How dare a newspaper print the truth! Off with their heads I say.
Treason!!!!
Give me a break...
Reckless and irresponsible, but not treason...
As noted in previous posts, the administration was quite public with the existence of the terrorist finances tracking program. Consequently, some now say that the NYT didn't tell the terrorist anything that they didn't already know. I don't think thats true.
Far from revealing the vague outline of the program, the Times disclosed such key details as: American investigators have a hard time tracking ATM transactions in the U.S.; they can’t track wire transfers in real time; and the United Arab Emirates is cooperating with the program. All good stuff to know — if you want to evade U.S. scrutiny.
Dennis Lormel is a former FBI agent who was instrumental in establishing and running this program. He said,
It was an innovative and remarkable program. As custodian of the program, Treasury provided the SWIFT information to the CIA, who managed the program. The FBI, in conjunction with the CIA and Treasury, exploited financial information to thwart terrorists, exposing them to areas of financial vulnerability.
For my colleagues who have been skeptical of the U.S. Government’s efforts in terrorist financing, this program, the cooperation with other financial providers, such as First Data Corporation and Western Union, contributed significantly to the A- grade given the Government for Terrorist Financing by the 9/11 Commission. Many of the successes achieved in terrorist financing have not reached the public domain. The anonymity afforded, up until this point, has provided the interagency community the opportunity to continue to exploit terrorists through their financial vulnerabilities.
[emphasis added]
Paraphrasing some thoughts from a recent editorial at
NRO...
While I believe the NYT exercised terrible judgment in publishing the story, I don't question the paper’s legal right to do so. But I also do not question the government’s legal right — indeed, its obligation — to find, prosecute, and punish those who are responsible for leaking details of this highly classified program. IMO, they have recklessly harmed an important program in the GWOT. It used to be thought that leak investigations always went nowhere, but now we have the experience of the Fitzgerald investigation to show us that reporters can be subpoenaed and leakers found out.
So far, judging by news reports, there is no such investigation going on. Perhaps there’s action we don’t know about, but the Plame precedent is instructive. When the CIA first referred the matter to Justice, nothing happened. It was only when then–CIA director George Tenet personally pushed for an investigation and his intervention was leaked to the press that DoJ began to move. I would like to see the same aggressiveness in this case from new treasury secretary Henry Paulson.
If the Bush administration’s complaints about the damage done by the NYT story are to be taken seriously — and they should be — it must pursue the government leakers who are the ultimate source of the damage. The administration shouldn not let this one go by.
