editors of the Times act as if prosecution is not a possibility, not everyone concurs. One person who is still mulling the matter over is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Asked in late May about the prospect of prosecuting the Times and others who publish classified information, he by no means ruled it out. "There are some statutes on the books," he said, "which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility."
Unsurprisingly, given what is at stake, even that tentative opinion elicited a fire and brimstone denunciation from the Times. An editorial on May 24 dismissed as "bizarre" the attorney general's "claim that a century-old espionage law could be used to muzzle the press." It has long been understood, added the newspaper, that the "overly broad and little used" Espionage Act of 1917 applies only to government officials and "not to journalists."
But this interpretation, even if it were accurate (which it is not), is entirely beside the point. The attorney general did not mention the 1917 Espionage Act or any other specific law. But if the editors of the paper were to take a look at the U.S. Criminal Code, they would find that they have run afoul not of the Espionage Act but of another law entirely: Section 798 of Title 18, the so-called Comint statute.
Unambiguously taking within its reach the publication of the NSA terrorist surveillance story (though arguably not the Times's more recent terrorist banking story), Section 798 reads, in part:
Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information . . . concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States . . . shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both [emphasis added].
This law, passed by Congress in 1950 as it was considering ways to avert a second Pearl Harbor during the Cold War, has a history that is highly germane to the present conduct of the Times. According to the 1949 Senate report accompanying its passage, the publication in the early 1930s of a book offering a detailed account of U.S. successes in breaking Japanese diplomatic codes inflicted "irreparable harm" on our security.
The Japanese responded to the book's revelations by investing heavily in the construction of more secure codes. Thanks to the ensuing Japanese progress, the report concludes, the United States was unable to "decode the important Japanese military communications in the days immediately leading up to Pearl Harbor." In other words, the aerial armada that devastated our Pacific Fleet had the skies in effect cleared for it by leaks of classified information.
Leaks of communications intelligence secrets pose an equivalent danger today. The 9/11 Commission identified the gap between our domestic and foreign intelligence gathering capabilities as one of the primary weaknesses that left us open to assault. The NSA terrorist surveillance program aimed to cover that gap. The program, by the Times's own account of it, was one of the most closely guarded secrets in the war on terrorism. After it was exposed, a broad range of government officials privy to the workings of the program, including Democrats (such as Jane Harman of the House Intelligence Committee), said that the unauthorized disclosure inflicted severe damage on our ability to track al Qaeda.
Such leaks cause harm of a more general but no less consequential sort. In waging the war on terrorism, the United States depends heavily on cooperation with allied intelligence agencies. But when our own intelligence services demonstrate that they are unable to keep shared information under wraps, international cooperation grinds to a halt.
This is a matter not of idle conjecture but of demonstrable fact. During the run-up to the Iraq war, the United States was urgently attempting to assess the state of play of Saddam Hussein's program to acquire weapons of mass destruction. One of the key sources suggesting that an ambitious WMD buildup was underway was an Iraqi defector, known by the codename of Curveball, who was talking to German intelligence. But Washington remained in the dark about Curveball's true identity, and the fact that he was a serial fabricator.
Why would the Germans not identify Curveball? According to the Silberman-Robb WMD Commission report, they refused "to share crucial information with the United States because of fear of leaks." In other words, some of the blame for our mistaken intelligence about Iraq's WMD program rests with leakers and those in the media who rush to publish the leaks.
Given the uproar a prosecution of the Times would provoke, the attorney general's cautious approach is certainly understandable. But what might look like a prudent exercise of prosecutorial discretion will, in the face of the Times's increasingly reckless behavior, send a terrible message. The Comint statute, like numerous other laws on the books limiting speech in such disparate realms as libel, privacy, and commercial activity, is fully compatible with the First Amendment. It was passed to deal with circumstances that are both dangerous and rare; the destruction of the World Trade Center and the continuing efforts by terrorists to strike again have thrust just such circumstances upon us.
If the Justice Department chooses not to prosecute the Times, its inaction will turn this statute into a dead letter. At stake here for Attorney General Gonzales to contemplate is not just the right to defend ourselves from another Pearl Harbor. Can it really be the government's position that, in the middle of a war in which we have been attacked on our own soil, the power to classify or declassify vital secrets should be taken away from elected officials acting in accord with laws set by Congress and bestowed on a private institution accountable to no one?
Gabriel Schoenfeld is senior editor of Commentary. This article is adapted from his June 6 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
#1
The Slimes is trying to force the issue with Justice in order to push their fallen readership.
The reason for the coordinated release of front-page articles in the LA Slimes, the NY Slimes, WaPo, WSJ, etc. was an attempt to up the ante.
As much as I would like to see Justice throw the book at the Slimes, the best answer may be to let Americans answer by decreasing their readership.
Posted by: Captain America ||
06/24/2006 7:45 Comments ||
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#2
P.S. Liberals always like to play victims
Posted by: Captain America ||
06/24/2006 7:46 Comments ||
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#3
"As much as I would like to see Justice throw the book at the Slimes, the best answer may be to let Americans answer by decreasing their readership."
