The NYT and Idiots
Posted by
Kevin
So, via publius, we see that Michelle Malkin, she of the internment camp fetish, has oh so cleverly made up parodies of WWII era secrecy posters to accuse the New York Times of treason for printing the story about the Bush Administration’s widespread surveillance of banking records. Malkin, in other words, is a bloody idiot.
That is the only explanation. The Times did absolutely nothing to even remotely threaten national security and you would have to be a world class ignoramus to think otherwise. The article listed nothing that could be considered an important-to-be-kept secret operational detail. In fact, the article had precious little detail at all. It was a 1000 foot overview of the program that essentially informed readers of the programs existence, the banks’ work to keep the program limited in scope, the type of warrant used to get the records, and the very large scope of the program. So the argument has to be, and has been, that merely revealing the existence of the program somehow threatens national security. Unfortunately for the right wingers spewing these talking points, getting to that conclusion takes you deep into the dark hear of complete and total idiocy.
How’s this logic supposed to go? The terrorists, a group of people dedicated to causing as much harm as possible to the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, a group of people who train for months or years before each attack, a group of people whose very lives depend upon concealment and a deep understanding of the forces arrayed against the, didn’t realize that their financial transactions could be scrutinized until the Times told them so. These would be quite stupid terrorists, then, which I suppose is good news: we should have them all rolled up in about a week.
But wait. 9/11 happened more than a week ago, didn’t it? Let’s see, 9/11 was in 2001 … carry the two … adjust for the leap year … Jesus Christ on a pogo stick! It’s been almost five years and we still haven’t caught Bin Laden! And al Qaeda managed to carry off large attacks in in Bali, Madrid, and London in that time! Wow, they must be some smart terrorists. I mean, otherwise, George Bush, who is the Greatest President Ever, the most Rootin-ist, Tootin-ist hombre west of Tehran and the Steely-ist Eyed Steely Eyed Missile Man to ever eye a missile, would have caught them by now.
Yeah, when you put it like that, that must be why George has to do things like attach signing statements to bills outlawing torture saying he doesn’t have to not torture if he wants to torture, and keep people locked away without trial fore ever and ever, and to run the illegal NSA wiretapping program, and claim that Article Two let’s him do whatever he wants when national security is on the line. It’s those darn terrorists — they are just so smart and clever and full of evil book learnin’ that George doesn’t have any choice but to regretfully, though with great determination and an ever so fetching flight suit, just has to use the Constitution as his own special toilet paper.
But wait. If the terrorists really were smart, then they would have guessed that their financial transactions were being watched. It’s hardly rocket science to figure out that the US, with three separate groups of people dedicated to spying, the FBI, and an entire Treasury Department filled with bankers and accountants and such would try to see where the money for bombs and flying lessons and take out was coming from.
But wait. The terrorists couldn’t be smart, because everyone knows that the Times committed treason by letting the terrorists know that the government was trying to trace their financial records.
But wait. They must be smart, otherwise George would have caught them by now.
But .. but… but… Look! Michael Moore is fat!
You know, when it’s put like that, doesn’t it just seem so compelling? Journofascism must be defeated.
OK… My understanding is the Times article explained that the financial monitoring is not being done in near real time, that in fact there is a several week delay between event and analysis. This would seem to be of use to “the enemy.” (Cycle through financial tools quickly and stay ahead of the CIA.)
No attacks can be launched without financing. Unless the terrorists counterfeit large quantities of US cash, and then smuggle the money into the US, they need to use financial tools to fund their actions - even if they know doing so is to risk getting caught. It is not a question of being stupid, it is a question of necessity.
You don’t claim the program in question is illegal (very few do). All I get from your post is that the Times didn’t really do damage to the CIA’s ability to disrupt terrorism by publishing classified material. But what if they did do damage? What if the Times editors, you, and I don’t have complete and exact knowledge of how the CIA, FBI, and others conduct their classified business. What if the next time classified information is published, the result is the enablement of a massive attack that kills tens of thousands of people? Maybe this is a small risk, but does our curiosity about legal classified programs outweigh the potential cost of us (and therefore our enemies) obtaining that knowledge?
