GRAND ISLAND — Vice President Dick Cheney accused the news media Monday of making “the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult.” Cheney zeroed in on The New York Times in condemning the press for “publishing detailed information about vital national security programs.”The attack, launched at a fund-raising luncheon for Republican congressional nominee Adrian Smith, was triggered by a story in The Times last week revealing a terrorist financial tracking program. Cheney also pointed to earlier news reports disclosing secret communications surveillance conducted without court approval.
“The New York Times has now made it more difficult for us to prevent attacks in the future,” the vice president declared. “Publishing this highly classified information about our sources and methods for collecting intelligence will enable the terrorists to look for ways to defeat our efforts,” he said.
Cheney’s criticism coincided with President Bush’s condemnation of the financial tracking disclosure during remarks to reporters at the White House on Monday. “Obviously, no one can guarantee that we won’t be hit again,” Cheney said. “But the relative safety of these past nearly five years now (since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington) did not come about by accident,” he said.
The programs disclosed by The Times “help explain why we have been so successful in preventing further attacks,” he said. Cheney said he considers it “a disgrace” that The Times was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its stories disclosing the terrorist surveillance program.