| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"http://www.infowars.com/" |
| Date: |
22 Aug 2006 06:53:22 AM |
| Object: |
Federal judge orders end to wiretap program |
On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 05:46:46 GMT, Cardinal Snarky of the Fannish Inquisition
<inquisition@smof.org> wrote:
Alexa!
Federal judge orders end to wiretap program
Justice Department appeals ruling; White House strongly opposes move
Aug. 17: A federal judge ruled the government’s wiretapping program is
unconstitutional.
NBC’s Rosiland Jordan reports.
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 3:52 p.m. ET Aug 17, 2006
DETROIT - A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government’s warrantless
wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.
The White House said it “couldn't disagree” more with the ruling.
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to
strike down the National Security Agency’s program, which she says violates
the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers
enshrined in the Constitution.
“Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this
matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution,” Taylor wrote in her
43-page opinion.
The U.S. Justice Department appealed the ruling and issued a statement
saying the program is “an essential tool for the intelligence community in
the war on terror.”
“In the ongoing conflict with al-Qaida and its allies, the president has the
primary duty under the Constitution to protect the American people,” the
department said. “The Constitution gives the president the full authority
necessary to carry out that solemn duty, and we believe the program is
lawful and protects civil liberties.”
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Bush administration's “Terrorist
Surveillance Program” is “firmly grounded in law and regularly reviewed to
make sure steps are taken to protect civil liberties.”
The ruling won't take immediate effect so Taylor can hear a Justice
Department request for a stay pending its appeal.
‘Checks and balances’
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of
journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult
for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas contacts are
likely targets of the program, which involves wiretapping conversations
between people in the U.S. and those in other countries.
The government argued that the program is well within the president’s
authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets.
The ACLU said the state-secrets argument was irrelevant because the Bush
administration already had publicly revealed enough information about the
program for Taylor to rule.
“At its core, today’s ruling addresses the abuse of presidential power and
reaffirms the system of checks and balances that’s necessary to our
democracy,” ACLU executive director Anthony Romero told reporters after the
ruling.
He called the opinion “another nail in the coffin in the Bush
administration’s legal strategy in the war on terror.”
One ruling against ACLU
While siding with the ACLU on the wiretapping issue, Taylor dismissed a
separate claim by the group over NSA data-mining of phone records. She said
not enough had been publicly revealed about that program to support the
claim and further litigation would jeopardize state secrets.
The lawsuit alleged that the NSA “uses artificial intelligence aids to
search for keywords and analyze patterns in millions of communications at
any given time.” Multiple lawsuits have been filed related to data-mining
against phone companies, accusing them of improperly turning over records to
the NSA.
However, the data-mining was only a small part of the Detroit suit, said Ann
Beeson, the ACLU’s associate legal director and the lead attorney on the
case.
Beeson predicted the government would appeal the wiretapping ruling and
request that the order to halt the program be postponed while the case makes
its way through the system. She said the ACLU had not yet decided whether it
would oppose such a postponement.
© 2006 MSNBC Interactive
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14393611/
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| User: "http://www.infowars.com/" |
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| Title: New York Times concealed NSA spying until after 2004 election Re: Federal judge orders end to wiretap program |
22 Aug 2006 06:55:10 AM |
|
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A damning admission: New York Times concealed NSA spying until after 2004
election
By David Walsh and Barry Grey
22 August 2006
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
A column by New York Times public editor Byron Calame August 13 reveals that
the newspaper withheld a story about the Bush administration’s program of
illegal domestic spying until after the 2004 election, and then lied about
it.
On December 16, 2005, the Times reported that President Bush had authorized
the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor thousands of telephone
conversations and e-mails in the US without court approval. At the time, the
Times acknowledged that it had, at the urging of the Bush administration,
withheld publication of the story, saying it held its exposé back “for a
year.” This time frame suggested that the newspaper made the decision to
withhold publication of the story until after the 2004 presidential
election.
