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http://snipurl.com/sgp7 Nuke the Messenger By Dan Froomkin Special to washingtonpost.com Tuesday, June 27, 2006; 1:34 PM In accusing the press -- and specifically, the New York Times -- of putting American lives at risk, President Bush and his allies have escalated their ongoing battle with the media to nuclear proportions. Here's what Bush had to say yesterday: "We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America." Here's Vice President Cheney: "The New York Times has now made it more difficult for us to prevent attacks in the future." Here's press secretary Tony Snow: "The New York Times and other news organizations ought to think long and hard about whether a public's right to know, in some cases, might overwrite somebody's right to live, and whether, in fact, the publications of these could place in jeopardy the safety of fellow Americans." It's a monstrous charge for the White House to suggest that the press is essentially aiding and abetting the enemy. But where's the evidence? The White House first began leveling this kind of accusation immediately after a New York Times story revealed a massive, secret domestic spying program conducted without congressional or judicial oversight. See, for instance, Bush's December 17, 2005 radio address , in which he said the disclosure put "our citizens at risk." But not once has the White House definitively answered this question: How are any of these disclosures actually impairing the pursuit of terrorists? Terrorists already knew the government was trying to track them down through their finances, their phone calls and their e-mails. Within days of the Sept. 11 attacks, for instance, Bush publicly declared open season on terrorist financing. As far as I can tell, all these disclosures do is alert the American public to the fact that all this stuff is going on without the requisite oversight, checks and balances. How does it possibly matter to a terrorist whether the government got a court order or not? Or whether Congress was able to exercise any oversight? The White House won't say. In fact, it can't say. By contrast, it does matter to us. This column has documented, again and again , that when faced with a potentially damaging political problem, White House strategist Karl Rove's response is not to defend, but to attack. The potentially damaging political problem here is that the evidence continues to grow that the Bush White House's exercise of unchecked authority in the war on terror poses a serious threat to American civil liberties and privacy rights. It wasn't that long ago, after all, that an American president used the mechanisms of national security to spy on his political enemies. The sum total of the administration's defense against this charge appears to be: Trust us. Trust that we're only spying on terrorists, and not anyone else. But what if the trust isn't there? And what if they're breaking the law? That's why it's better to attack. It makes for great soundbites. It motivates the base. And perhaps most significantly, it takes attention away from Bush's own behavior. The Coverage Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush offered an impassioned defense of his secret international banking surveillance program yesterday, calling it a legal and effective tool for hunting down terrorists and denouncing the media's disclosure of it as a 'disgraceful' act that does 'great harm' to the nation. "The president used a White House appearance with supporters of troops in Iraq to lash out at newspapers that revealed the program, which has examined hundreds of thousands of private banking records from around the world. His remarks led off a broader White House assault later amplified by Vice President Cheney and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow. . . . "Critics said Bush was trying to divert attention from his own actions. Bush, Cheney and other Republicans 'have adopted a shoot-the-messenger strategy by attacking the newspaper that revealed the existence of the secret bank surveillance program rather than answering the disturbing questions that those reports raise about possible violations of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. privacy laws,' said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.)." Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in the New York Times: "Administration officials had argued strongly that in reporting on the financial tracking operation, The Times would endanger national security by prompting the Belgian banking consortium that maintains the financial data to withdraw from the program. On Sunday, Mr. Keller, the paper's executive editor, posted a letter on The New York Times Web site saying that the newspaper 'found this argument puzzling,' partly because the banking consortium is compelled by subpoena to comply. . . . "Mr. Keller said in the letter that the administration had made a 'secondary argument' that publication of the article would lead terrorists to change tactics, but he said that argument had been made 'in a halfhearted way.' " Here is Keller's letter: http://snipurl.com/sgp8. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews spoke with Ron Suskind, author of the new book "The One Percent Doctrine." Matthews noted that Suskind specifically wrote in his book that Al Qaeda got wise to electronic transfer surveillance after a while. Matthews: "So in other words, the bad guys figured out how we were catching them." Suskind: "Right, it's a process of deduction. After a while, you catch enough of them, they're not idiots. They say, 'Well, we can't do the things we were doing.' They're not leaving electronic trails like they were.' " Dean Baquet , the editor of the Los Angeles Times, explains his paper's decision to publish the story: "We considered very seriously the government's assertion that these disclosures could cause difficulties for counterterrorism programs. And we weighed that assertion against the fact that there is an intense and ongoing public debate about whether surveillance programs like these pose a serious threat to civil liberties. "We sometimes withhold information when we believe that reporting it would threaten a life. In this case, we believed, based on our talks with many people in the government and on our own reporting, that the information on the Treasury Department's program did not pose that threat. Nor did the government give us any strong evidence that the information would thwart true terrorism inquiries. In fact, a close read of the article shows that some in the government believe that the program is ineffective in fighting terrorism. . . . "History has taught us that the government is not always being honest when it cites secrecy as a reason not to publish." Kelly O'Donnell reports for NBC News: "Today's coordinated response is more than simply shared frustration. Analysts say there is political upside as well." Charlie Cook tells O'Donnell: "They've got to motivate their base, and conservatives, Republicans, tend to distrust the media, so anytime you can play off and use the media as a foil, it's probably a good thing." Ron Hutcheson of Knight Ridder Newspapers noted in his pool report from yesterday's event: "The president seemed determined to keep [taking] questions until he got the one he wanted -- regarding the media disclosures about the government's efforts to monitor financial transactions. He became quite animated during his response, speaking forcefully, and leaning forward and gesturing with his hands for emphasis." And why so much ire specifically directed at the Times? Julie Mason writes in the Houston Chronicle quotes Dennis Simon, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University: "The ardent conservatives in the Republican Party believe in biased mainstream media, and at the top of that list is the New York Times. So this is good politics for them." _____________________________ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will become disabled or deleted from this list. 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