Grey Lady Goes Nixon

The GOP push-back against the New York Times' open treason in leaking the NSA anti-terror eavesdropping program (among other national security secrets) rolled on Sunday with Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell taking his turn at the plate:

Asked about the prospect of public hearings into the counterterrorism program, Senator Mitch McConnell told Fox News Sunday: "We're already talking about this entirely too much out in public as a result of these leaks and the New York Times continuing to write about it - and it's endangering our efforts to make Americans more secure."...

McConnell said that any congressional hearings should take a back seat to the criminal probe launched into the Times leaks on Friday, saying: "Thank God the Justice Department is investigating to find out who is endangering our national security by leaking this information so that our enemies now have a greater sense of what our techniques are in going after terrorists."

The Kentucky Republican predicted that Americans would back the White House in any fight over surveilling terrorists, noting, "An overwhelming majority of the American people understand that we needed new techniques in the wake of 9/11 to protect us."

That much is obvious. Including, evidently, to the "paper of record" itself, which stubbornly persists in trying to breathe life into this anchor of a "story,"and is now providing a telling preview of how they plan to respond to the Justice Department investigation:

New York Times executives are "stonewalling" on questions about the paper's decision to publish top secret information about the Bush Administration's use of the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance operations against terrorists, the paper's public editor charged on Sunday.

"The New York Times' explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate," public editor Byron Calame wrote in a New Years Day column....

"For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making," he lamented.

Three days after the Times began publishing the national security secrets, Calame says he emailed a list of 28 questions to executive editor Bill Keller, who "promptly declined to respond to them."

He then sent the same questions to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who also declined to respond. "They held out no hope for a fuller explanation in the future," Calame said.

He accused the two top Times officials of "stonewalling," adding, "The paper's silence leaves me with uncomfortable doubts."

But hardly surprises. That's precisely how I would expect Sulzberger and Keller to react. After all, they don't work for Calame. Although it does surprise me that they would publish Calame's accusations, including the term "stonewall". That's a word I think we'll be hearing - and using - quite a bit in the weeks and months ahead as the scandal Eric Lichtblau and James Risen thought would bring down the Bush Administration once and for all boomerangs instead to bite them where it hurts the most.