Such a delay was, in itself, unpardonable, and provoked angry criticism. Now
we learn, from an interview with Executive Editor Bill Keller conducted by
Calame, that internal discussions at the Times about drafts of the eventual
article had been “dragging on for weeks” before the November 2, 2004,
election, which resulted in a victory for Bush.
“The process,” the public editor notes, “had included talks with the Bush
administration.” A fresh draft was the subject of discussion at the
newspaper “less than a week” before the election.
Involved here is not a trivial sex scandal or some moral peccadillo
committed by one or another of the major candidates. At issue was a major
policy question—one that goes to the core of constitutionally guaranteed
civil liberties and basic democratic rights.
The electorate had the right to know that the incumbent president was
systematically breaking the law in order to secretly wiretap, without court
warrants, the communications of American citizens. As the Times was well
aware, similar illegalities—although on a smaller scale—were among the
charges leveled against Richard Nixon in the second article of impeachment,
entitled “Abuse of Power,” approved by the Judiciary Committee of the House
of Representatives in July 1974, leading to Nixon’s resignation the
following month.
The NSA spying, authorized by Bush shortly after September 11, 2001,
violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Security Act, which was passed in the
aftermath of the Watergate scandal specifically to prohibit the type of
warrantless wiretaps and intercepts ordered by Nixon against his political
opponents, and secretly sanctioned by Bush without congressional approval
after 9/11. (As the Bush administration revealed in the wake of the Times’s
December, 2005 exposé, some leading members of Congress of both parties were
briefed on the program after it was initiated, and Democrats and Republicans
alike remained silent.)
As a federal judge pointed out in her ruling last week ordering the shutdown
of the NSA program, it also breaches the Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution, which bans unreasonable searches and seizures, and the First
Amendment, which protects free speech.
The NSA spying operation is a major component of a massive and unprecedented
assault on the democratic rights of the American people, involving a drive
by the Bush administration to establish what amounts to a presidential
dictatorship.
In the fall of 2004, the Times, under pressure from a lawless president
running for reelection, chose to conceal the existence of the surveillance
program from the electorate. The history of this decision and its cover-up
is quite revealing.
In his August 13 column, entitled “Eavesdropping and the Election: An Answer
on the Question of Timing,” Calame makes reference to “a number of readers
critical of the Bush administration” who “have remained particularly
suspicious of the [original Times] article’s assertion that the publication
delay dated back only ‘a year’ to Dec. 16, 2004.” Clearly, Calame’s piece
comes in response to protests and inquiries as to when the decision was made
to withhold the domestic spying story.
His admission is itself an effort at damage control.
Calame asks in the second paragraph of his August 13 commentary, “Did the
Times mislead readers by stating that any delay in publication came after
the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election?” The answer, although the public
editor doesn’t care to say so directly, is unequivocally “Yes,” based on his
own findings.
Calame writes: “Mr. Keller, who wouldn’t answer any questions for my January
column, recently agreed to an interview about the delay, although he saw it
as ‘old business.’ But he had some new things to say about the delay and the
election.”
These “new things” include the following:
“ ‘The climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of
the election,’ Mr. Keller said. The pre-election discussions included Jill
Abramson, a managing editor; Philip Taubman, the chief of the Washington
bureau; Rebecca Corbett, the editor handling the story, and often Mr.
[James] Risen [one of the article’s co-authors]. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the
publisher, was briefed, but Mr. Keller said the final decision to hold the
story was his.
“Mr. Keller declined to explain in detail his pre-election decision to hold
the article, citing obligations to preserve the confidentiality of sources.
He has repeatedly indicated that a major reason for the publication delays
was the administration’s claim that everyone involved was satisfied with the
program’s legality. Later, he has said, it became clear that questions about
the program’s legality ‘loomed larger within the government than we had
previously understood.’ ”
If one is believe this account, Keller and company chose to accept the Bush
administration’s arguments about the legality of its own unconstitutional
domestic surveillance operation. The Times hierarchy took the word of a
government that epitomizes the rise of the political underworld and its
consolidation of power. Not only did the Bush administration come to power
on the basis of a stolen election, it used lie after lie to drag the
American people into a bloody and unprovoked war in Iraq.