If the only consequences of the Times' perfidy were political, I would agree.
But their actions help the enemy to evade detection, encourage the enemy to keep on fighting, and enable the enemy to kill more American soldiers-- and someday, very likely, more American civilians in another mass-casualty terrorist attack.
No, this shit MUST be stopped. It's too damaging to our nation's security.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/24/2006 8:26 Comments ||
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#4
It must be stopped and I am starting to not care how.
#5
Yes, it must be stopped but there are at least two guilty parties. None of this or anything else concerning a Special Access Program (SAP), would see the light of day unless someone "read-on to the program" disclosed it. That someone could be internal to the agency (worthless gummit, commi civilian or uniformed traitor), or a donk politician on one of the intelligence commitees.
The responsible individuals must all suffer strict consequences.
The punishment must be severe -- as severe as the law requires, and at a minimum as much as the least that previous war-time traitors have suffered (life in prison?).
The people who have been undermining the War effort must be made to visibly suffer the most painful consequences. Lose property, liberty, and in some cases life. No matter who they are, how much money they have, who their friends are, what their "profession" is. If it means the NYT owner, editors, journalists, and even some Senators are tried and executed -- so be it.
But it's got to be a process of law. Because that's the nature of this Republic. And what we need today is to establish the principle that treason is a crime and no traitor shall remain above the law.
#7
Here's what Investor's Business Daily says: "Once again, major newspapers, led by The New York Times, have spilled secrets that will make Americans less safe and the war on terror harder to win. No doubt, Pulitzers are in order. We hope they're proud. The decision by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal to print details of the government's secret program to monitor terrorists' finances couldn't come at a worse time. ..."
#9
From WaPo:
"A lawsuit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Chicago accused SWIFT of violating the privacy rights of Americans by disclosing private financial information to the government, Bloomberg News reported. The plaintiff named in the suit, Ian Walker, was described as a D.C. resident, although no further information was made available. The suit seeks statutory, compensatory and punitive damages on behalf of every American who made a domestic or international financial transaction after Sept. 11, 2001."
#11
the WSJ news det is totally liberal, while the op-ed is relatively conservative. They are shills for illegals
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2006 13:53 Comments ||
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#12
Kalle: Process of law? The problem with what the moonbats, the Donks, Murtha, and the NYT is doing is that law is used as a weapon against to the very Republic that the law is supposed to uphold. Hence, posts like Glomogum Shogum2997 2006-06-23 13:49, yesterday.
#13
There are laws against espionage and treason but they're not being used. Many moon bats would end up behind bars or executed if these laws were applied.
#14
Just past some new Torte Law Reform [sorta like Immigration 'Reform']. Make publications subject to civil damages by survivors of victim of attacks by enemies during time of war or war like environments. Let the standard be preponderance of evidence which can be inferred that the plaintiffs actions contributed to the death of their loved one. Unlike criminal proceedings where reasonable doubt is the standard, just the review of willful and negligent actions makes the plaintiff accountable. Read - deep pockets.
#15
It t'aint TOP SECRET anymore - FDR and WIlson did it for World Wars I + II, and while Congress has not officially declared war a de facto US national security issue is pertinent here becuz of the fatwas issued by armed Radical Islamist groups to attack and destroy the USA in the name of Islam andor Radical islam. *GOD = MORALISM = ETHICS, etal. is important > wid out these, all you have, or may have eventually, are PC, Nepotist orgs, institutions, and public authorities no better than the PC criminals sell-outs, andor de facto traitors Society is supposed to be protected from.
Public authorities become part of the problem, NOT the solution and certainly not justice. SECULAR ETHICS = REGULATION/LEGALISM/CANONISM, etc > "I CAN'T, BY LAW OR REGULATION, DO THAT", which is NOT always the same as I DON'T BELIEVE I SHOULD THAT!?
#16
NYT Does it Again, This weekend, Posting information from a Classified Meeting this week at the Pentagon... NYT has gone over to Al Qaeda. Lock up the Executives.
The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say. According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007...
Investors Biz Daily Smackdown of John Kerry
Hat-tip Instapundit.
Senator John Kerry has spent a career taking the side of America's enemies. His call last week for a pullout from Iraq was the latest evidence he is unfit to serve in the Senate never mind the White House.
Kerry's proposal to withdraw us completely from Iraq by July of next year was resoundingly defeated in the Senate by a vote of 86 to 13. And just days before, he said the deadline should be the end of this year.
But Kerry's idea is the exact opposite of what he was calling for in late 2003 while running for president. Back then he was accusing President Bush of planning to prematurely withdraw from Iraq.
"I fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election the administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy," Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations. He said it would be "a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal of principle" to allow "a politically expedient withdrawal of American troops."
That's one of but many Kerry flip-flops, but he's been consistent over the years in siding against the U.S. in war. Things really got started for Kerry at Valley Forge, Pa., of all places, where he provided an encore to a Jane Fonda speech at an anti-war rally in 1970.