It seems to me either there is a justification for covert action to attempt to disrupt terrorists, or there is not. If there is justification, then the Times’ action was wrong. If there is no reason to pursue terrorists, then the Times was in the clear. But the facts that one does not like Bush, that Bin Laden has not been caught, that one is against signing statements seem irrelevant to me. Legal covert action is either justified or not. If it is justified, then we can either support or disrupt the process. But I don’t believe we can disrupt it and also claim to support it.
Comment 6/27/2006
Ted
Not convincing:
“This would seem to be of use to “the enemy.” (Cycle through financial tools quickly and stay ahead of the CIA.)”
Except that is the kind of common sense thing that you are going to do anyway if you want to avoid detection. No help to anyone who wouldn’t blow themselves up the first time they tried to build a bomb.
“But what if they did do damage? What if the Times editors, you, and I don’t have complete and exact knowledge of how the CIA, FBI, and others conduct their classified business. What if the next time classified information is published, the result is the enablement of a massive attack that kills tens of thousands of people? Maybe this is a small risk, but does our curiosity about legal classified programs outweigh the potential cost of us (and therefore our enemies) obtaining that knowledge?”
Sorry, but no — keeping everything secret is a recipe for the death of democacy. We know the failings of the NSA program becasue the press reported on them. it seems much morel likely that secrecy creates bad programs and poor decisions becasue it isolates people form the consequences of their decisions and is thus more likely to lead to the deaths of thousands because they failed. You also assume that the papers would print anything they find. That is demonstrably nonsense — the NYT sat on the NSA story for more than a year and gave the Bush Administration chance after chance to prove that the story should be killed and made several canges to the story.
“It seems to me either there is a justification for covert action to attempt to disrupt terrorists, or there is not. If there is justification, then the Times’ action was wrong. If there is no reason to pursue terrorists, then the Times was in the clear. But the facts that one does not like Bush, that Bin Laden has not been caught, that one is against signing statements seem irrelevant to me. Legal covert action is either justified or not. If it is justified, then we can either support or disrupt the process. But I don’t believe we can disrupt it and also claim to support it.”
No, this is not true. The Bush Administration itself has talked several times of tracking financial movements. You want to create a flase dilemma. Covert actison could be good or bad, they could be worth the price or not. If everything is kept in secrecy all the time, then we will never know if the government is being effective or counterproductive, and since we need to have that information to make reaosned voting decisons, then information about these programs need to be shared with the public. Again, there is not a single thing that a terrorist would not have already thought about or the Bush Amdiistration has not already discussed in those stories. They let the the US know that the government wanted all their finaicial information, but the banks tried to limit that and that they Admin is using a method of warrants that does not provide very much oversight. Bioth those things are critical pieces of information for the public to have if they are going to be asked to decide whose programs they support or oppose.
Democracies depond upon treating their cictizens as adults. All secrets all the time does nothign but keep citizens in the dark and deny them critical information they need to keep dmeocracy functioning. Comparing a NYT story that tells terrorists nothing that they didn’t already know or that the Amdin had not alreay told them to traitors is totalitarian in nature - - the people and the press cannot be trusted to judge for themselves whether or not what the government does is good or bad and anyone who tries to inform them of anything the giovernment has decided they should not know is a traitor.
That’s not acceptable.
Comment 6/27/2006
So what was that whole “Plame” thing about?
Comment 6/27/2006
I wonder where Scooter Libby would weigh in on publishing classified information.
Comment 6/27/2006
AOG
Unlike the NYT times article, the revelation served no public policy purpose (what Wilson;s wife did was immaterial to his report) and it, you know, actually blew the cover of someone working on WMD proliferation prevention. And I notice that the right never, ever asked for Novak to be tried as a traitor.
So: revelations that pose no harm to the nation and serve the public interest — good
revelations that harm the nation and are irrelevant to the public interest — bad.
Not so hard, is it?
Comment 6/27/2006
Kevin,
What good was achieved by exposing the financial monitoring?
Also, I wasn’t clear making my point about covert action. Either we need to allow it or make it illegal. You seem to be arguing for making it illegal. If not, then I still don’t understand the benefit to making public the financial monitoring, since it is a legal program.
