Timestorm

Some days you get the bear, and other days the bear gets you.

So the saying goes. Today the "bear" got me, and I haven't been able to get a word in here fingerwise. But in line with keeping a promise for a change, here is my first bite at the most recent in an apparently intended long line of illegal breaches of U.S. national security by the gilded, self-annointed arbiters of secrecy at the New York Times.

Which I can see from my twenty-six linked stories in the initial batch, is probably way too big a bite. But what could possibly happen? It's not like the consumption metaphor can become scatalogical, although I could end up face-down drooling on my keyboard.

Here might be a short-cut, though: How do you know when the Extreme Media has rampaged beyond the pale of even vile, partisan excess? When Michael Barone, the dean of political analysis and the king of understatement, accuses them of being at war with their own country:

Why do they hate us? No, I'm not talking about Islamofascist terrorists. We know why they hate us: because we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, because we refuse to treat women as second-class citizens, because we do not kill homosexuals, because we are a free society.

No, the "they" I'm referring to are the editors of the New York Times. And do they hate us? Well, that may be stretching it. But at the least they have gotten into the habit of acting in reckless disregard of our safety....

Last Friday, the Times did it again, printing a story revealing the existence of U.S. government monitoring of financial transactions routed through the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which routes about $6 trillion a day in electronic money transfers around the world. The monitoring is conducted by the CIA and supervised by the Treasury Department. An independent auditing firm has been hired to make sure only terrorist-related transactions are targeted.

Members of Congress were briefed on the program, and it does not seem to violate any law, at least any that the Times could identify. And it has been effective. As the Times reporters admit, it helped to locate the mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombing in Thailand and a Brooklyn man convicted on charges of laundering a $200,000 payment to al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan.

Once again, Bush Administration officials asked the Times not to publish the story. Once again, the Times went ahead anyway. "We have listened closely to the Administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration," Bill Keller is quoted as saying. It's interesting to note that he feels obliged to report he and his colleagues weren't smirking or cracking jokes. "We remain convinced that the Administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

I'd better stop there before I impregnate the fair usage standard with double-triplets. But I felt it necessary to re-establish the baseline of this issue. There is no question of illegality or questionable constitutional propriety with the Swift project, and unlike in their exposure of the NSA terrorist surveillance program, the Times didn't raise any. So what could possibly have motivated them to print this story anyway? And what made them think they had the right to do so? Given that the tool they exposed was instrumental in the government's prosecution of the war, wasn't it more in the public interest to keep it undisclosed?

Rhetorical questions all, 'tis true. I'll answer them myself below (WAY DOWN below), but first, here's a sampling of the reaction outside the Bushophobia asylum, which can be fairly described as uniformly and deservedly sulfuric.

Congressman Peter King (R-NY) (via RCP):

To me, the real question here is the conduct of the New York Times. By disclosing this in time of war, they have compromised America's antiterrorist policies. This is a very effective policy. They have compromised it. This is the second time the New York Times has done this.

And to me, nobody elected the New York Times to do anything. And the New York Times is putting its own arrogant, elitist, left-wing agenda before the interests of the American people. And I'm calling on the attorney general to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of the New York Times, its reporters, the editors that worked on this, and the publisher. We're in time of war, Chris, and what they've done here is absolutely disgraceful. I believe they violated the Espionage Act, the Comint (ph) Act.

This is absolutely disgraceful. The time has come for the American people to realize and the New York Times to realize we're at war and they can't be just on their own deciding what to declassify, what to release.

If Congress wants to work on this privately, that's one thing. But for them to, on their own - for them to decide - for the editor of the New York Times to say that he decides it's in the national interest - no one elected them to anything.

Michael Ledeen:

Keller et al have confirmed yet again that they don’t care about national security, at least in this war (sorry, the current circumstances; they don’t think we’re at war). What they really want is the defeat of George W Bush, and the devil take the consequences.

They have forgotten that the terrorists love to behead journalists. But Daniel Pearl, well, it’s such a long time ago, you know...

Andrew McCarthy:

Appealing to the patriotism of these newspapers proved about as promising as appealing to the humanity of the terrorists they so insouciantly edify — the same monsters who, as we saw again only a few days ago with the torture murder of two American soldiers, continue to define depravity down.

The newspapers, of course, said no. Why? What could outweigh the need to protect a valid effort to shield Americans from additional, barbarous attacks? Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, smugly decreed that the Bush Administration’s “access to this vast repository of international financial data” was, in his singularly impeccable judgment, “a matter of public interest.”