"Hanoi Jane" is remembered for traveling to North Vietnam to give backing and encouragement to its communist regime as it killed tens of thousands of American forces. In a 2004 interview, Fonda said of Kerry, "I remember thinking, 'Wow, this is a real leader, a Lincolnesque kind of leader.' "
Fonda reportedly gave tens of thousands of dollars of proceeds from her anti-war speeches to Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization so it could investigate purported atrocities by U.S. military personnel.
On "Meet the Press" in 1971, Kerry called "the men who ordered us" namely the White House under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon "war criminals."
Bui Tin, the North Vietnam army colonel who accepted South Vietnam's surrender in 1975 and later left for exile as a dissident against the communist Hanoi government, called the anti-war movement Kerry and Fonda helped lead in the U.S. in the early 1970s "essential to our strategy."
Indeed, Kerry's photo was placed on display in Vietnam's "War Remnants Museum" (originally named "War Crimes Museum" when it was opened in 1975).
According to The Boston Globe's 2004 "complete biography" of Kerry, in the 1984 campaign that first landed him in the Senate during the height of the Cold War against the Soviet Union "Kerry supported cancellation of a host of weapons systems that have become the basis of U.S. military might the high-tech munitions and delivery systems on display to the world as they leveled the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in a matter of weeks in 2003."
They include the B-1 and B-2/Stealth bombers, the Apache helicopter, the Patriot missile, and the F-15, F-14A and F-14D jets. He also repeatedly voted against missile defense more than 50 times, by our count.
During President Reagan's second term, Kerry urged Congress to trust "the good faith of the Sandinistas" and cut funding to Nicaragua's Contra freedom fighters. And he used the Senate's investigative powers to make sure no back-door funding was going to the Contras.
So when Kerry isn't flip-flopping for the sake of politics, he's serving the purposes of our adversaries from Vietnam to the War on Terror. Whether it's poor judgment, or something more sinister that animates John Kerry, it's remarkable that someone so dangerous could have come so close to occupying the Oval Office.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/24/2006 11:18 ||
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#1
He'll be remembered as John "Anti-American" Kerry
#3
We're actually lucky to have someone like J. F'in Kerry.
His words and actions allow us a window into the "soul" of the tranzi left. In their world, the American path of Western Civilization -capitalist, emphasizing the private over the public sector, emphasizing equality of opportunity over government enforced equality/mitigation of economic outcome - is the greatest evil. In a "perfect" woprld it would be overthrown and banished. Short of that, it must always have a counterbalance, lest it become become the system which would prevail over our entire species.
In Kerry's generation, that counterbalance was communism. Everyone from nuclear scientists who gave secrets to the Soviets, to academicians who sought to use their bully pulpit to indoctrinate students - Gramsci style - to hate Western institutions and favor non-Western ones, to leftist politicians who preached things like unilateral disarmament, all of these and more, feared America's own robust success more than any other thing in the world. Our species is at a technological level where a single system of societal governance could become the basis for the entire planet within the next four or five generations. And right now, the American way is, to their dismay, poised to be that system. It was their hope that by supporting a countervailing force to the dreaded nonMarxist American that the evil inherent in that individual could be kept in check.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, things changed and now radical Islam now fills the bill.
Kerry and the rest of the left will continue to try to find foils to the American way and support them (in whatever way they can) until the collapse of Western capitalism that Marx predicted comes to pass and the promised socialist world state that they believe they'll control is finally realized.
Don't hold your breath, Johnny boy.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
06/24/2006 13:45 Comments ||
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#4
They mentioned that Kerry voted against a US missile defense at least 50 times. I truly wish someone would compile a list of those who ever voted against it, and how many times.
#5
"Senator John Kerry has spent a career taking the side of America's enemies."
YES!
I almost spewed Coke when I read this on Glenn's site this morning.
Somebody finally said it out loud. Perfect description of John F'ing Traitor Kerry.
On the bright side, he'll have lots of his dictator and commie friends waiting for him - courtesy of the United States that he tried so hard to destroy - when he finally goes to Hell.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/24/2006 14:34 Comments ||
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#6
John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, "Turbin" Durbin and all the other Elitist Leftists trying to establishe their Moonbat Moonpire. Bugwits.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/24/2006 18:50 Comments ||
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#7
KERRY > BILATERALIST/BiPOLARIST-FOR-UNILATERALISM/UNIPOLARISM, considering that both the Left + Radical Islam > both for anarchism and universal revolution as methods to defeat,suborn, overthrow iff not destroy the current Order-Reality???
Posted by: Fred ||
06/24/2006 11:22 ||
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#1
But Fred-
Hollywood wants us to believe that the "American Way" means racism, bigotry, indifference to the poor, racism, sexism, greed, slavery, racism, intolerance, racism, religious extremism, homophobia, xenophobia, lack of good tase, obesity, racism, cultural illiteracy, racism, and racism.
Why, it's only by being like a superior and enlightened European that one can be "super", right?
Based upon that line of thinking, better to sweep that icky "American Way" stuff under the rug, eh?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
06/24/2006 13:54 Comments ||
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