Posted on 08/17/2006 8:01:16 AM PDT by aft_lizard
There is nothing classified in Washington today, said U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., disturbed by leaked information.
"These are stories that have made America less safe, in my view, and have endangered sources, methods and lives," Roberts said during a stop Wednesday afternoon in McPherson.
He referred to stories on government surveillance tactics and money-tracking efforts to find terrorists.
The stories not only rob the government of its national security tools, but they also are filled - "80 percent" - with errors, he said.
"I'm stuck," Roberts added, because as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he can't address the published reports.
"I think if we had the same kind of mood in our country and the same kind of press coverage," Roberts said, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower probably would have been court-martialed because of all the casualties on D-Day.
If reporters with The New York Times or The Washington Post had discovered the suspected plot in London before recent arrests occurred, would they have broken the news, Roberts asked reporters at a McPherson press conference.
Based on past experience, Roberts thinks that answer would be yes.
Roberts noted that he has asked National Intelligence Director John Negroponte for a damage assessment on leaks.
As for sources of leaks, Roberts said there should be "mandatory duct tape" for a lot of people in Congress.
The press has a right to print it, Roberts said, but the question is: Should they?
He spoke of his own roots in journalism. An ancestor founded the Oskaloosa Independent, the second-oldest newspaper in Kansas, and Roberts earned a degree in journalism from Kansas State University in 1958. He worked as a reporter and editor before switching and joining the staff of Sen. Frank Carlson, R-Kan., in 1967.
"I think that there is a new era of information in America," Roberts said, but he questions if bloggers should be considered members of the press.
Hutchinson News Photo U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts talks Wednesday to the employees of Hospira in McPherson. Travis Morisse
Partisanship on Capitol Hill and sharp rhetoric stirred by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan also concern Roberts.
"Let's just cool the rhetoric," he said.
Not since perhaps the Nixon era, he said, have feelings been so hot.
"Civility still lives here - I'm not sure it does, though, in Washington, D.C.," he said.
"Words have consequences," Roberts said, and those outside the U.S. interpret some words as a loss of resolve.
The fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is approaching, and terrorist leader Osama bin Laden remains elusive.
"I think he's more of a figurehead now," Roberts said, expressing greater concern about "home-grown cells" of terrorists.
Roberts, who also serves on the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, toured Hospira's pharmaceutical plant and talked to employees during his stop.
With roughly 800 employees, Hospira is the biggest employer in McPherson County, according to Marvin Peters, executive director of the McPherson Industrial Development Co.
"It really is amazing," Roberts said of the "state-of-the-art" plant.
Roberts was also a Marine at one time, the article forgot to mention that.
Based on past experience, Roberts thinks that answer would be yes.
You were first on this story, DFU!
Good for Roberts. We have to stop the fifth column in this country.
Here is the story about the phone call to the NY TIMES --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681329/posts
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