House vote slaps news organizations

[XtremeJibber2001]

House vote slaps news organizations
Resolution blasts stories on terrorist tracking program

Thursday, June 29, 2006; Posted: 8:51 p.m. EDT (00:51 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House on Thursday approved a Republican-crafted resolution condemning news organizations for revealing a covert government program to track terrorist financing, saying the disclosure had "placed the lives of Americans in danger."

The resolution, passed 227-183 on a largely party-line vote, did not specifically name the news organizations, but it was aimed at The New York Times and other news media that last week reported on a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorists.

Most Democrats opposed the measure, protesting language in it that asserts that the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was "rooted in sound legal authority" and that members of Congress had been appropriately briefed on the program.

While the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal also carried stories on the program, Republicans singled out The New York Times.

"The recent front-page story in the aforementioned New York Times cut the legs out from under this program," said the Financial Services Committee chairman, Rep. Michael Oxley, R-Ohio. "Now the terrorists are well-informed of the details of our methods and will find other ways to move money outside of the formal financial system."

The administration and the 9/11 Commission "went to The New York Times and asked them in the interest of national security not to release the details of this program," said Rep. Peter King, R-New York, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. "They went ahead and did it anyway."

The Times has defended its reporting, saying publication has served America's public interest. Its executive editor, Bill Keller, said in a statement after the House passed the resolution that the paper took seriously the risks of reporting on intelligence.

"We have on many occasions withheld information when lives were at stake," Keller said. "However, the administration simply did not make a convincing case that describing our efforts to monitor international banking presented such a danger. Indeed, the administration itself has talked publicly and repeatedly about its successes in the area of financial surveillance."

The resolution "condemns the unauthorized disclosure of classified information" and "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations in protecting the lives of Americans and the capability of the government to identify, disrupt and capture terrorists by not disclosing classified intelligence programs such as the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program."

Democrats reacted angrily to the GOP majority's refusal to allow them to offer an alternative that would also have expressed concerns about the unauthorized leak of classified information but would have left out language defending the legality of the program.

"What you have done is to hijack the virtually unanimous support for tracking terrorist financing into an endorsement of the way the Bush administration has conducted itself," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, author of the alternative.

"It is a campaign document," said Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

"There's never been any oversight of the program," she said. "You are asking us to vote on something that we absolutely cannot attest to."

I think this is a waste of time, but I think the NYT defense is fairly "retarded". NYT states that "everyone" including "terrorists" already knew about the program because GWB shared the information with the World. Supposing that's the case, why would it be front-page news?

[BigKahuna13]

Nothing more than Republican payback to the Times for being continually critical of the administration.

[XtremeJibber2001]

Nothing more than Republican payback to the Times for being continually critical of the administration.

Nothing, nothing at all? Why do you think the NYT published the article? Murtha, staunchly against this admin (IMHO) ... called the NYT asking them not to run the story...

[Bubba]

And the administration leaked the story to papers like the Wall Street Journal once it knew that the Times was going to print it.

[XtremeJibber2001]

And the administration leaked the story to papers like the Wall Street Journal once it knew that the Times was going to print it.

I thought WSJ, LA Times, and the like ... recieved their story from the NYT?

[BigKahuna13]

Nothing more than Republican payback to the Times for being continually critical of the administration.

Nothing, nothing at all? Why do you think the NYT published the article? Murtha, staunchly against this admin (IMHO) ... called the NYT asking them not to run the story...

The New York Times' stated reason for publishing the article (opinion 6/28/2006) is

From our side of the news-opinion wall, the Swift story looks like part of an alarming pattern. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

The Swift program, like the wiretapping program, has been under way for years with no restrictions except those that the executive branch chooses to impose on itself — or, in the case of Swift, that the banks themselves are able to demand. This seems to us very much the sort of thing the other branches of government, and the public, should be nervously aware of. We would have been very happy if Congressman Peter King, the Long Island Republican who has been so vocal in citing the Espionage Act, had been as aggressive in encouraging his colleagues to do the oversight job they were elected to do.

The United States will soon be marking the fifth anniversary of the war on terror. The country is in this for the long haul, and the fight has to be coupled with a commitment to individual liberties that define America's side in the battle. A half-century ago, the country endured a long period of amorphous, global vigilance against an enemy who was suspected of boring from within, and history suggests that under those conditions, it is easy to err on the side of security and secrecy. The free press has a central place in the Constitution because it can provide information the public needs to make things right again. Even if it runs the risk of being labeled unpatriotic in the process.



Nothing in the Times' reporting on this administration leads me to think that the above is not an accurate read on why they published the story.

[XtremeJibber2001]

Nothing more than Republican payback to the Times for being continually critical of the administration.