Either Keller is being disingenuous, or he is so ignorant of elementary
political realities that he is unfit to edit a newspaper of any kind, let
alone the supposed “newspaper of record.”
Concerning the Times’s change of heart in 2005, Calame notes that Keller
recently e-mailed him “a description of how that picture had changed by
December 2005, and it cast some new light on the pre-election situation for
me. It implied that the paper’s pre-election sources hadn’t been
sufficiently ‘well-placed and credible’ to convince him that questions about
the program’s legality and oversight were serious enough to make it
‘responsible to publish.’ But by December, he wrote, ‘We now had some new
people who could in no way be characterized as disgruntled bureaucrats or
war-on-terror doves saying we should publish. That was a big deal.’”
This ostensible justification is itself damning. The Times knew that the
secret program existed, that it flouted the letter and spirit of the 1978
FISA Act, and that it was a matter of immense political import. Why,
otherwise, would the Bush administration be so insistent that the story be
killed? There was no credible rationale, given what the newspaper knew at
the time, to withhold the existence of the domestic spying program from the
public—especially on the eve of an election.
Particularly significant is Keller’s contemptuous reference to
“war-on-terror doves,” which only reveals the fundamental agreement of
Keller and the rest of the Times leadership with the administration’s
all-purpose pretext for war abroad and repression at home. Those who
question or challenge the so-called “war on terror” are, evidently,
relegated by the Times to the lunatic fringe of politics.
As for the description of the newspaper’s devotion to the most scrupulous
and conscientious regard for verifiable facts and unimpeachable sources, one
need only consider its approach to the current British terror scare. Take
last Sunday’s Times editorial (“Hokum on Homeland Security”), which begins
with the following phrase: “Ever since British intelligence did such a
masterly job in rounding up terrorists intent on blowing up airliners....”
Really? How do they know that those imprisoned in London were “terrorists
intent on blowing up airliners?” Because Bush and British Home Secretary
John Reid say so? Not a shred of evidence has been presented by either the
British or American authorities to substantiate this claim. No charges were
even lodged until yesterday, and even sections of the American media have
decided to somewhat downplay the alleged plot because of lack of proof and
growing public skepticism.
Calame goes on to quote Keller, approvingly, that the decision to withhold
the NSA story only days before the election “also was an issue of fairness.”
Calame says he agrees “that candidates affected by a negative article
deserve to have time—several days to a week—to get their response
disseminated before voters head to the polls.”
Aside from the sophistry arising from the fact that Keller admitted to
having the basic story in hand for weeks before the election, what is truly
astounding is that neither Calame nor Keller shows the slightest concern for
“fairness” toward the voters, who went to the polls not knowing, thanks to
the Times, that the Republican candidate was tearing up the Constitution.
As for Keller’s dishonest claim last December that the story had been held
up only “for a year,” Calame quotes his executive editor, without comment,
saying, “It was probably inelegant wording.”
This entire affair is one more devastating example of the cowardice of the
Times and its capitulation to the White House and the most ruthless elements
in the ruling elite, who are irremediably hostile to any signs of opposition
and democratic political life in general. More broadly, the Times’s conduct
speaks to the virtual integration of the American mass media into the state
apparatus. It reveals the degree to which the media functions as a
propaganda appendage of the government, concealing or distorting facts on
cue.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/nyti-a22.shtml
.
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| User: "http://www.infowars.com/" |
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| Title: NSA: 40 Years Of Human Rights Abuse: New York Times concealed NSA spying until after 2004 election Re: Federal judge orders end to wiretap program |
22 Aug 2006 06:56:57 AM |
|
|
A damning admission: New York Times concealed NSA spying until after 2004
election
By David Walsh and Barry Grey
22 August 2006
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
A column by New York Times public editor Byron Calame August 13 reveals that
the newspaper withheld a story about the Bush administration’s program of
illegal domestic spying until after the 2004 election, and then lied about
it.
