Except for good luck and a bomber's ineptness, hundreds in Times Square would be dead or maimed with a little help from the New York Times.
"Some of our primary tools of counter-terrorism have been severely compromised by the American press…"
– Gabriel Schoenfeld, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute
Treason is aiding and abetting our country's enemy, aligning with those who, given the chance, would kill us. In the words of the foundation document of these United States, the Constitution at Article III, Sec. 3, says treason is ". . . adhering to their [the states'] enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
Clear enough. Simple words, not well understood, evidently, in America's news media, and in the judiciary, tilting toward giving our enemies, unlike suckers, more than an even break. And in the process, or rather the lack of it, putting Americans in deadly peril.
Except for good luck and dunderhead bomb-making, a would-be catastrophe such as attempted by a hyphenated Pakistani-American in Times Square, mainstream media might have been, in large measure anyhow, responsible for a "successful" bombing in Sinatra's city that never sleeps.
Trace that near "success" of Faisal Shahzadi's act principally to the Old Gray Lady, the New York Times. Two reporters there, and their blind-to-reality editors, could have been largely culpable for the deaths and injuries of hundreds.
Some dare call it treason. I do.
Here's the nexus, mostly unexplored by incurious American media, print and electronic, and ignored by a head-in-the-sand Justice Department under two administrations:
– December 16, 2005: So-called "warrantless wiretapping" is revealed, with critical details, in an article by the Times's James Riser and Eric Lichtblau. Blowing the cover on a secret National Security Agency (NSA) program, they give notice to al Qaeda and the Taliban to alter their methods of communication with their agents of doom. Riser and Lichtblau disclose this NSA program in spite of stern protests from the agency that to do so would compromise catching the thugs. To no avail.
Sprouting indignation, the headline carries the witless allegation of "warrantless wiretaps" (wiretaps?) of the terrorists' communications:
"Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts"
Admitting to giving away secrets, the reporters do not name "official" sources "because of the classified nature of the material." Someone is guilty here, plainly, and getting away with it. The White House had asked Times's editors not to publish it, they note shamelessly, "arguing it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert terrorists they might be under scrutiny." Again, to no avail.
Soon other newspapers and 7/24 electronic media pick up the story. It's a "W" for tipping off terrorists. Irresponsibility sprouts wings. Gone are days of the second World War when media respected national security, recognizing "loose lips" could sink ships. New times, these postmodern days, full of political correctness, with agendas to carry out. Why? To sell newspapers? To assert the First Amendment at the cost of killing fellow Americans? To "stick it to" an administration?
Not content with their original perfidy, the two reporters strike again six months later with another bonanza for terrorists:
– June 23, 2006: A hush-hush CIA program of monitoring the enormous database of worldwide financial transactions is revealed. Oh, it was only to assess how and when the terrorists finance their deadly operations. Oblivious to national security, the Times tips 'em off, even naming the entity used to monitor the interbank transfers, a Belgian-based cooperative bank clearinghouse called "SWIFT."
Here's the headline that, ironic in itself, admits to peddling national security secrets:
"Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. In Secret To Block Terror"
The tell-all article discloses the CIA "reviews records from the nerve center of the global banking industry ["SWIFT"] that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks . . ."
The story is picked up by the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, even usually-circumspect the Wall Street Journal. Print pickup is followed by the 7/24 electronic news media slavishly quoting the Times's original story. Hey! Spread the word to the Middle East!
What kind of craziness is this? Such disclosures give heads up to terrorists to (1) use extreme caution when communicating with their agents and (2) alter their methods of payments to avoid detection. Not born yesterday, terrorists have ears, if not top-notch bomb-making skills. Turns out, our nation's out-to-kill us enemies' primary intelligence-gathering is not undercover agents, or break-ins in the dark of night, but the American press. Who would think treason itself finds a place in the repertoire of news media?
It is more than coincidental that would-be bomber Shahzadi's communications back and forth to Pakistan, his trips there, are shielded from surveillance. Now comes word he received cash to pay for the '93 Nissan Pathfinder and his air fare to Dubai, by courier, not a money wire transfer. How very, very telling.
Telling, also is that would-be bomber Shahzadi used a disposable cell phone, not a land line or device that could be traced, to contact the Pathfinder-for-sale's owner. Now who exactly told him to do that? Did walls have ears? No, it was front-page stuff of the New York Times.