Nothing, nothing at all? Why do you think the NYT published the article? Murtha, staunchly against this admin (IMHO) ... called the NYT asking them not to run the story...

The New York Times' stated reason for publishing the article (opinion 6/28/2006) is

From our side of the news-opinion wall, the Swift story looks like part of an alarming pattern. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

The Swift program, like the wiretapping program, has been under way for years with no restrictions except those that the executive branch chooses to impose on itself — or, in the case of Swift, that the banks themselves are able to demand. This seems to us very much the sort of thing the other branches of government, and the public, should be nervously aware of. We would have been very happy if Congressman Peter King, the Long Island Republican who has been so vocal in citing the Espionage Act, had been as aggressive in encouraging his colleagues to do the oversight job they were elected to do.

The United States will soon be marking the fifth anniversary of the war on terror. The country is in this for the long haul, and the fight has to be coupled with a commitment to individual liberties that define America's side in the battle. A half-century ago, the country endured a long period of amorphous, global vigilance against an enemy who was suspected of boring from within, and history suggests that under those conditions, it is easy to err on the side of security and secrecy. The free press has a central place in the Constitution because it can provide information the public needs to make things right again. Even if it runs the risk of being labeled unpatriotic in the process.


Nothing in the Times' reporting on this administration leads me to think that the above is not an accurate read on why they published the story.

My problem is, there is no accountability for what laws the program is or was breaking. The only reason for running the story (in my eyes) is so the public knows this is occuring. Swift, from what I've heard, is the monitoring and tracking of international wires. There is already a great degree of regulations already in place in terms of wiretaps stateside (I worked at a bank). I have yet to see how this is "news" to any particular individual.

Unlike other gov't admin programs, this program lacks any "questionable" legalities or over stepping the boundaries. It just seems this is an outing of a program that may or may not have been helping the US with the war on terror. It is to my surprised that this particular article from the NYT has caused many Republicans and Dems to unite against this article.

Still a waste of time for congress to pursue this, but the article wasn't news to me ... I wasn't rushing to read the story at least.

[ski_adk]

I consider this flare-up to just be for several purposes

1. to further strengthen the government's ability to intimidate and control the mainstream media.

2. to divert attention away from the ticking time-bomb that is the Middle East.

The majority of America has a very very limited attention span. Half the darn country still thinks that there were vast quantities of WMD found in Iraq and that Iraq itself attacked the Twin Towers. Americans don't remember when Bush himself said he was going to go after terrorists' financials. By making such damning accusations (especially when they're a major part of the weekly talking points), the administration is able to further discredit the press's reputation and public standing, strengthen their base and increase their power.

See, by attacking the principles of a free press and free speech, the established government is able to redirect the focus of the anti-war crowd towards a more immediate and localized threat. This keeps the adminstration's opposition constantly scrambling on multiple fronts while the establish press is injected with a bit of litigation fear. Knowing that the government will brandish them and possibly charge them with crimes -- regardless whether the government has a legitimate case -- the mainstream media will think twice before publishing a sensitive piece. Because, regardless of guilt, defending yourself of accusations and charges is an expensive affair.

[XtremeJibber2001]

I consider this flare-up to just be for several purposes

1. to further strengthen the government's ability to intimidate and control the mainstream media.

2. to divert attention away from the ticking time-bomb that is the Middle East.

The majority of America has a very very limited attention span. Half the darn country still thinks that there were vast quantities of WMD found in Iraq and that Iraq itself attacked the Twin Towers. Americans don't remember when Bush himself said he was going to go after terrorists' financials. By making such damning accusations (especially when they're a major part of the weekly talking points), the administration is able to further discredit the press's reputation and public standing, strengthen their base and increase their power.

See, by attacking the principles of a free press and free speech, the established government is able to redirect the focus of the anti-war crowd towards a more immediate and localized threat. This keeps the adminstration's opposition constantly scrambling on multiple fronts while the establish press is injected with a bit of litigation fear. Knowing that the government will brandish them and possibly charge them with crimes -- regardless whether the government has a legitimate case -- the mainstream media will think twice before publishing a sensitive piece. Because, regardless of guilt, defending yourself of accusations and charges is an expensive affair.

I agree with all your points. This is certainly a wasteful "flareup" that warrants anytime or money spent. Like you said and many others, GWB already outed the program and wiretaps in general are monitored very closely anyway.

My question ... if its just a diversion from the Iraq war, why is Murtha flaring up WITH the Republicans on this?

[BigKahuna13]

Nothing more than Republican payback to the Times for being continually critical of the administration.

Nothing, nothing at all? Why do you think the NYT published the article? Murtha, staunchly against this admin (IMHO) ... called the NYT asking them not to run the story...