Several of the more critical tactical situations in the European theatre during WWII relied on hundreds, and in one case thousands of people keeping a damn secret (enigma and Operation Fortitude). You like to argue a slippery slope. I claim creating a culture where it is acceptable or even admirable to expose classified information just might come back to bite us in the future. Be it in criminal investigations, anti-terrorist operations, or perhaps actions against another country in the time of war.
Loose lips sometime do sink ships.
Comment 6/27/2006
Ted
Actually, if you read the article, there are questions about the legality of some aspects of it, though the question is much more ambigious than the NSA issue. but the articles do tell us two things about the Bush Amdinistration’s program:
1)It was initially indiscriminate until the bankers put the brakes on
2)It uses administrative subpenoes which ar enot subject to the normal kind of judicial oversight.
Those are two important piece of infomration about the practices and itent of the Bush Amdinistration. The fact that the Bush Admin prefers indiscrimate search and the fact that they choose the route of least judicial oversight ar ento trivialites; they are evidenc eof how the Bush Admin handles other survieleance programs and would handle new survielance oppurtunities. The country has a right to decide for itself if those are appropriate, effective, and worth the cost.
“Loose lips sometime do sink ships.”
Only when they discuss the shipping schedules. The NYT did not discuss shipping schedules. Novak did: that is the difference.
You want to argue an either or situation where none exists. Governments cannot simply declare something secret; that is contrary to democracy and common sense. People who do thinkgs without accountabality eventually slip into a kind of group think where the dumbest, least effective ideas are held up as sterling examples of good policy. One fo the reasons the Soviet block fell was that its pwer structure mad eit impossible for anyone, inisde the government or out, to tell anyone important “Damn, that’s a dumb idea!” A blanket allowance to prevent people form talkign about what the government doesn;t want them to talk about is getitng too close for comfoprt to that point.
Comment 6/27/2006
Kevin,
We are going around in circles. Either there is a need for classified information or there is not. If there is a need, by default, the public can’t judge what should and should not be classified.
You entirely miss the point of the “loose lips sink ships” campaign. It wasn’t just about shipping schedules. It was also about shipping routes, ship contents, convoy speed, individual ship speed and armor, vessel seakeeping characteristics, evasion tactics, escort strength, air cover, and a variety of other data that would help U2 captains plan and execute attacks.
The relevance here is that you, Mr Citizen, made the erroneous determination that only shipping schedules nattered, so it would be OK to talk about other things related to ships. Turns out other things mattered as well. You might have inadvertently sunk a ship. The LLSS campaign was designed to convince people to not judge for themselves what was and was not of tactical significance to the enemy, but rather to not talk about anything related to their shipyard work.
Comment 6/27/2006
Ted:
Either there is a need for classified information or there is not. If there is a need, by default, the public can’t judge what should and should not be classified.
Well, then you’ve put yourself in a pickle: Who does get to decide? Nobody here, least of all Kevin, is arguing that there’s no need for classified information. What he’s arguing is that excessive secrecy is bad, and that the media have an important role to play in preventing that sort of damaging, abusive secrecy.
In my opinion, revealing speicifics about people and places may well be bad or even treasonous, depending on circumstances. But if the press can’t reveal even generalities about a legally suspect program, what viable measure do you propose to prevent abuse?
The rest is wholly irrelevant, in my opinion. Accountability isn’t just a nice-to-have when discussing government power; it’s a must. And if the press can’t ensure accountability, who can? By the standard you’re setting here, where even generalities are verboten and possibly treasonous, you may as well surrender and just say that the government can do whatever the hell it wants with no fear of accountability, because you’re essentially relying on the government to self-police at that point. History has shown us just how reliable governments are at self-policing.
So my take on the whole thing is that until the people complaining come up with a viable alternative for accountability, they’re just engaging in partisan protectionism.
Comment 6/27/2006
Kevin said: there are questions about the legality of some aspects of it
Fred: By whom? I have questions about the legality of a newspaper keeping its sources secret when the source has broken the law by revealing classified material. Who appointed the NYT as the arbiter of what is legal and what is not?