On December 16, 2005, the Times reported that President Bush had authorized
the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor thousands of telephone
conversations and e-mails in the US without court approval. At the time, the
Times acknowledged that it had, at the urging of the Bush administration,
withheld publication of the story, saying it held its exposé back “for a
year.” This time frame suggested that the newspaper made the decision to
withhold publication of the story until after the 2004 presidential
election.
Such a delay was, in itself, unpardonable, and provoked angry criticism. Now
we learn, from an interview with Executive Editor Bill Keller conducted by
Calame, that internal discussions at the Times about drafts of the eventual
article had been “dragging on for weeks” before the November 2, 2004,
election, which resulted in a victory for Bush.
“The process,” the public editor notes, “had included talks with the Bush
administration.” A fresh draft was the subject of discussion at the
newspaper “less than a week” before the election.
Involved here is not a trivial sex scandal or some moral peccadillo
committed by one or another of the major candidates. At issue was a major
policy question—one that goes to the core of constitutionally guaranteed
civil liberties and basic democratic rights.
The electorate had the right to know that the incumbent president was
systematically breaking the law in order to secretly wiretap, without court
warrants, the communications of American citizens. As the Times was well
aware, similar illegalities—although on a smaller scale—were among the
charges leveled against Richard Nixon in the second article of impeachment,
entitled “Abuse of Power,” approved by the Judiciary Committee of the House
of Representatives in July 1974, leading to Nixon’s resignation the
following month.
The NSA spying, authorized by Bush shortly after September 11, 2001,
violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Security Act, which was passed in the
aftermath of the Watergate scandal specifically to prohibit the type of
warrantless wiretaps and intercepts ordered by Nixon against his political
opponents, and secretly sanctioned by Bush without congressional approval
after 9/11. (As the Bush administration revealed in the wake of the Times’s
December, 2005 exposé, some leading members of Congress of both parties were
briefed on the program after it was initiated, and Democrats and Republicans
alike remained silent.)
As a federal judge pointed out in her ruling last week ordering the shutdown
of the NSA program, it also breaches the Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution, which bans unreasonable searches and seizures, and the First
Amendment, which protects free speech.
The NSA spying operation is a major component of a massive and unprecedented
assault on the democratic rights of the American people, involving a drive
by the Bush administration to establish what amounts to a presidential
dictatorship.
In the fall of 2004, the Times, under pressure from a lawless president
running for reelection, chose to conceal the existence of the surveillance
program from the electorate. The history of this decision and its cover-up
is quite revealing.
In his August 13 column, entitled “Eavesdropping and the Election: An Answer
on the Question of Timing,” Calame makes reference to “a number of readers
critical of the Bush administration” who “have remained particularly
suspicious of the [original Times] article’s assertion that the publication
delay dated back only ‘a year’ to Dec. 16, 2004.” Clearly, Calame’s piece
comes in response to protests and inquiries as to when the decision was made
to withhold the domestic spying story.
His admission is itself an effort at damage control.
Calame asks in the second paragraph of his August 13 commentary, “Did the
Times mislead readers by stating that any delay in publication came after
the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election?” The answer, although the public
editor doesn’t care to say so directly, is unequivocally “Yes,” based on his
own findings.
Calame writes: “Mr. Keller, who wouldn’t answer any questions for my January
column, recently agreed to an interview about the delay, although he saw it
as ‘old business.’ But he had some new things to say about the delay and the
election.”
These “new things” include the following:
“ ‘The climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of
the election,’ Mr. Keller said. The pre-election discussions included Jill
Abramson, a managing editor; Philip Taubman, the chief of the Washington
bureau; Rebecca Corbett, the editor handling the story, and often Mr.
[James] Risen [one of the article’s co-authors]. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the
publisher, was briefed, but Mr. Keller said the final decision to hold the
story was his.
“Mr. Keller declined to explain in detail his pre-election decision to hold
the article, citing obligations to preserve the confidentiality of sources.