The New York Times' stated reason for publishing the article (opinion 6/28/2006) is

From our side of the news-opinion wall, the Swift story looks like part of an alarming pattern. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

The Swift program, like the wiretapping program, has been under way for years with no restrictions except those that the executive branch chooses to impose on itself — or, in the case of Swift, that the banks themselves are able to demand. This seems to us very much the sort of thing the other branches of government, and the public, should be nervously aware of. We would have been very happy if Congressman Peter King, the Long Island Republican who has been so vocal in citing the Espionage Act, had been as aggressive in encouraging his colleagues to do the oversight job they were elected to do.

The United States will soon be marking the fifth anniversary of the war on terror. The country is in this for the long haul, and the fight has to be coupled with a commitment to individual liberties that define America's side in the battle. A half-century ago, the country endured a long period of amorphous, global vigilance against an enemy who was suspected of boring from within, and history suggests that under those conditions, it is easy to err on the side of security and secrecy. The free press has a central place in the Constitution because it can provide information the public needs to make things right again. Even if it runs the risk of being labeled unpatriotic in the process.


Nothing in the Times' reporting on this administration leads me to think that the above is not an accurate read on why they published the story.

My problem is, there is no accountability for what laws the program is or was breaking. The only reason for running the story (in my eyes) is so the public knows this is occuring. Swift, from what I've heard, is the monitoring and tracking of international wires. There is already a great degree of regulations already in place in terms of wiretaps stateside (I worked at a bank). I have yet to see how this is "news" to any particular individual.

Unlike other gov't admin programs, this program lacks any "questionable" legalities or over stepping the boundaries. It just seems this is an outing of a program that may or may not have been helping the US with the war on terror. It is to my surprised that this particular article from the NYT has caused many Republicans and Dems to unite against this article.

Still a waste of time for congress to pursue this, but the article wasn't news to me ... I wasn't rushing to read the story at least.

That (the bolded item) is the best reason for publishing the article. Making government transparent - a phrase that Mr. Bush loves to use with respect to North Korea - is arguable the most important functions of a free press.

[XtremeJibber2001]

Nothing more than Republican payback to the Times for being continually critical of the administration.

Nothing, nothing at all? Why do you think the NYT published the article? Murtha, staunchly against this admin (IMHO) ... called the NYT asking them not to run the story...

The New York Times' stated reason for publishing the article (opinion 6/28/2006) is

From our side of the news-opinion wall, the Swift story looks like part of an alarming pattern. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

The Swift program, like the wiretapping program, has been under way for years with no restrictions except those that the executive branch chooses to impose on itself — or, in the case of Swift, that the banks themselves are able to demand. This seems to us very much the sort of thing the other branches of government, and the public, should be nervously aware of. We would have been very happy if Congressman Peter King, the Long Island Republican who has been so vocal in citing the Espionage Act, had been as aggressive in encouraging his colleagues to do the oversight job they were elected to do.

The United States will soon be marking the fifth anniversary of the war on terror. The country is in this for the long haul, and the fight has to be coupled with a commitment to individual liberties that define America's side in the battle. A half-century ago, the country endured a long period of amorphous, global vigilance against an enemy who was suspected of boring from within, and history suggests that under those conditions, it is easy to err on the side of security and secrecy. The free press has a central place in the Constitution because it can provide information the public needs to make things right again. Even if it runs the risk of being labeled unpatriotic in the process.


Nothing in the Times' reporting on this administration leads me to think that the above is not an accurate read on why they published the story.

My problem is, there is no accountability for what laws the program is or was breaking. The only reason for running the story (in my eyes) is so the public knows this is occuring. Swift, from what I've heard, is the monitoring and tracking of international wires. There is already a great degree of regulations already in place in terms of wiretaps stateside (I worked at a bank). I have yet to see how this is "news" to any particular individual.

Unlike other gov't admin programs, this program lacks any "questionable" legalities or over stepping the boundaries. It just seems this is an outing of a program that may or may not have been helping the US with the war on terror. It is to my surprised that this particular article from the NYT has caused many Republicans and Dems to unite against this article.

Still a waste of time for congress to pursue this, but the article wasn't news to me ... I wasn't rushing to read the story at least.

That (the bolded item) is the best reason for publishing the article. Making government transparent - a phrase that Mr. Bush loves to use with respect to North Korea - is arguable the most important functions of a free press.

It's the only reason, but do you think they're right for publishing it? I don't.

The NYT could have published a report on June 1, 1944 that reported the Allies would be landing in Normandy instead of Pas de Calais, but what kind of news would that be? It would have only helped the Nazi's and merely "informed" US citizens about a secret plan, essentially making our gov't "transparent".

[XtremeJibber2001]

And the administration leaked the story to papers like the Wall Street Journal once it knew that the Times was going to print it.

Just thought you'd be interest in the WSJ's response...

