Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence

The New York Times (Liberal Death Star) ^ | 1/1/06 | BYRON CALAME

[Mike Darancette]

If they were smart enough back in 2004 to foresee a backlash, then they would have been smart enough to foresee a backlash in 2005

It is a matter of news cycles, just before the election it would have hurt Kerry and the RATS immediately. Now, the NYT assumes, it will be forgotten by 11/06.

[68skylark]

Your speculation makes sense for me. And like you note, I think the Times and the rest of the left is now is a pickle, since the public seems to agree with the Bush administration that it's okay to intercept al-Queada communications coming into this country.

(I can't imagine how anyone could have a problem with that, but that's why I'm not a liberal. And conversely, I guess that liberals must be baffled by those of us who want to treat al-Queada as a greater threat than the Bush administration.)

I'll be interested to see if liberals keep this NSA story alive -- part of them wants to keep it alive, even though another part of them has got to know it makes them look bad and makes the administration look good.

[Brad from Tennessee]

Recalling a couple of stories posted on FR (I don't have the links) in the last week or two, the West Europeans--who the liberals admire as the enlightened--have more intrusive methods of domestic surveillance and more Draconian counter-terror laws than we do in the U.S.

[Cicero]

I'm with you on this.

I think Bill Keller and Pinch Sulzberger are stonewalling with their own public editor because they are in line to be implicated conspirators in the Justice Department probe.

The story never would have been printed without Keller's go-ahead. And I believe Sulzberger would have been consulted before going forward with it as well, because it's too important for him not to be asked to approve of it. If anyone believes that a story of this magnitude could have been kicking around for a year without Sulzberger, Keller, and everyone else in the chain of command knowing about it and approving its publication, I have a bridge to sell them.

Any admissions that Keller and Sulzberger make now, anything they say at all, could be used against them in the ongoing Justice Department probe. They just saw Judith Miller go to jail for refusing to reveal her sources, and the same thing could happen to them. Indeed, it should happen to them. So it's not surprising that they're not talking.

They took a big gamble that once again Bush would do nothing in response to leftist treason. Maybe this time they are in some danger of losing their treasonous bet.

[airedale]

They don't have a choice in taking the 5th. They know that Justice is going to be knocking on both their doors and jail awaits them if they don't spill all the info they have on the sources for this article including what every else they got from those sources. The more they talk the more ammunition Justice has to use against them. If Valerie Plame was justification for the courts to put reporters in the slammer if they didn't talk the leaks printed in the NY Times which are far more damaging give even more justification.

[oldbrowser]

But when further reporting showed that legal questions loomed larger than The Times first thought and that a story could be written without certain genuinely sensitive technical details,

Legal technicalities and interpretations aside, was there ever any thought that publishing secret surveillance methods might cripple our ability to protect ourselves ?

[oldbrowser]

Is this a veiled threat to the Administration to back off any investigation into the leaking of NSA intercepts, "or we will tell all we know and cripple the country's ability to obtain intelligence"?

Remember the J. Edgar Hoover days ?

He had a dossier on everybody.

If the NYT has files on everybody and can selectively leak information to punish or reward, then it becomes a shadow government able to manipulate politicians and bureaucrats at will.

[p23185]

At the outset, it's essential to acknowledge the far-reaching importance of the eavesdropping article's content to Times readers and to the rest of the nation. Whatever its path to publication, Mr. Sulzberger and Mr. Keller deserve credit for its eventual appearance in the face of strong White House pressure to kill it. I think most normal, patriotic Americans would wonder if it's right to spill military secrets that help the enemy in wartime. But not Mr. Calame.

As I have posted over the last weeks here, Pinchie Sultzberger and Keller (and Risen) need to be tried as traitors for this treasonous act. They KNOWINGLY published national secrets for the world to see, and it was NO ACCIDENT. No trial is needed since the whole world witnessed the act, and we all know the intent was there since President Bush asked them not to publish. The 1st Amendment does give a person a right to commit TREASON.

[p23185]

The year long delay in release is strange. Now it makes them look bad from the standpoint it appears that they knew the info was in national security interests...but then they released it anyway.

I find it VERY strange if the Bush Administration had not started the leak investigation until just recently - President Bush knew of this leak over a year ago. The investigation should be completed by now and the frog march should have already taken place, I would think.

[Bullitt]

We need a version of "Gitmo" For the NY Times traitors.

[pepsionice]

When you read the entire article...you quickly realize the entire story. Reporter spends huge amount of time on a story which is kept underwraps...for months and months. Newspaper, trying to appease the administration...did alot of hesitation and simply kept the story in limbo. Finally, the reporter lets them know he is publishing his own book on the entire story. Paper decides it must publish or appear as a "friend" of the adminstration. GW attempts to talk sense into them...but to no avail. Reporter is happy, because his book will sell double what it would have because of the publicity. The paper looks like it has a great story...but the fact is that the US government has had NSA doing this kind of thing for decades...so its really not news. Congress wants to hold meetings...but there isn't much they can say in public after the meetings...so they are worthless for the political hack shows on Sunday. The NSA continues their mission, with little or no change.

Did I miss anything here?

[beyond the sea]

For me, however, the most obvious question is still this: If no one at The Times was aware of the eavesdropping prior to the election, why wouldn't the paper have been eager to make that clear to readers in the original explanation and avoid that politically charged issue? The paper's silence leaves me with uncomfortable doubts.

Now it looks like this editor is going to try to pretend to anyone who is stupid enough to read this (me) that the NYT was perhaps trying to help G.W. before the election by not printing this story.

These people are so Effin bizarrely foolish! What a plan!!

LOL

[frankjr]

You left out that best part...where the "happy reporter" is sitting in jail for refusing to disclose to the Prosecutor the source of the classified info. After a few days in the slammer, the reporter becomes the "girlfriend" of another inmate.

[Leatherneck_MT]

and they would have been occupied by either the OSS or the Marines, the Editors and Reporters Arrested and thrown in jail and quite possibly tried for treason and shot or hung.

We didn't play games with traitors back then.