The NY Times and the public interest--a new Bay of Pigs

David Limbaugh:

Would the New York Times pubish our nuclear launch codes if it acquired access to them because it "may be … a matter of public interest"?

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TFTP has been a very successful tool in the war on terror and has been an important part of the administration's promise, shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to include a financial component among its "weapons" to fight terrorists. TFTP led to the capture of the al Qaeda operative known as "Hambali," who is believed to have planned the bombing of a Bali resort in 2002. It also led to the prosecution and conviction of Uzair Paracha, a Brooklyn man, on terrorism-related charges, for laundering $200,000 through a Karachi bank to assist an al Qaeda terrorist in Pakistan.

The Times admitted that administration officials asked it not to disclose the existence of TFTP and even "enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value." (The White House had briefed officials from both parties on the program.) The government warned that disclosing the program would alert terrorists to its existence and severely compromise it. But the Times, in its omniscience and omnipotence, wasn't impressed and published the article anyway.

The paper's exective editor, Bill Keller, said, "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial date, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

So what might be a matter of public interest is sufficient to outweigh what will certainly be a detriment to the public interest? Under Keller's definition, would any classified information coming into the press's hands ever be off-limits from public disclosure no matter how damaging to the national interest or dangerous to American lives?

If the mainstream media truly has this attitude toward the publication of highly classified government secrets, we have no choice but to tighten existing laws -- assuming they're not sufficiently tight now -- to criminalize such disclosures by the press. The First Amendment is not absolute. Everyone is well aware of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' admonition in Schenck v. United States that "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing panic."

Well, this is a case where the Times has done worse than yelling "fire." It has given al Qaeda a book of matches with ignition fuel....

An unelected unaccountable bunch of reporters and editors have arrogantly assumed responsibility for declassifying information that will aid our enemies and they presume to tells us that is in the public interest. I blame John F. Kennedy.

After the Bay of Pigs debacle President Kennedy told a NY Times reporter who knew about the invasion and did not report it that he wished that the paper had reported it so he would have had to stop the ill fated adventure. Ever since that time the media has felt an obligation to stop perceived Bay of Pigs on the basis of less than complete knowledge of the programs and their effects.

It will probably take prosecutions confirmed by the Supreme Court to stop their ego manical drive to take over the responsibility for declassifying information. They clearly lack the self disipline to do it on their own. Rich Lowry makes a similar point. He also notes the secrets the Times is willing to keep from the public, i.e. the names of the people who violated the law to tell them the secrets.