Here are a few excerpts from Friday's Journal editorial.
*

We recount all this because more than a few commentators have tried to link the Journal and Times at the hip. On the left, the motive is to help shield the Times from political criticism. On the right, the goal is to tar everyone in the "mainstream media." But anyone who understands how publishing decisions are made knows that different newspapers make up their minds differently.

Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn't mind seeing in print. If this was a "leak," it was entirely authorized....

The problem with the Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't. On issue after issue, it has become clear that the Times believes the U.S. is not really at war, and in any case the Bush Administration lacks the legitimacy to wage it.

So, for example, it promulgates a double standard on "leaks," deploring them in the case of Valerie Plame and demanding a special counsel when the leaker was presumably someone in the White House and the journalist a conservative columnist. But then it hails as heroic and public-spirited the leak to the Times itself that revealed the National Security Agency's al Qaeda wiretaps.

Mr. Keller's open letter explaining his decision to expose the Treasury program all but admits that he did so because he doesn't agree with, or believe, the Bush Administration. "Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress," he writes, and "some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight." Since the Treasury story broke, as it happens, no one but Congressman Ed Markey and a few cranks have even objected to the program, much less claimed illegality.

Perhaps Mr. Keller has been listening to his boss, Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who in a recent commencement address apologized to the graduates because his generation "had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government.

"Our children, we vowed, would never know that. So, well, sorry. It wasn't supposed to be this way," the publisher continued. "You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights," and so on.

Forgive us if we conclude that a newspaper led by someone who speaks this way to college seniors has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it.

[BigKahuna13]

Nothing, nothing at all? Why do you think the NYT published the article? Murtha, staunchly against this admin (IMHO) ... called the NYT asking them not to run the story...

The New York Times' stated reason for publishing the article (opinion 6/28/2006) is

From our side of the news-opinion wall, the Swift story looks like part of an alarming pattern. Ever since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has taken the necessity of heightened vigilance against terrorism and turned it into a rationale for an extraordinarily powerful executive branch, exempt from the normal checks and balances of our system of government. It has created powerful new tools of surveillance and refused, almost as a matter of principle, to use normal procedures that would acknowledge that either Congress or the courts have an oversight role.

The Swift program, like the wiretapping program, has been under way for years with no restrictions except those that the executive branch chooses to impose on itself — or, in the case of Swift, that the banks themselves are able to demand. This seems to us very much the sort of thing the other branches of government, and the public, should be nervously aware of. We would have been very happy if Congressman Peter King, the Long Island Republican who has been so vocal in citing the Espionage Act, had been as aggressive in encouraging his colleagues to do the oversight job they were elected to do.

The United States will soon be marking the fifth anniversary of the war on terror. The country is in this for the long haul, and the fight has to be coupled with a commitment to individual liberties that define America's side in the battle. A half-century ago, the country endured a long period of amorphous, global vigilance against an enemy who was suspected of boring from within, and history suggests that under those conditions, it is easy to err on the side of security and secrecy. The free press has a central place in the Constitution because it can provide information the public needs to make things right again. Even if it runs the risk of being labeled unpatriotic in the process.


Nothing in the Times' reporting on this administration leads me to think that the above is not an accurate read on why they published the story.

My problem is, there is no accountability for what laws the program is or was breaking. The only reason for running the story (in my eyes) is so the public knows this is occuring. Swift, from what I've heard, is the monitoring and tracking of international wires. There is already a great degree of regulations already in place in terms of wiretaps stateside (I worked at a bank). I have yet to see how this is "news" to any particular individual.

Unlike other gov't admin programs, this program lacks any "questionable" legalities or over stepping the boundaries. It just seems this is an outing of a program that may or may not have been helping the US with the war on terror. It is to my surprised that this particular article from the NYT has caused many Republicans and Dems to unite against this article.

Still a waste of time for congress to pursue this, but the article wasn't news to me ... I wasn't rushing to read the story at least.

That (the bolded item) is the best reason for publishing the article. Making government transparent - a phrase that Mr. Bush loves to use with respect to North Korea - is arguable the most important functions of a free press.

It's the only reason, but do you think they're right for publishing it? I don't.

The NYT could have published a report on June 1, 1944 that reported the Allies would be landing in Normandy instead of Pas de Calais, but what kind of news would that be? It would have only helped the Nazi's and merely "informed" US citizens about a secret plan, essentially making our gov't "transparent".

We probably don't need to know operational details, as long as some other branch of the government is overseeing what's going on. We do need to know that the program exists, especially if, as in this case, the government is looking at financial transactions of ordinary people while it looks for al-Qaeda.

To use your analogy - we didn't need to know about the Normandy invasion before the fact, but we certainly needed to know that we had
declared war on Germany.

(not that the government tried to hide that fact - but you get the idea).