He has repeatedly indicated that a major reason for the publication delays
was the administration’s claim that everyone involved was satisfied with the
program’s legality. Later, he has said, it became clear that questions about
the program’s legality ‘loomed larger within the government than we had
previously understood.’ ”
If one is believe this account, Keller and company chose to accept the Bush
administration’s arguments about the legality of its own unconstitutional
domestic surveillance operation. The Times hierarchy took the word of a
government that epitomizes the rise of the political underworld and its
consolidation of power. Not only did the Bush administration come to power
on the basis of a stolen election, it used lie after lie to drag the
American people into a bloody and unprovoked war in Iraq.
Either Keller is being disingenuous, or he is so ignorant of elementary
political realities that he is unfit to edit a newspaper of any kind, let
alone the supposed “newspaper of record.”
Concerning the Times’s change of heart in 2005, Calame notes that Keller
recently e-mailed him “a description of how that picture had changed by
December 2005, and it cast some new light on the pre-election situation for
me. It implied that the paper’s pre-election sources hadn’t been
sufficiently ‘well-placed and credible’ to convince him that questions about
the program’s legality and oversight were serious enough to make it
‘responsible to publish.’ But by December, he wrote, ‘We now had some new
people who could in no way be characterized as disgruntled bureaucrats or
war-on-terror doves saying we should publish. That was a big deal.’”
This ostensible justification is itself damning. The Times knew that the
secret program existed, that it flouted the letter and spirit of the 1978
FISA Act, and that it was a matter of immense political import. Why,
otherwise, would the Bush administration be so insistent that the story be
killed? There was no credible rationale, given what the newspaper knew at
the time, to withhold the existence of the domestic spying program from the
public—especially on the eve of an election.
Particularly significant is Keller’s contemptuous reference to
“war-on-terror doves,” which only reveals the fundamental agreement of
Keller and the rest of the Times leadership with the administration’s
all-purpose pretext for war abroad and repression at home. Those who
question or challenge the so-called “war on terror” are, evidently,
relegated by the Times to the lunatic fringe of politics.
As for the description of the newspaper’s devotion to the most scrupulous
and conscientious regard for verifiable facts and unimpeachable sources, one
need only consider its approach to the current British terror scare. Take
last Sunday’s Times editorial (“Hokum on Homeland Security”), which begins
with the following phrase: “Ever since British intelligence did such a
masterly job in rounding up terrorists intent on blowing up airliners....”
Really? How do they know that those imprisoned in London were “terrorists
intent on blowing up airliners?” Because Bush and British Home Secretary
John Reid say so? Not a shred of evidence has been presented by either the
British or American authorities to substantiate this claim. No charges were
even lodged until yesterday, and even sections of the American media have
decided to somewhat downplay the alleged plot because of lack of proof and
growing public skepticism.
Calame goes on to quote Keller, approvingly, that the decision to withhold
the NSA story only days before the election “also was an issue of fairness.”
Calame says he agrees “that candidates affected by a negative article
deserve to have time—several days to a week—to get their response
disseminated before voters head to the polls.”
Aside from the sophistry arising from the fact that Keller admitted to
having the basic story in hand for weeks before the election, what is truly
astounding is that neither Calame nor Keller shows the slightest concern for
“fairness” toward the voters, who went to the polls not knowing, thanks to
the Times, that the Republican candidate was tearing up the Constitution.
As for Keller’s dishonest claim last December that the story had been held
up only “for a year,” Calame quotes his executive editor, without comment,
saying, “It was probably inelegant wording.”
This entire affair is one more devastating example of the cowardice of the
Times and its capitulation to the White House and the most ruthless elements
in the ruling elite, who are irremediably hostile to any signs of opposition
and democratic political life in general. More broadly, the Times’s conduct
speaks to the virtual integration of the American mass media into the state
apparatus. It reveals the degree to which the media functions as a
propaganda appendage of the government, concealing or distorting facts on
cue.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/nyti-a22.shtml
.
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| User: "http://www.infowars.com/" |
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| Title: US Media: Lawless Propaganda NSA: 40 Years Of Human Rights Abuse: New York Times concealed NSA spying until after 2004 election Re: Federal judge orders end to wiretap program |
22 Aug 2006 07:00:08 AM |
|
|
A damning admission: New York Times concealed NSA spying until after 2004
election
By David Walsh and Barry Grey
22 August 2006
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
A column by New York Times public editor Byron Calame August 13 reveals that
the newspaper withheld a story about the Bush administration’s program of
illegal domestic spying until after the 2004 election, and then lied about
it.