And you probably thought George Bush was the imperious one. And that the public’s principal interest was in remaining alive. Wrong again.

The blunt reality here is that there is a war against the war. It is the jihad of privacy fetishists whose self-absorption knows no bounds. Pleas rooted in the well-being of our community hold no sway.

Brother Trunk:

[Abraham] Lincoln feared the "mobocratic spirit" at large across the country in the hands of ignorant men who took justice into their own hands and committed violent outrages. Today the same "mobocratic spirit" can be seen in the hands of the smug sophisticates at the Times and elsewhere who share this in common with the mobs of Lincoln's day: "the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice."

NRO:

Success in defeating the terrorists at war with us is dependent on good intelligence. Without obtaining it and keeping it secret, the government can’t even find the dots, much less connect them. If the compromising of our national-security secrets continues, terrorists will thrive and Americans will die. It has to be stopped.

The New York Times is a recidivist offender in what has become a relentless effort to undermine the intelligence-gathering without which a war against embedded terrorists cannot be won. And it is an unrepentant offender. In a letter published over the weekend, Keller once again defended the newspaper’s editorial decision to run its TFTP story. Without any trace of perceiving the danger inherent in public officials’ compromising of national-security information (a matter that the Times frothed over when it came to the comparative trifle of Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA employee), Keller indicated that the Times would continue revealing such matters whenever it unilaterally decided that doing so was in the public interest.

The President should match [his] tough talk with concrete action. Publications such as the Times, which act irresponsibly when given access to secrets on which national security depends, should have their access to government reduced. Their press credentials should be withdrawn. Reporting is surely a right, but press credentials are a privilege. This kind of conduct ought not be rewarded with privileged access.

Heather MacDonald:

The New York Times is a national security threat. So drunk is it on its own power and so antagonistic to the Bush Administration that it will expose every classified antiterror program it finds out about, no matter how legal the program, how carefully crafted to safeguard civil liberties, or how vital to protecting American lives....The bottom line is this: No classified secret necessary to fight terrorism is safe once the Times hears of it, at least as long as the Bush Administration is in power.....al Qaeda has long worked to manipulate the media in its favor. It can disband that operation now, knowing that, unbidden, America's most powerful newspaper is looking out for its interests.

Jed Babbin:

What, then, shall we do with "Punch" Sulzberger, Bill Keller, Jill Abramson and the rest of the ideologues who control the New York Times? They are the new war profiteers. When they learned of the NSA terrorist surveillance program they kept the secret for a year for which the NSA was grateful. But in that year, James Risen wrote his book on the story and it was released on the same day the Times published a front-page story on the NSA program after the President had personally asked that it not be published. The Sulzbergers, Kellers and Abramsons are a new and vastly worse breed of war profiteers. Arms manufacturers may make bigger profits than some think is due them, but they deliver products essential to winning a war. The products of the N.Y. Times and its ilk are not only unnecessary, they materially assist the enemy.

Former Attorney-General Ed Meese:

Former Attorney General Ed Meese accused the New York Times of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" a term that fits the definition of treason.

Interviewed Monday on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, Meese said the Times' outing of the CIA and Treasury Department's tracking of financial transactions by al-Qaida and other terrorist groups was its "the third offense," Pipeline News reported.

According to Meese, the Times' exposure of of the existence of the NSA program to track al-Qaida communications, their outing of the logging of phone records and now the publishing of the details of the financial tracking operation were cases of newspaper "putting the enemy on notice." That, he said was giving "aid and comfort to the enemy."

Rich Lowry:

Who made Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, the nation’s classification czar? By running the nation’s foremost newspaper, Keller gets to decide which secrets of the U.S. government are maintained and which aren’t — and his default position is to expose them all. This amounts to an extraordinary accretion of public power in the hands of an individual, and a self-interested individual at that....

On the one hand, the implicit contention of the Times is that the public almost never has an interest in secrecy, in having classified matters kept that way. On the other, it jealously guards the identity of its secret sources and wants its ability to do so in defiance of governmental investigations written into law. Here is the ultimate arrogation of public power — the Times demanding legal protection for its own secrets so it can better expose the government’s.

Mark Levin:

The Times is a serial offender, having previously published leaks about the NSA intercept program and the data-mining program. It is the current Times management that's damaging a free press (not to mention our ability to defend ourselves) by irresponsibly regurgitating key national secrets leaked by individuals within our government who are using their positions to assist the enemy. Even when asked by the White House to withhold publication, this handful of self-anointed arbiters of the "public interest" willfully defied it....At long last, Pinch, have you no decency?