Comment 6/27/2006
Ted
What you are saying is that the people who decide who runs the country cannot have the informaiton needed to make clear and rational decisons about who shoudl run the country. the fact that sometimes covert information is neccesary does not mean that we should allow the government to tell the press what they can and cannot tell the people in every situation. You would have Iran-Contra, the Watergate break-in, and the Pentagon papers locked behind closed doors. You do that, then hand in your voting card, becasue you will become irrelevant. the government can keep any manner of truth from you in the name of national security and thus you can never, ever come close to making an informed decision. National security od the priamry issue of the day: you woudl redecue the deabte on that matter to “Trust us!” and “no, trust us!” That, I would submit, is a grave and serious threat to the integrity of the nation.
And that is in additon to the fact that closed shops become stupid shops. The American people the right and the need to know what its government is doing in as much detail as is possible. Otherwise, the concept of citizen and holding the government accountable is a sad joke.
“The relevance here is that you, Mr Citizen, made the erroneous determination that only shipping schedules nattered, so it would be OK to talk about other things related to ships. Turns out other things mattered as well. You might have inadvertently sunk a ship. The LLSS campaign was designed to convince people to not judge for themselves what was and was not of tactical significance to the enemy, but rather to not talk about anything related to their shipyard work.”
No, Ted, you were using shorthand so I used shorthand in turn. There is nothing in terms of operational details — not one single solitatry thing — in the NYTimes article that would help terrorist OR that hadn’t been mentioned by Administration officials before the story. They only thing that is new is the original scope of the program and the choice of which level of judicial scrutiny to subject the program to. And, as I already pointed out, those tell us important things about the Bush Administration, things informed voters should know. ther eis no reason this should be kept form the Americna people. None, other than some bueracrat decided it was a secret.
Comment 6/27/2006
Kevin wrote:
“There is nothing in terms of operational details — not one single solitatry thing — in the NYTimes article that would help terrorist OR that hadn’t been mentioned by Administration officials before the story.”
and
“The terrorists…didn’t realize that their financial transactions could be scrutinized until the Times told them so. These would be quite stupid terrorists, then, which I suppose is good news: we should have them all rolled up in about a week.
from the article:
“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.”
and
“The cooperative’s message traffic allows investigators, for example, to track money from the Saudi bank account of a suspected terrorist to a mosque in New York. Starting with tips from intelligence reports about specific targets, agents search the database in what one official described as a “24-7″ operation. Customers’ names, bank account numbers and other identifying information can be retrieved, the officials said.”
and
“The data does not allow the government to track routine financial activity, like A.T.M. withdrawals, confined to this country, or to see bank balances, Treasury officials said. And the information is not provided in real time — Swift generally turns it over several weeks later”
and
“While the banking program is a closely held secret, administration officials have held classified briefings for some members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission, the officials said. More lawmakers were briefed in recent weeks, after the administration learned The Times was making inquiries for this article.”
and
“In terrorism prosecutions, intelligence officials have been careful to “sanitize,” or hide the origins of evidence collected through the program to keep it secret, officials said.”
and
“The 9/11 hijackers had helped finance their plot by moving money through banks. Nine of the hijackers, for instance, funneled money from Europe and the Middle East to SunTrust bank accounts in Florida. Some of the $130,000 they received was wired by people overseas with known links to Al Qaeda.”
and
“Similar subpoenas for the Western Union data allowed the F.B.I. to trace wire transfers, mainly outside the United States, and to help Israel disrupt about a half-dozen possible terrorist plots there by unraveling the financing, an official said.”
It seems to me that
1) there are some details in the article, that 2) the government was attempting to keep the program secret, and 3) the terrorists (including the 9/11 hijackers) were engaging in financial transactions that could be traced.
Comment 6/27/2006
Ted
Sorry, but we are back to the very stupid terrorists again. I said:
” There is nothing in terms of operational details — not one single solitatry thing — in the NYTimes article that would help terrorist OR that hadn’t been mentioned by Administration officials before the story. ”
so show me in that list anything that a terrorist who wasn’t a galactically sized moron would not have already known was probably happening and taken steps to counter act? The al Queda point goes to the fact that the terrorist took a risk that paid off, not that they never suspected that their transactions were being traced. And, as I keep saying, the Bush administration has discussed almost all of this in public already. They obviously didn;t think it too dangerous to discuss, except when it highlighted some of their less savoy characteristics and when they needed a distraction.