Is such tipping off terrorists grounds for legal action? One would think so. Where's a civil-defense minded Justice Dept., not invoking protect-our-nation espionage laws? Congressional hearings, anyone? Not a snowball's chance. Media outrage? Don't even think of it. Media circle the wagons to protect their kind, endlessly reciting the First Amendment as if that had anything to do it with exposing Americans to terrorists' bombs and perhap worse.
Betrayers of national security secrets even win plaudits from the like-minded, journalists wrapping themselves sanctimoniously in the First Amendment. It's a bizarre, upside-down, Orwellian world: Peace Is War. Ignorance is Strength. And secrets are for sharing with one's enemies? All the better to kill or maim us?
Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, author-historian Gabriel Schoenfeld comments in a recent Washington Post blog, of all places:
Both of these stories [by Risen-Lichtblau in 2005 and 2006] were published against strenuous objections of high-ranking officials . . . including straight-shooting intelligence professionals [such as] CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden and, in the case of the SWIFT story, even leading Democrats, like former Congressman Lee Hamilton. President Bush himself warned the Times' top editors that if they went forward with the NSA wiretapping story, they might one day have blood on their hands.
Indeed. Will news media "get it"? One wonders if their treasonous practices will continue to trump national security in this crazy, upside-down world of ours.
Look, we live in a theoretically free society. We have laws that protect the rights of the press. The press is NOT being treasonous. They are performing the function they were designed to perform.
As a free society, we must pay for these freedoms. Evidently, it is the case in the world of modern explosives that we are going to have to endure terror attacks once in a while as a price for these freedoms. I don’t understand why military folks don’t understand this. The civilian sector is allowed to sacrifice as well.
It is important to accept these attacks stoically and not overreact when they occur. I personally believe that these kinds of half-cocked responses are the ultimate goal of these kinds of attacks.
Given that belief, I feel that the ideology espoused by this article actually helps the cause of the terrorists.
First amendment rights do entitle the media to print information they have obtained legally (and hopefully, though hardly necessarily, ethically). But just like sticking your tongue to a frozen telephone pole, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The media during WWII, for example, exercised discretion in sharing information with the public for the sake of protecting military strategies and methods. Of course, the media was very sympathetic to the president in office then, as they are now, so perhaps the circumstances dictated their decision making. Either way, it made it a lot easier for the military to prosecute a proper war strategy.
It does seem ironic, too, that these same media outlets who were in an all-out rush to get national security exploits and editorial theories about their motives out the door during the George W. Bush administration have been relatively mum since Obama took office. Not much has been made, for example, of the fact that President Obama has supported the continuation of “rendition” – an ostensibly-scandalous controversy during the Bush presidency. Or of his recent decision to approve the assassination of a US citizen on foreign soil despite the public spectacle made of, say, Jose Padilla (The NYT article on the story refused to even use the word “assassination” in reference to the administration’s move, preferring “targeted killing” despite that very paper’s copious use of the word “torture” to describe what the Bush administration dubbed “enhanced interrogation”). I’d call this selective free press, at best.
The press has always been selective. Ever hear of “yellow journalism” of the turn of the 20th century? During WWII, the current idea of “unbiased” journalism arose and was temporarily the norm.
Now, journalism is returning to its natural state, which is to be completely biased. Americans just don’t remember that this IS the normal state.
The press collectively realizes that these terrorists are not a serious threat and they are just doing what the military-industrialists are doing: making a quick buck off of it.
Would I do it as a journalist? No, I wouldn’t. I may counted among some as a pinko, or lazy, or whatever, but I will never willingly aid a foreign power in such a way, even in such a tangential manner. That’s why I wouldn’t make it as a journalist, though.
Conservatives need to realize that this kind of journalism is just another spin-off of the “profit-at-all-costs” mentality. The journalists are loyal to their paycheck, not the welfare of the nation. You have to take the good and the bad of your ideology.
Part of the problem is that the NYT’s editors are unwilling to realize that the US is engaged in a war–not some silly ‘war on terror,’ but a war against Islamism, because Islamist are engaged in a war against the US. Many liberals, unfortunately, are similarly blind to this. They can’t think outside of the box according to which a ‘war’ has to have such things as a country of origin, a clearly visible leadership/command structure, and clearly identifiable combatants.
Add to this the ‘adversarial’ stance of many professional journalists and you have a fine mess. Adversarial journalism, as it is called in the news business, is based on the premise that journalists should be challenging/confronting/unmasking/deconstructing public officials–their words, actions, and decisions. I’m sure that it would be impossible today to keep something like the atomic bomb a secret. Today some journalist would have found someone who didn’t think his own contribution to the project was valued enough, and the cover would be blown.