On December 16, 2005, the Times reported that President Bush had authorized
the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor thousands of telephone
conversations and e-mails in the US without court approval. At the time, the
Times acknowledged that it had, at the urging of the Bush administration,
withheld publication of the story, saying it held its exposé back “for a
year.” This time frame suggested that the newspaper made the decision to
withhold publication of the story until after the 2004 presidential
election.
Such a delay was, in itself, unpardonable, and provoked angry criticism. Now
we learn, from an interview with Executive Editor Bill Keller conducted by
Calame, that internal discussions at the Times about drafts of the eventual
article had been “dragging on for weeks” before the November 2, 2004,
election, which resulted in a victory for Bush.
“The process,” the public editor notes, “had included talks with the Bush
administration.” A fresh draft was the subject of discussion at the
newspaper “less than a week” before the election.
Involved here is not a trivial sex scandal or some moral peccadillo
committed by one or another of the major candidates. At issue was a major
policy question—one that goes to the core of constitutionally guaranteed
civil liberties and basic democratic rights.
The electorate had the right to know that the incumbent president was
systematically breaking the law in order to secretly wiretap, without court
warrants, the communications of American citizens. As the Times was well
aware, similar illegalities—although on a smaller scale—were among the
charges leveled against Richard Nixon in the second article of impeachment,
entitled “Abuse of Power,” approved by the Judiciary Committee of the House
of Representatives in July 1974, leading to Nixon’s resignation the
following month.
The NSA spying, authorized by Bush shortly after September 11, 2001,
violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Security Act, which was passed in the
aftermath of the Watergate scandal specifically to prohibit the type of
warrantless wiretaps and intercepts ordered by Nixon against his political
opponents, and secretly sanctioned by Bush without congressional approval
after 9/11. (As the Bush administration revealed in the wake of the Times’s
December, 2005 exposé, some leading members of Congress of both parties were
briefed on the program after it was initiated, and Democrats and Republicans
alike remained silent.)
As a federal judge pointed out in her ruling last week ordering the shutdown
of the NSA program, it also breaches the Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution, which bans unreasonable searches and seizures, and the First
Amendment, which protects free speech.
The NSA spying operation is a major component of a massive and unprecedented
assault on the democratic rights of the American people, involving a drive
by the Bush administration to establish what amounts to a presidential
dictatorship.
In the fall of 2004, the Times, under pressure from a lawless president
running for reelection, chose to conceal the existence of the surveillance
program from the electorate. The history of this decision and its cover-up
is quite revealing.
In his August 13 column, entitled “Eavesdropping and the Election: An Answer
on the Question of Timing,” Calame makes reference to “a number of readers
critical of the Bush administration” who “have remained particularly
suspicious of the [original Times] article’s assertion that the publication
delay dated back only ‘a year’ to Dec. 16, 2004.” Clearly, Calame’s piece
comes in response to protests and inquiries as to when the decision was made
to withhold the domestic spying story.
His admission is itself an effort at damage control.
Calame asks in the second paragraph of his August 13 commentary, “Did the
Times mislead readers by stating that any delay in publication came after
the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election?” The answer, although the public
editor doesn’t care to say so directly, is unequivocally “Yes,” based on his
own findings.
Calame writes: “Mr. Keller, who wouldn’t answer any questions for my January
column, recently agreed to an interview about the delay, although he saw it
as ‘old business.’ But he had some new things to say about the delay and the
election.”
These “new things” include the following:
“ ‘The climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of
the election,’ Mr. Keller said. The pre-election discussions included Jill
Abramson, a managing editor; Philip Taubman, the chief of the Washington
bureau; Rebecca Corbett, the editor handling the story, and often Mr.
[James] Risen [one of the article’s co-authors]. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the
publisher, was briefed, but Mr. Keller said the final decision to hold the
story was his.