Your list is this:
That’s it — what, aside from maybe convincing stupid terrorists that they don’t have to worry about real time investigation — gives the terrorists and advantage? And if you are trying t say that since some terorrists got caught using this, that the logical thing to do would be to never discuss ny of it. But that doesn’t go to the point that the terrorists know their money is subject to tracing. All that is going on here is that the terrorist are betting on their counter measures or betting on the incompetance of the US measures. And the fact that some cells have been rolled up is actually evidence that the terrorist already knew about this program - -afer all, arrest generate notice and it wouldn’t take much brain power to find potential areas where the cell could have been discovered. So, again, we are back to censoring an article that has no affect on national security for the sake of protecting the sancronasity of state secrets.
And the fact that the government want to keep it secret is no bar for publishing it. You ignored my point about Iran Contra, Watergate, and the pentagon papers: so answer me straight, would you have had those remain secret?
Comment 6/27/2006
Kevin,
Watergate was not a military classified situation. It was a crome and a cover-up. I fail to see the connection. Iran Contra was a stupid thing, but let me ask you this. If the arms for hostages angle turned out to be substantiated, do you think the US was better off having the world know that we were willing to make deals with hostage takers? And what good came from the Pentagon Papers?
My snips above were in response to your claims that the gov’t had already made the financial program public.
My list is what it is. You can condense “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.” to “suspected terrorists are monitored”, but I am not stupid, and most readers here are not, and you only do yourself an injustice by trying to be so deceptive.
I am not going to repeat myself over and over just to have you change my words and send them back. This debate has ceased to be enjoyable and I am done.
Comment 6/27/2006
Ted:
This debate has ceased to be enjoyable and I am done.
Uhh, you still haven’t answered my questions. Gee, I wonder why not!
Apparently, you don’t give a shit about government accountability. What’s that old saying about those who are willing to trade freedom for the illusion of security?
Comment 6/27/2006
Why aren’t all the screeching harpies jumping on the Wall Street Journal???? They published pretty much the same article. This has Rove’s stench all over it, a set up job. Another covert act to diminish the credibility of the press in all the wingnut’s eyes. Will they ever wake up???
Comment 6/28/2006
Rove must be the smartest man who ever lived. He is credited (or blamed) with everything in the world. Keep those tinfoil hats handy.
Comment 6/28/2006
tgirsch, I didn’t answer your questions because I was having a discussion with Kevin, and the scope kept increasing, and each time I stated something it was paraphrased, condensed, and restated. I wasn’t about to take on another thread since I was overwhelmed by the discussion with Kevin. Since I have abandoned that one, I will attempt to address your issues now.
You say I have put myself in a pickle by stating that we either have a system that allows classified information or not. I disagree. As you then go on to state, even Kevin will want some classified information. So, we seem to agree that some classified information is required. My question to you is this: how would you go about classifying information to avoid the obvious pitfalls involved with government secrecy? Shall we run it all by the NY Times first and see what they say?
Of course excessive secrecy is a bad thing. And I am glad you agree that revealing classified info can be an act of treason in certain cases. This was the thrust of my poorly explained point regarding LLSS. The average citizen is incapable of knowing all the ramifications of revealing information. Sometimes there is more to a situation than meets the eye. Sometimes it is about more than just shipping schedules. It is risky business to rely on the partially informed to determine the sensitivity of information. Perhaps it is the best we can do, but it is not a panacea, and will have negative consequences in certain instances.
My contention is the financial monitoring program (unlike the phone tapping situation) is on pretty sound legal footing (yes, I know you disagree) and that the article revealed more than generalities. I snipped several instances illustrating this from the Times article and posted them above. I am not going to repeat the exercise, but if you care, go read comment 12. My snips were my attempt to refute Kevin’s assertions that 1) terrorists would have to be stupid to do things that this program would reveal, that 2) the government had already publicized the program, and that 3) zero details were revealed.
