Wed
Jun 28 2006
11:38 am

The nation's premier newspaper, the New York Times, is under attack from the government and many of its partisan adherents because of a report about the government's use of bank records to track terrorists and terrorist organizations.

All of this is following a predictable pattern, although the vitriol of those attacking the Times, as Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports, is at a high level. Predictable to a lesser degree though still not very surprising is the report from the Boston Globe that a lot of this information has already been in the public domain -- and the source has been the federal government itself.

One wonders, then, why the attack on the Times has been so virulent. The Times is a convenient target; a lot of people don't like the Times anyway and would certainly be willing to believe that it has compromised national security.

But the Bush strategy here may be like that of a baseball team manager arguing the call of the umpire; he knows he won't get the call changed but hopes to intimidate the ump into giving him the next one.

Let's hope that doesn't happen.

R. Neal's picture

Wonder why they aren't

Wonder why they aren't piling on the Wall Street Journal? Or why they have never objected to the Valerie Plame outing? Or why they never complained about the NYT reporting all that "curveball" misinformation/propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq?

Good analogy re. the umpire call. I was afraid they were backing themselves into a corner with all the rhetoric, and would be forced to do something stupid. Based on Tony Snow's comment yesterday that they won't be revoking the NYT's White House press privileges, I suppose we can assume it was just blustering, and as you say, intimidation.

Andy Axel's picture

GOP = Joe Mikulik

And the GOP is increasingly starting to look like Joe Mikulik.

video: (link...)
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"The iPod was not developed by Baptists in Waco." -- G.K.

joli's picture

There was nothing wrong or

There was nothing wrong or illegal about the program. So what exactly IS in the public interest in publishing this NSA program ... one that the NYT called for itself in an editorial on 9/24/01?

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(link...)

One of the New York Times’s justifications for exposing the Bush administration’s post-9/11 scrutiny of international banking transactions via access to Swift, the Belgium-based international banking-information system, is that the American people never gave the feds permission to snoop into banking records—even those of suspected Islamist terrorists. Thus, the Times must save the day by alerting us all. But there’s a flaw in this justification. When the Bush administration did ask the American people for permission to scrutinize banking records for terrorist activity, Congress practically shouted yes, without public objection.

Just six weeks after 9/11, Congress overwhelmingly passed the USA Patriot Act. Among other things, the act vastly increased the Treasury Department’s ability to examine both domestic banking transactions and international ones whose activity touches the U.S. for possible terrorist activity, by expanding longstanding tools to uncover money laundering. Federal law now requires all banks and brokerage firms doing business in the U.S. to keep detailed records of new customers and to report any suspicious clients or transactions to the authorities.

RedDog's picture

ummmm - people could be up

ummmm - people could be up set because people could actually die because of the NYT's posting of classified information?

And regarding an earlier comment - was Val truly outed? Outed from what? There has certainly been a lot of accusations about an outing without an actual determination of such. I guess it is kind of like the SKB outing. Not very pleasant but certainly not any crime... 

 

S Carpenter's picture

That people die

 

 

 That people die because it has been reported that bank records are subpoenaed is horsepuck.

 If our government gets commercial records via subpoena then ANYONE should have the right to know, particularly the person whose records are being subpoenaed.

 The lengths to which people, who otherwise claim to be conservative, will blindly  tolerate unchecked executive power is astonishing.

 Happy Independence Day,
 SC

Factchecker's picture

Oh, pleeze

...ummmm - people could be up set because people could actually die because of the NYT's posting of classified information?

Oh, pleeze.  Besides this also being reported by the GOP'S darling WSJ, as well as The Boston Globe, it was mentioned in today's paper that the SWIFT program was also reported on years ago.  Wingnuts need to learn that the media is not the enemy.  Though of course those making such accuasations don't believe that; they just want the sheeple to think that to divert blame for politcal gain.  That's why the umpire analogy fits.

Why don't people like RedDog try and help President Bush to find out who leaked Plame's name, which Bush acknowledged and whom he pledged to fire.  Sounds like it must have been a serious issue.

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