They can’t think outside of the box according to which a ‘war’ has to have such things as a country of origin, a clearly visible leadership/command structure, and clearly identifiable combatants.
Without those things you just listed, the enemy can not fight anything other than a guerilla war. The phrase war on terror is ridiculous because terrorism is a tactic of warfare itself.
The whole mess in the Middle East is silly. No rational leader who actually ran the numbers on invading Iraq and Afghanistan would have done so. They simply are not capable of inflicting enough damage to justify a military deployment at this time.
And no, I don’t consider 9/11 significant damage. Sorry, I’m looking at it objectively, not patriotically or emotionally.
If the papers and networks are indeed grabbing for dollars, a lot of them are doing a pretty piss poor job of it. The Old Grey Lady herself has been in pretty rough shape financially (over 1 billion dollars in debt last year), to the point that government was contemplating allowing it and other newspapers to reorganize as non-profit organizations and lend them public dollars. If they’re slanting their news purely to make money, they need some new market researchers or something. That’s a tough argument to swallow from news outlets that are going broke.
Fewer people died in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor than on 9/11, and we got involved in a global war in which we developed and subsequently deployed the first nuclear weapons as a result. I guess “significant” is in the eye of the beholder.
“They simply are not capable of inflicting enough damage to justify a military deployment at this time”
Funny, The United States Constitution endows the federal government with the responsibility to provide for the general defense. By contrast, there’s not word one about most of the garbage that Democrats want to use the federal government to do. Such as infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms… but I digress.
9/11 was exactly the sort of thing the federal government has the responsibility to protect Americans from. As far as radical islamic fundamentalists go, the only question is if they are going to kill people in the US or kill people somewhere else. Convincing them to kill Arabs in the Middle East instead of killing Americans in the US was a stroke of genius.
The military is designed to go against other formal militaries. They are not designed, nor should they be expected to protect the public from small-scale wackos who want to do some damage.
Pearl Harbor is not comparable in any way to 9/11, because Pearl Harbor was perpetrated by an actual entity with intrests and possessions that our military could effectively attack. No, the damage wrought by Pearl Harbor was trivial in the overall scheme of things, but imperial Japan controlling the entire Pacific would not have been trivial.
Conversely, these Islamsist can’t even control their own countries, much less build an empire to rival the Japanese empire. They can cause sporadic damage, but that’s it. That’s all. They are not a threat at all in the grand scheme because they have no real organization, no industrial base, and limited technology.
It was the CIA’s job to stop 9/11. That is what they are for. However, the CIA has been historically very poor at its job and so that is something that we just have to expect.
Convincing them to kill Arabs in the Middle East instead of killing Americans in the US was a stroke of genius.
This never happened. The entire point of the attacks was to get us further involved in the Middle East. And we complied graciously.
Think about it. If you were an imam bent on dragging down the US, what options are available to you? Outright war is right out. However, if you were to get the US involved in an endless guerilla war in Asia, you could slowly drain the treasury and American willpower.
It’s just like Vietnam, except instead of the Vietnamese using guerilla warfare as a means to their freedom, the Islamists are using guerilla warfar as a means to drain our resources. See how the concept of resources keeps coming back up? Resource management is where America is an epic failure.
reply to Martel732
Maybe you’re a conservative, because you seem to resist the idea that the process of warfare can change over time. Modern armies don’t wage war by standing in opposed ranks and firing muzzle-loaders, or marching to the front with fife and drum. Why assume that the only way to wage war is to do it World War II style?
Islamists wage war against us by any means they have available. If they can use bioweapons or dirty bombs, they will. And destroying an enemy’s war-making ability is still a mission for a real military force, not just CIA spooks.
The problem with both Vietnam and the Middle East, at least from a liberal viewpoint, is this: in both instances military missions were subordinated to wacky political schemes of democratization. Political outcomes that it took Western nations a millennium and more to achieve were expected to result from the US being able to install a ‘leader,’ conduct ‘free elections,’ and send in lots of economic aid. Look how that turned out in Vietnam and is turning out in Iraq.
In the Vietnam era, liberal Democrats suffered from the delusion that the US could will its chosen outcome in Vietnam. In the post 9/11 era the neocons and Bushies fell prey to the same sort of mythology with regard to Iraq. Now Obama and his crew seem to think that the US can accomplish similar changes in Afghanistan. Utter folly.
I wonder how the JCS and top field commanders would respond if they were given the following charge: What courses of military action would be most likely to maximize the safety and security of the United States? Forget about ‘nation-building.’ Forget about ‘human rights.’ Just respond to the question. It might be fascinating.
