The winger forces, including Bush himself, are screaming for the collective head of the New York Times for its article revealing that the United States monitors bank transactions of would-be terrorists. (Interestingly — or perhaps not — the rightwing wrath is directed solely at The New York Times, not at the conservative Wall Street Journal or L.A. Times, which also reported the same story).
Glenn Greenwald has the most cohesive and complete response.
He first destroys the central prop of the right’s outrage — that the NYT revealed to terrorists our secret techniques to catch them, thus endangering lives. As Greenwald says, this is simply untrue. In this speech in April 2004, Bush himself specifically told a large crowd:
See, part of the way to make sure that we catch terrorists is we chase money trails.
Furthermore, a group blog consisting of former government anti-terrorism experts featured an article by a former State Department official, listing several other Internet-available sources which exposed the money-tracking program years ago:
[R]eports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group, on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries. The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website.
…An MIT paper discussed the pros and cons of such practices back in 1995. Canada’s Financial Intelligence Unit, FINTRAC,, for one, has acknowledged receiving information on Canadian origin SWIFT transactions since 2002. Of course, this info is provided by the banks themselves.
So the notion that the New York Times was treasonously divulging state secrets is simply absurd.
And when you think about it, if YOU were a terrorist, wouldn’t you ASSUME that the U.S. was doing that kind of thing ANYWAY?
Greenwald also mocks the laughable argument that the New York Times wants to help the terrorists. Really, this is silly rhetoric. The New York Times, located in Times Square (a prime target for terrorists) really doesn’t want to help terrorists, and anyone who seriously suggests that it simply smearing due to the lack of rational arguments.
Greenwald also does a nice job of talking about how the Founding Fathers were adamant about securing the guarantee of a free press even if it hindered fonctionality of the government. I quote at length:
The reason the Founders guaranteed a free press is to ensure that there would be an adversary of the Government, an entity which uncovers and discloses government conduct which political leaders want to conceal. As a result, it was hardly unforeseen by the Founders that the Government would be hostile and resentful of the press. Hostility and adversarial struggles were supposed to be an intrinsic attribute of the government-press relationship.
And the Founders equally recognized that, as a result of this inherent conflict, the Government would attempt to do exactly what the Bush administration and its supporters are now actively pursuing — that is, using governmental power (such as the power of anti-press legislation, prosecution and/or imprisonment) to forcibly limit what the media can report and/or to intimidate them from reporting facts which the Government wanted to conceal. The Constitution resolves that conflict in favor of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution by making the prohibition on anti-press government restraints absolute and unambiguous.
Bush supporters want nothing less than to re-visit the Founders’ resolution and reverse it. They want to replace the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin with regard to press freedoms with the superior judgment of Dick Cheney, Congressman Peter King and Michelle Malkin, who want to imprison reporters for what they publish. They simply don’t believe in the same principles that the Founders embraced and enshrined for our country. These observations from Jefferson simply leave no doubt about that:
"Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."
And in the debate over whether to favor excessive disclosure or excessive government secrecy, Jefferson left little doubt as to how that conflict was resolved by the Founders: in choosing "government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter."
Bush supporters plainly disagree with both assessments. They believe in government power that cannot be checked by the press, at least under this administration. The government can act in total secrecy, and journalists ought to be imprisoned if they disclose information which the President decrees should be kept secret.
Why does the "patriotic" right hate the founding principles of America so much?