Treason? [Tribune defends leaking of WWII breaking of Japanese code?]

Debates rage inside a newsroom about every sensitive story. There's nothing more sobering than when the debate goes beyond a story's accuracy and fairness, when it goes to a larger question: Will publishing this story cause more harm than good to the nation?

President Bush on Monday condemned the recent disclosure of a secret government program by several newspapers, saying that the reporting had damaged national security.

The program in question monitors the financial transactions of suspected terrorists, allowing U.S. counterterrorism analysts to obtain financial information from a vast database.

Bush said the disclosure of that program was "disgraceful." He said the revelation "does great harm to the United States" and "makes it harder to win this war on terror." The contention is that terrorists will hide their tracks if they know some of the "means and methods" the U.S. and its allies use to track them.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) urged the Bush administration to prosecute The New York Times for the disclosure. "We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," he said.

I don't know how to interpret this other than a justification for leaking the news that the US had broken the Japanese codes.

I say that because the incident alluded to was accidental, the Tribune noted in a post Midway article that the Navy had advance knowledge of the Japanese plans. It wasn’t a deliberate publication of classified information, but the Japanese could have deduced the the breaking of their code from their article. Fortunately they didn’t.

Had the Tribune run a headline Navy Breaks Japanese Code, followed by details of the successful program as the NYT did, the course of the war would have been changed.

The Tribune editorial staff must know that.

Alluding to being “cleared” of an unintentional act in defense of the deliberate NY Times publication is dishonest.

In 1942, a livid President Franklin Roosevelt briefly contemplated sending Marines to occupy Tribune Tower because of a report in this newspaper that naval officials feared would tip the Japanese that the U.S. had broken their military code. An investigation later cleared the Tribune and two of its staffers of violating an espionage law.

I'm reminded of Diane Feinstein inserting herself into the search for Richard Ramirez. She ran her mouth about clues the police wanted kept secret (police knew what type of shoes he was wearing). Ramirez saw the interview and ditched the shoes. I don't remember if he killed anyone more due to Feinstein's mouth.

I canceled my subscription to the Chicago Tribune after their blatant dishonesty in how the Sandy Burglar story was handled. They are united at the hip with the NYT. I won't waste my time or money reading that paper. BTW, even after we canceled our subscription, we found out that they kept us on their subscriber rolls for years. They wouldn't want to let their advertisers know they are bleeding readers.

The Tribune had best be careful. The Japanese were already scheduled to change their codes following Midway. When they did it severely limited our information about certain fleet movements. This led to a dearth of information that cost lives on Guadalcanal. Had the Japanese not already been scheduled to change their codes, the change they enacted might have been construed as a response to the Tribune story about Midway.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.