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS):

"There was no public interest served by disclosing an effective and highly classified intelligence program that is legal and properly overseen by Congress and the executive branch. The New York Times knew that and printed the story anyway," Roberts said in a statement released with his letter to Negroponte.

"I understand newspapers want to sell papers and authors want to sell books, but some things shouldn't be for sale."

Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY):

Senator Jim Bunning, R-KY, has added his voice to those charging that the New York Times committed treason by revealing details of a government program that tracks financial transactions by al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

"That the press wouldn’t have better sense than to leak critical information on terrorists so that they know what we’re doing – that scares the devil out of me,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters.

Bunning said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should empanel a grand jury to decide if the Times’ publisher, editors and writers who were involved in the story should be indicted for treason, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports.

"In my opinion, that is giving aid and comfort to the enemy; therefore it is an act of treason,” Bunning said. "What you write in a war and what is legal to do for the federal government, or state government, whoever it is, is very important in winning the war on terror.”

Jonah Goldberg:

A glimpse into the thinking behind Times executive editor Bill Keller’s decision to green-light the story can be gleaned by noting his tactic of referring to this as a program of the Bush “Administration” rather than a government program. It seems the Times has simply concluded that a president who won’t use the war on terror to unify the country on terms the newspaper finds favorable isn’t justified in fighting that war at all.

More Mark Levin:

The media claim to be representing "the public interest." But that's not a defense to willful, serial criminal activity. I suppose the moles in our government who leak the information to the likes of the New York Times can claim the same thing. Indeed, Bill Keller said as much when he wrote that some officials question the legality of the financial-tracking system. Who cares if they violate not only the law, put their sworn oath to uphold the law and the trust of their colleagues and fellow citizens. And the mere assertion by Keller that his lawlessness is in the public interest doesn't make it so. This is a self-serving claim and nothing more.

The media wrap themselves in the First Amendment's free-speech and free-press clauses — which are apparently the only parts of the Constitution they believe to be written in stone. But this isn't about prior restraint.

Indeed, the judiciary — the media's favorite branch of government because its members are unelected and are least representative of the public, much like the media themselves — has said that editors and reporters are, in essence, free to betray their country, but they are not immune from the consequences of their behavior. And that's what Keller is really demanding, i.e., not the right to publish our secrets, but the right to be legally protected from the laws that apply to all other citizens....

Keller and others have said that there are no checks on the authority exercised by this president. This reveals Keller's true motivation. He does, in fact, seek to weaken the commander-in-chief....

The New York Times:

"If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one," a newspaper editorialized on September 24, 2001 - just 13 days after the terrorist strikes of 9/11....

"[The] cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists....

"[Much more is needed], including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities.... [There] must also be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies."

The Bush Administration agreed and did precisely as the Times urged. And there have been no more Islamist attacks inside the U.S. since then. Evidently the "Grey Lady" has decided that it's time for al Qaeda's unfettered operations to resume, no matter that that decision isn't theirs to make. Almost makes you wonder what the Times editorialists would have penned about themselves five years hence.

Just to close the loop on my rhetorical questions above (WAY UP above), Extreme Media outlets like the NYT are systematically rototilling our national security secrets into public view because...they can. In their minds THEY run the country, not that drooling, hillbilly, blue-blood, snake-handling mongoloid. That he was actually twice elected to do so, unlike them, makes no difference; their moral supremacy entitles them to rule, and supercedes the whims of the unwashed masses who stubbornly refuse to learn from what the press sees as their serial, biennial "mistakes." It also supercedes the Constitution, which they consider to be their property anyway, to deface, redact, and otherwise vandalize to their extremist preferences.

Understand this if nothing else: Liberals are mercenaries. Like good orthodox lefties they are unmoored from any loyalty to "king and country"; and like good self-centered solopsists, if they can't be the king, the country can burn as far as they're concerned.

This makes the Times' serial treasons tantamount to blackmail of the entire American populace. The message seems abundantly clear:

Either let a Democrat into the White House, or we will continue to sabotage American security and, in effect, kill Americans. We will keep secrets when a Democrat is in office, but not a Republican. So we offer the American people a choice: Let the politicians we favor run the country, or we will help Al Qaeda murder you.

After I get home and have some dinner, the grassroots get their turn at a little additional amplification.