Why they chose to publish
Editors of the three American newspapers explained to their readers the deliberation that preceded the publication of the stories.
Dasu Krishnamoorty
The White House and the press are locked in a fresh battle -- national security vs. the right of the public to know. The New York Times has again taken on the Bush administration after it had published last year news about the National Security Agency¿s wiretapping of American citizens¿ phone and e-mail traffic - a story it had held back from its readers for an entire year on the advice of the administration. This time it carried an article, dismissing a request of the administration not to publish information about state agencies snooping on financial transactions of individuals and institutions allegedly linked to terrorism. Though the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal also put the story on their front pages, Conservatives want the Times¿ scalp because it has a history of courting controversy centred on such disclosures.
On June 23, the three newspapers ran a story revealing a Treasury Department programme monitoring international financial transactions aimed at helping terrorist activity. The Times report claimed that following 9/11, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration began siphoning data from a vast database of international financial transactions stored by a Belgian banking consortium known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) in order to ?trac[e] transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda.? The records mostly concerned wire transfers and other methods of moving financial transactions into and out of the United States, the report said. The Times quoted officials (without naming them) saying that the programme had helped the US administration to capture the most wanted Al Qaeda functionary in Southeast Asia.
Official response to these disclosures has been prompt and sharp and at the same time steered clear of a showdown with the media. President Bush said it was ?disgraceful? that the media had blown the lid off a secret programme aimed at scouring financial records to help hunt down terrorist suspects. The White House blamed the New York Times for violating an established tradition of keeping wartime secrets. ?The fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror,? Bush said, at a brief question-and-answer session with reporters at the White House. ?The New York Times has now twice ? two separate occasions ? disclosed programs; both times they had been asked not to publish those stories by senior administration officials,? said Vice President Dick Cheney.
Treasury Secretary John Snow said the disclosures were regrettable and could only help the terrorists by revealing sources and methods used by investigators. ?We`re at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous,? chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Peter King, told the Associated Press and said he would write to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation`s chief law enforcer ?begin an investigation and prosecution of the New York Times -- the reporters, the editors and the publisher.?
Editors of all the three newspapers explained to their readers the deep deliberation that preceded the publication of the stories and how they considered the viewpoints of Bush officials and national security concerns before concluding that the information they were about to print was in public interest. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, said the Times had spent weeks discussing these details with the administration. Some of the officials working for the programme were skeptical about the legality of government`s actions and the adequacy of oversight, Keller said. A Times editorial maintained that the story bore no resemblance to security breaches like disclosure of troop locations. The editorial claimed that the decisions of the paper¿s news department were independent of its opinions department. WSJ also said the same thing.
The Los Angeles Times editorial showed that it was not ready to confer martyrdom on the Bush regime. It said, ?We are not out to get the President.? According to LAT, ?there is an intense and ongoing public debate about whether surveillance programs like these pose a serious threat to civil liberties.? Even as readers may wonder how a Bush supporter like the Wall Street Journal found itself in the ?questionable? company of the Times, the paper, in an extraordinarily long editorial of two columns, distanced itself from the Times in the following passage: ?Just as dubious is the defense in a Times editorial this week that ?The Swift story bears ?no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals.? In the asymmetric war against terrorists, intelligence and financial tracking are the equivalent of troop movements. They are America¿s main weapons.? The Journal published the story because ?at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information.?
In a very unusual exercise, both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times published in their newspapers a joint op-ed article by their editors Bill Keller and Dean Baquet on July 1. They recalled the history of their newspapers in co-operating with the administration by delaying or withholding articles when they were convinced that the risk of publication outweighed the benefits. They cited the example of the New York Times holding back articles that ?if published, might have jeopardized efforts to protect vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear material,? and the example of the Los Angeles Times withholding in April information about American espionage and surveillance activities in Afghanistan discovered on computer drives purchased by reporters in an Afghan bazaar.
In a signed editorial (June 2), Time magazine¿s managing editor Richard Stengel, said that even in the past, presidents had constitutionally overreached themselves. He thought that whether public security concerns outweighed public interest was a question difficult to answer. It is, however, not clear how these disclosures would hurt pursuit of terrorists, he said. ?The government`s assertion that it must be unhindered in protecting our security can camouflage the desire to increase Executive power, while the press`s cry of the public`s right to know can mask a quest for competitive advantage or a hidden animus,? Stengel said.
Not to break a tradition, the Republican press bayed for the blood of the New York Times. Rupert Murdoch¿s New York Post unleashed a battery of columnists. Maggie Gallagher reminded the Times that the Swift programme had helped Bush track Hambali, the brain behind the 2003 Bali resort explosions that killed more than 200 persons. Since the three newspapers could not have gathered information without leaks from officials, Arnold Ahlert called for prosecution of the accomplices. Several GOP scribes accused the Times of treason and suggested that the editors and reporters responsible for the article should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. But the White House made it clear that it would not take any measures against the newspapers that published the story.
In a swift media-bashing reaction, the chairman of the Senate intelligence Pat Roberts swiftly moved asking intelligence chief John Negroponte to assess the damage done to the country by the Times leaks of top secret intelligence. This was followed by the House of Representatives passing a resolution condemning the disclosures and calling upon the media to co-operate with the administration in its efforts to track terrorists. In the debate, Democrats blamed Republicans for intimidating the press and the latter accused the press of jeopardizing intelligence efforts. The resolution did not name any newspaper specifically. Some members called for revocation of press credentials of newspapers that published the stories.
Elsewhere, Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt has asked the justice ministry to investigate whether SWIFT had violated Belgian law in permitting the Americans to access its data. Legal experts maintain that though domestic electronic surveillance without court orders is illegal, monitoring international bank transfers with the knowledge of the bank consortium is unobjectionable. Two former counter-terrorism officials believe that terrorists are intelligent enough to anticipate official monitoring and adopt nontraditional methods of communication and money transfers.
The government is now raring to go after those officials suspected of leaking information to the newspapers that kept their sources anonymous. If the state, in response to the clamour for prosecution, try the leakers, it may be difficult for the media to evade court summons to reveal their sources. There will be a fresh enactment of judiciary-media trial of strength. Perhaps it will expedite the promised federal shield law to help reporters preserve the anonymity of their sources. Media watchers tend to think that the administration is anxious to be seen as valiantly fighting forces wittingly or unwittingly helping the terrorists. The run-up to the election in November is likely to see both Democrats and Republicans raise the pitch in the cause of patriotism.
Tailpiece: An angry reader asked the New York Times, ?Are you guys so intensely focused on ?investigative journalism? that you¿ve lost all common sense??
Subscribe To The Newsletter