To expand a bit on the third, since you also seem to believe this, let me explain my thinking. If I have money in Afghanistan and I need to purchase things in the US, I would find it very useful to know that international wire transfers were traced, but local transfers and other transactions were not traced. Also that monitoring was subject to a time delay. Knowing this, I would not do a wire transfer like the 9/11 hijackers did (before the monitoring program was in place). I would set up an account local to wherever my assets were at the time. I would then go to the US and set up a credit account, using the established offshore account as collateral, but not transferring any funds. By doing this, I would avoid monitored wire transfers. (There are many other ways to do this as well. It’s referred to as laundering money, and has been perfected by embezzlers, major drug dealers, Mafia king pins, and anyone else who generates large quantities of cash and does not want to attract attention by moving it through the financial system.) If my laundering ceased to work, I would postpone large cash acquisitions until within 2 weeks of my strike, and then wire the cash, knowing that by the time the monitoring system uncovered the transaction, I would be dead and the twin towers would be in rubble.
I hope that helps explain why I believe that the article was not harmless, and why others share my opinion.
I have not claimed that generalities are verboten. If I gave you that impression, I was unclear. I do believe they are risky however, and in the Times case, gov’t officials sat down with them and explained why they believed the program should be kept secret. The Times published anyway. I am not suggesting the Times be prosecuted, I am saying they showed poor judgment.
I agree that the press serves an important purpose in containing government. I do not have a good answer as to how to balance our need to monitor gov’t action and the need for classified information. Guess what, you don’t have a good answer either. So the fact that you pose this question to me as a way to discredit my disagreement with a specific case is unimpressive to me. There is no good answer. I know it. You know it. And any rational person who accepts the need for classified information and also distrusts government (funny how conservative/liberal roles flip flop on this) and thus wants checks and balances knows it.
You claim I am engaging in partisan protectionism. I am unwilling to accept that, since I not a Republican and have a strong dislike for Bush and his administration. I disagree with most things he has done and have posted so on this site. For you to resort to a Fred-like political characterization here is below your usual standard of integrity.
I hope I have explained myself and that you understand my point of view. Your quip “you don’t give a shit about government accountability” is on par with the “you are soft on terrorism” crap heard from some on the right. You, sir, are off your meds.
Comment 6/28/2006
mikefrom texas wrote
“Why aren’t all the screeching harpies jumping on the Wall Street Journal???? They published pretty much the same article.”
Let me take a shot at explaining this to you mike. The Times wrote the story and made the information public. From that point on, the monitoring program is no longer a secret. Those who we don’t want to know about it now know about it. No further damage is done by rehashing the information. Information is only leaked once. Subsequent publishing is not a leak. Had the WSJ broken the story, I would hold them accountable. I hope this helps you understand the situation.
Comment 6/28/2006
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Pingback 6/28/2006
Ted:
Let me start by backing off the “partisan protectionism” remark a bit. It’s not so much that you’re engaging in it as you are enabling it. I shouldn’t have accused you of intending to do so. Also, on re-reading, I see that my tone was unnecessarily harsh and uncalled for. So for that, I hope you’ll accept my apology. I didn’t mean to go into Fred-land. (Why am I so full of hate?!?)
I also want to point out that accountability in government has become one of my top issues; so in that respect, I don’t care if it’s an administration I like and support, or one I dislike and distrust, there has to be accountability, and without stories like this one, there won’t be.
Moving on…
The monitoring program hasn’t been a “secret” since at least 2002. “Classified” != “Secret,” at least not necessarily. As has been pointed out to you earlier in the thread, virtually everything reported in the NYT story had been previously publicly stated elsewhere, including by the president himself. The Glenn Greenwald story Kevin linked has links to most of the details.
More or less the way we’ve always gone about doing it, which absolutely requires a free and independent press. Something that the solution you seem to support undermines. When people in government see systemic illegal or questionable or immoral or incompetent actions, their lone course of action is to go to the media. This is an option you would seemingly take away from them. What options have you left them?
Actually, I’m not sure I disagree about the sound legal footing in this case; it very well may be on sound legal footing. There are ethical concerns, perhaps, but questionable ethics doesn’t necessarily translate into criminality.
Where I disagree with you is on the point that the article revealed “more than generalities.” I’ve read it, and it really didn’t. And most of the few specifics it did give were already a matter of public record. What’s news in all of this — and the part that I contend makes it a legitimate public interest question — is that the program operates under blanket warrants and only the thinnest judicial oversight, and that the program may point up shortcomings in existing laws designed to protect personal financial information from unwarranted intrusion. I contend that these are of great interest to the general public, and that the NYT had a duty to report as such.
