The New York Times: A falling star

Once again, a corrupt major media, led by The New York Times, is interferring in the U.S. war effort against terrorism by exposing to the terrorist enemies of America another of the nation’s secret intelligence collecting methods, thereby giving them aid and comfort.
This traitorous disclosure followed requests from President George W. Bush and other government leaders to withhold publication in the interest of homeland security and the lives of not only American citizens but our military troops facing combat.
The New York Times’ answer was, simply, the public has a right to know.
The June 23 disclosure involves an operation, identified as Swift, which gives the Central Intelligence Agency access to “records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about 6 trillion dollars daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions.”
World terrorism relies on financial support from many sources, other nations and organizations, some support coming from the United States itself.
Tracing financial transactions of suspected terrorists provided intelligence leading to the capture of the mastermind of the 2002 Bali resort bombing.
America’s routine financial transactions, such as ATM withdrawals or bank balances, confined in this country are not in the database.
The utter hypocrisy of The New York Times is revealed in a front page article of some 3,700 words outlining the vital necessity of such a secret program and its positive results, while at the same time destroying its effectiveness by divulging in detail its operational secrets.
Adding insult to injury, Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, in a three-page letter explained his reasoning for publishing the national security secret. In answer to the civil libertarians questioning the value of the program, he said: “We cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financiers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it.”
Brit Hume reported on the June 27 “Special Report” that The New York Times urged, after the Sept. 11 attacks, among other things, that President Bush initiate a program to track financial information as a way to identify the many sources open to Osama bin Laden and his supporters.
This marks the second time in six months that such a vicious act of media disloyalty against the national defense occurred.
The first was the disclosure last December that Pres. Bush used the National Security Administration to monitor incoming telephone calls from suspected terrorists to the United States.
Let’s set the record straight.
The motive for these disclosures is the expressed seminal hatred the dominant media and, in particular, The New York Times has for Pres. Bush.
The June 23 disclosure of national defense secrets will create another firestorm, as did the NSA disclosure.
It will compound and perpetuate the hate against the President.
The cumulative effect of these firestorms is to destroy the Bush Administration and win control of the U.S. Congress, which would lead to the impeachment of President Bush in 2007.
Unless the Justice Department acts immediately, U.S. security will be compromised on an incremental basis up to the November elections.
The failed argument that the public needs to know is refuted in a Fox News poll on June 24, showing a majority of Americans are satisfied with President Bush’s use of his intelligence sources to protect America.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, is demanding a federal Grand Jury be convened to require the editors and reporters of The New York Times to divulge the sources of the published national security secrets.
It is a felony to divulge national security secrets.
The Attorney General has an obligation to subpoena the publisher and reporters of The New York Times who are responsible for the news articles of June 23 and 24. They must reveal their sources.
Failure to do so will lead to their imprisonment until the sources are identified.
The procedure should follow in the manner that Special Counsel Elliot Richardson handled the Valerie Plame case against White House staff members Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.
The New York Times reporter Judy Miller was jailed for 85 days for failure to divulge her sources in the “outing” of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
This procedure will serve several purposes.
One, a form of punishment can be meted out to the culprits in the press.
Two, the government officials who leaked the secrets can face 20-year jail terms.
Three, and as importantly, leakers in the future will think twice before they divulge national security secrets to The New York Times.
The level of hypocrisy demonstrated by The New York Times is of the lowest depth.
The dominant media, once the proud watch dog of life and liberty in America, reduced itself to an attack dog as it became the darling of the far left and finally to a lap dog during the Clinton years.
The New York Times, by its own actions in giving aid and comfort to the enemy, has placed the American public at risk of terrorist attacks and the American soldier in combat at risk of his life, causing the one-time watch dog to sink to the level of a sniveling cur.
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