“Mr. Keller declined to explain in detail his pre-election decision to hold
the article, citing obligations to preserve the confidentiality of sources.
He has repeatedly indicated that a major reason for the publication delays
was the administration’s claim that everyone involved was satisfied with the
program’s legality. Later, he has said, it became clear that questions about
the program’s legality ‘loomed larger within the government than we had
previously understood.’ ”
If one is believe this account, Keller and company chose to accept the Bush
administration’s arguments about the legality of its own unconstitutional
domestic surveillance operation. The Times hierarchy took the word of a
government that epitomizes the rise of the political underworld and its
consolidation of power. Not only did the Bush administration come to power
on the basis of a stolen election, it used lie after lie to drag the
American people into a bloody and unprovoked war in Iraq.
Either Keller is being disingenuous, or he is so ignorant of elementary
political realities that he is unfit to edit a newspaper of any kind, let
alone the supposed “newspaper of record.”
Concerning the Times’s change of heart in 2005, Calame notes that Keller
recently e-mailed him “a description of how that picture had changed by
December 2005, and it cast some new light on the pre-election situation for
me. It implied that the paper’s pre-election sources hadn’t been
sufficiently ‘well-placed and credible’ to convince him that questions about
the program’s legality and oversight were serious enough to make it
‘responsible to publish.’ But by December, he wrote, ‘We now had some new
people who could in no way be characterized as disgruntled bureaucrats or
war-on-terror doves saying we should publish. That was a big deal.’”
This ostensible justification is itself damning. The Times knew that the
secret program existed, that it flouted the letter and spirit of the 1978
FISA Act, and that it was a matter of immense political import. Why,
otherwise, would the Bush administration be so insistent that the story be
killed? There was no credible rationale, given what the newspaper knew at
the time, to withhold the existence of the domestic spying program from the
public—especially on the eve of an election.
Particularly significant is Keller’s contemptuous reference to
“war-on-terror doves,” which only reveals the fundamental agreement of
Keller and the rest of the Times leadership with the administration’s
all-purpose pretext for war abroad and repression at home. Those who
question or challenge the so-called “war on terror” are, evidently,
relegated by the Times to the lunatic fringe of politics.
As for the description of the newspaper’s devotion to the most scrupulous
and conscientious regard for verifiable facts and unimpeachable sources, one
need only consider its approach to the current British terror scare. Take
last Sunday’s Times editorial (“Hokum on Homeland Security”), which begins
with the following phrase: “Ever since British intelligence did such a
masterly job in rounding up terrorists intent on blowing up airliners....”
Really? How do they know that those imprisoned in London were “terrorists
intent on blowing up airliners?” Because Bush and British Home Secretary
John Reid say so? Not a shred of evidence has been presented by either the
British or American authorities to substantiate this claim. No charges were
even lodged until yesterday, and even sections of the American media have
decided to somewhat downplay the alleged plot because of lack of proof and
growing public skepticism.
Calame goes on to quote Keller, approvingly, that the decision to withhold
the NSA story only days before the election “also was an issue of fairness.”
Calame says he agrees “that candidates affected by a negative article
deserve to have time—several days to a week—to get their response
disseminated before voters head to the polls.”
Aside from the sophistry arising from the fact that Keller admitted to
having the basic story in hand for weeks before the election, what is truly
astounding is that neither Calame nor Keller shows the slightest concern for
“fairness” toward the voters, who went to the polls not knowing, thanks to
the Times, that the Republican candidate was tearing up the Constitution.
As for Keller’s dishonest claim last December that the story had been held
up only “for a year,” Calame quotes his executive editor, without comment,
saying, “It was probably inelegant wording.”
This entire affair is one more devastating example of the cowardice of the
Times and its capitulation to the White House and the most ruthless elements
in the ruling elite, who are irremediably hostile to any signs of opposition
and democratic political life in general. More broadly, the Times’s conduct
speaks to the virtual integration of the American mass media into the state
apparatus. It reveals the degree to which the media functions as a
propaganda appendage of the government, concealing or distorting facts on
cue.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/nyti-a22.shtml
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