I also contend that the reason the administration so vehemently objected to the story is not because it jeopardized any counterterror operations, but because the administration had already been taking heat for its disregard for privacy and its pervasive avoidance of meaningful judicial oversight. This story can’t have helped in that regard.
In short, it’s not so much that “zero details were revealed,” it’s more that “zero new details were revealed that are likely to help terrorists conceal their actions.” The very “details” that you claim could potentially help the terrorists have been public since 2002. See, among others, the Boston Globe.
The bottom line here is that there’s a conflict between the importance of secrecy and the public’s right to know. Given that most of the information was already public, and that most of the few new details involved who the program might affect Jane Q. American, I tend to agree with the NYT editorial staff in thinking the public’s right to know wins out pretty handily here.
Anyway, even if the NYT story did jeopardize American security (a claim I still find to be absurd on its face, given the lack of previously-unreleased details), hypothetically speaking, it’s not the NYT that should be prosecuted, it’s the “[n]early 20 government and industry” contacts who gave the information to The Times.
Comment 6/28/2006
tgirsch, I assume you are addressing the general readership when you write that the NYT should not be prosecuted. I have written the same thing two or three times above.
I read teh Glode article, and I don’t see where the specifics I have pointed out in the NYT article have been made public. The fact that several countries monitor finances in an effort to catch terrorists was public, but I don’t see the specifics. The article you cite also contained this:
“I worked this stuff and I can guarantee that [revealing the SWIFT] information made a difference,” said Dennis Lormel, a retired FBI special agent who helped establish the bureau’s Terrorist Financing Operations Section before leaving government in 2003. “The disclosure will have an adverse impact on investigations. It was used in two specific instances where it helped to track terrorists. We also used it for lead value.”
But I suppose we know more than a guy who actually used the stuff…
I have never said that I would prefer nobody ever blow the whistle on a gov’t program - even a classified one. You continually extrapolate my objection to this specific case to a blanket objection, even though I have set the record straight on my stance regarding this in each of my posts above.
In any event, we should probably move on. This horse is past dead.
Comment 6/28/2006
Ted:
If our primary disagreement is whether the NYT story was “ill-advised,” then our disagreements are still there, but not so deep as I initially assumed. But you must understand the context here. What Kevin is railing against (and I agree with him) is the idea (pervasive on the right) that the NYT running the story was treasonous, and that the NYT should be criminally prosecuted. You seemed to be taking that side in this, and you don’t mention that you don’t think the NYT should be prosecuted (that I can find) until comment #18. Neither did you suggest that they should be. But given the rhetoric that’s been going around, and the fact that you were critical of the NYT without being critical of those pundits engaging in heavy-handed criticism of the NYT, I don’t think it was an unreasonable assumption to make.
Comment 6/28/2006
Shall I assume you are in agreement with everything that you don’t explicitly disagree with?
As is the case with you, I form my opinions considering the merits of the case at hand. I don’t feel an obligation to defend the left position any more than I feel an obligation to defend the right. It is precisely that knee-jerk behavior that makes a mockery of virtually all political debate these days.
Assigning guilt by assumed association is a lazy form of analysis (you generally steer clear of this - to your credit). Case in point, in the above discussion, I was focusing on a specific aspect of the NYT debate. Since my stance on this specific aspect was in line with certain morons on the right, it was assumed that:
1) I am in favor of the Times being prosecuted (nothing could be more untrue)
2) I would suppress all reporting unsanctioned by the government (completely against my ideals)
3) I am in favor of the government being able to indiscriminately classify anything it wishes to keep from the public (untrue),
4) Believe the Times would print anytime (untrue), and
5) That I am a screeching harpie, am engaging in political protectionism, don’t give a shit abut government accountability, and more.
I don’t know why exactly, but this thread has proved very frustrating for me - much more so than others. This case could be debated in a meaningful fashion if the scope remained limited to the specifics at hand. But if the debate also requires that we establish and defend positions regarding freedom, motherhood and apple pie, then we will (and did) make limited progress.
Comment 6/29/2006