Islamists wage war against us by any means they have available. If they can use bioweapons or dirty bombs, they will. And destroying an enemy’s war-making ability is still a mission for a real military force, not just CIA spooks.
It is the CIA’s job to keep bioweapons and dirty bombs out of their hands, not the military. Theoretically, we have the backing of many other nation’s intelligence services as well, because ours sucks.
Maybe you’re a conservative, because you seem to resist the idea that the process of warfare can change over time. Modern armies don’t wage war by standing in opposed ranks and firing muzzle-loaders, or marching to the front with fife and drum. Why assume that the only way to wage war is to do it World War II style?
Tactics and weapons may change, but some things stay the same. Such as the necessity of projection of power. The Islamists can not conquer the United States. The Islamists pose no real threat to any major trading partner of the US. They can kill a few people and make the lives of their own countrymen miserable. That’s about it.
I wonder how the JCS and top field commanders would respond if they were given the following charge: What courses of military action would be most likely to maximize the safety and security of the United States? Forget about ‘nation-building.’ Forget about ‘human rights.’ Just respond to the question. It might be fascinating.
Leave these backwards nations alone to hash out their own problems. Invading these countries does nothing to enhance our security, because there is no real organization to disrupt, unlike against Nazi Germany or imperial Japan.
The Islamists pose no real threat to any major trading partner of the US. They can kill a few people and make the lives of their own countrymen miserable. That’s about it.
There is an Islamic nation-state on the cusp of acquiring its first nuclear weapons and threatening to use them to destroy the state of Israel. We import 15% of our oil from the Islamic theocracy of Saudi Arabia, a state sponsor of terrorism and insane Islamic theology where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers hailed from. The Taliban of Afghanistan was the de-facto government before we invaded and had been harboring al-Qaeda. In addition to Iran and Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, and Egypt are all known to harbor terrorists and use state monies to sponsor them. The slightest change in political climate in the middle east can swing several trillion dollars in global markets. I think it’s safe to say that terrorists are capable of inflicting serious harm on our trading partners. And to pretend as if terrorism is not perpetrated by organized states is willful suspension of disbelief at best. We simply do not want to deal with a full-scale war against 95% of the offical nation-states of the middle east for both political and economic reasons, so instead we fight isolated “limited wars” that are about as effective as pissing on a forest fire.
But getting back to the point of the article, whether we choose to call our current military conflicts “war” or “authorizations to use military force” or “rough cuddling”, the media has been extremely uncooperative in keeping state secrets for the benefit of the military and intelligence community, which has certainly put the boots on the ground in increased danger in many cases. That may not rise to the level of legally defined treason, but an easy argument can be made that it is distasteful and unpatriotic.
And to pretend as if terrorism is not perpetrated by organized states is willful suspension of disbelief at best. We simply do not want to deal with a full-scale war against 95% of the offical nation-states of the middle east for both political and economic reasons, so instead we fight isolated “limited wars” that are about as effective as pissing on a forest fire.
I’m not even going to pretend here. I don’t know if the CIA/government has 100% irrefutable evidence that actual governments are coordinating these terrorist groups. If this is actually the case, I am in favor of all-out total war against them. You are correct that “limited wars” are total crap and a waste of time, money, and people’s lives.
Of course, there is the little problem of blowing up oil well are reliant upon……what a mess.
But getting back to the point of the article, whether we choose to call our current military conflicts “war” or “authorizations to use military force” or “rough cuddling”, the media has been extremely uncooperative in keeping state secrets for the benefit of the military and intelligence community, which has certainly put the boots on the ground in increased danger in many cases. That may not rise to the level of legally defined treason, but an easy argument can be made that it is distasteful and unpatriotic.
That’s true. I agree with this. But it is no more distasteful and unpatriotic than our US-owned corps moving valuable jobs over seas.
Furthermore, I’m not sure I want the media cooperating with the military in this fashion, but I don’t trust the military not to abuse the secrecy this would give them.
The media geni can’t be put back into the bottle again. Adversary journalism reigns supreme, and reporters and editors sense little if any obligation to sit on information about covert operations. Today, some newspaper or, more likely, some blogger, would have announced every important strategic move the US planned on making in WWII. And can you imagine how our media would have handled the serious US defeat in the Battle of the Kasserine Pass if something like that happened today?
And, no, tightening up on the media won’t help. Old-fashioned government censorship can’t work today either. There are simply too many ways to spread information.
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