By John Burtis
Thursday, January 5, 2006
Let's see, somehow, from somebody, information on the NSa's deep black program for the monitoring of individuals linked to al-Qaeda, and approved by President Bush with the advice and consent of Congress, was leaked to a reporter and The NY Times over a year ago.
I visualize a guy in a trench coat with the collar up, in a Fedora, tossing a Coke can with a note in it at the foot of a tree, at some secluded pre-arranged drop site in Virginia horse country, with another guy, in similar togs, coming by later to pick it up. But I've probably read too many Ian Fleming and Eric ambler novels for my own good.
Now The Times holds this information for a considerable period, somewhere in their cavernous headquarters in a secure location, and then releases it to coincide with the author's and his publisher's, a Times owned house, book release. Holding it all without an inside leak of their own.
So, on one hand we have the NSa, referred to as the Puzzle Palace. inhabiting the opaque black cubes at Fort George Gordon Meade in Maryland, sporting the highest levels of security and the most intensive background checks of any governmental agency in the Free World and a pretty good record. Next we have the members of Congress, who received the top secret briefings and their staffs, with a less stellar record. and we also have the various members of the Executive branch and assorted staff members with a need to know, again with a less than satisfactory record on leaking.
although the folks at the NSa are facing felonies and jail terms for rolling over, as are the Congressional and Executive staffers, the newspaper may skate a bit more safely thanks to the First amendment. But the employees at the Grey Lady could still face a Federal Grand Jury, months of legal wrangling, and maybe jail in an attempt to piece together the story of who did what when for whom and for how much.
Here we have a big city, liberal newspaper with a penchant for adopting a line favorable to the terrorists, setting the tone for the Democratic leadership and spearheading the drive for gay marriage, to say nothing of white washing Hugo Chavez with a broad editorial brush and pillorying the Catholic church. Sure, The Times slips up now and then on the facts, lets a sporadic plagiarist through the sieve nets and it's now published by Pinc Sulzberger, a mere shadow of his domineering father, Punch. Oh, sure, The Times stock value is on the way down, say about 36% last year, while its circulation is stagnant at best.
But doggone it, if it isn't the newspaper that kept the lid on their side of the secret. and I'm sort of wondering how The NY Times, protected on the outside by all the rotund security guards with the square badges and wannabe police suits you see on that endless TV loop, peopled on the inside by too many hack reporters and led by a solid second string of notables with Pinch at the head of the table, managed it. How did they trump the NSa, Congress and the White House in the protection of secrets? Not just for getting the leak, but for keeping it quiet once they had it.
How is it that nobody at The NY Times, from top to bottom, dropped a dime outing this upcoming story on leaked secrets? Why is that no one felt that the harboring of state secrets at a newspaper was worth a phone call to the feds, while somebody felt that breaking Title 17 US Code, always a felony, was worthwhile to get the story to the paper? are you going to tell me that there are stiffer penalties at The Times for leaking than there are at the NSa, in Congress or at the White House for giving the story away?
Or maybe the folks there are worried more about the sobering penalties outside the Times purview, like the dreaded comeuppance to be faced on the street for breaking the code. This horrible, life shattering series of penalties consists of heads quickly turned away as you pass, a lack of invitations to Upper West Side cocktail parties, the failure to get your spalpeen into St. Paul's, a dearth of invitations asking you to appear for liberal charities, and the loss of a favored table at an upscale clip joint. When added together, these handicaps can bedevil a liberal family to a greater extent than those endured by the protagonist, Philip Nolan, in The Man Without a Country. When you're being rebuked and the phone doesn't ring, it's your old liberal friends.
Maybe the secretaries, administrative assistants, reporters and assorted hangers on, to say nothing of the editors and managers, are more worried about being ostracized by the Big apple liberals and moneyed Democrats than they are by the slings and arrows of mere judges, grand juries and federal Da's. Perhaps a life on the outs with the liberal cognoscenti for, gasp, diming out a traitor is viewed as a fate far worse than the jail cell for maintaining the secret.
How else can you explain why there are no moles at The Times and why their secrets are safer than ours are in the NSa, Congress and in the White House?
Pursuant to Title 17 U.S.C. 107, other copyrighted work is provided for educational purposes, research, critical comment, or debate without profit or payment. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for your own purposes beyond the 'fair use' exception, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Views are those of authors and not necessarily those of Canada Free Press. Content is Copyright 1997-2024 the individual authors. Site Copyright 1997-2024 Canada Free Press.Com Privacy Statement