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June 28, 2006
Question No. 9
In response to my blog entry last week on The War Tapes, a reader asks:
“I’m curious if you have any opinion on the recent controversy over the newspaper reports detailing a secret but legal government program which scans bank records. Were the various newspapers right to report on this program? Did you agree with Bill Keller’s letter to his readers? Or is it only newsworthy if a secret program is illegal?”
This is foreign ground to me as the editor of the Monitor. In my career I’ve had to deal with government officials who didn’t want things published but never on national security grounds. So my opinion is based only on many years of following such issues.
Jack M. Balkin, a blogger whose column appears on today’s Concord Monitor Forum page, makes clear that the Bush administration is as good as or better than its predecessors in playing the leaking game. This consists mainly of leaking information it thinks will be to its political advantage and crying “national security” when something is leaked that it doesn’t want out.
This administration does have an advantage its predecessors did not. This consists of two elements. The first is a Greek chorus, masquerading as journalists, that is quick to take up its tune, often thoughtlessly but with much tumult and shouting. The second is a communication system – the internet and 24-hour news networks – that amplifies the howl from a reliable administration perspective.
Three newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, found out about and published stories about the government scanning of bank records.
This raises two questions for me: First, if three newspapers found out about it, how secret was it? And second, how come most of the press’s critics left the Wall Street Journal out of their plaint?
I believe in a vigorous press and have a great deal of faith in the editors of big newspapers to make the right decisions in these cases. I am never surprised to hear an administration – this one or any other – wage a “national security” defense. And ultimately, although my faith is often sorely tested, I believe the public has the ability to look beyond the political hubbub and figure out who is right and, more important, what is right.
Finally, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, did a superb job explaining why the Times went with the story. I’ve pasted the crux of his argument below, but you can read the whole thing at the New York Times website, nytimes.com.
"The Administration case for holding the story had two parts, roughly speaking: first that the program is good – that it is legal, that there are safeguards against abuse of privacy, and that it has been valuable in deterring and prosecuting terrorists. And, second, that exposing this program would put its usefulness at risk.
“It’s not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don’t know about it.
“We weighed most heavily the Administration’s concern that describing this program would endanger it. The central argument we heard from officials at senior levels was that international bankers would stop cooperating, would resist, if this program saw the light of day. We don’t know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling. First, the bankers provide this information under the authority of a subpoena, which imposes a legal obligation. Second, if, as the Administration says, the program is legal, highly effective, and well protected against invasion of privacy, the bankers should have little trouble defending it. The Bush Administration and America itself may be unpopular in Europe these days, but policing the byways of international terror seems to have pretty strong support everywhere. And while it is too early to tell, the initial signs are that our article is not generating a banker backlash against the program.
“By the way, we heard similar arguments against publishing last year’s reporting on the NSA eavesdropping program. We were told then that our article would mean the death of that program. We were told that telecommunications companies would – if the public knew what they were doing – withdraw their cooperation. To the best of my knowledge, that has not happened. While our coverage has led to much public debate and new congressional oversight, to the best of our knowledge the eavesdropping program continues to operate much as it did before. Members of Congress have proposed to amend the law to put the eavesdropping program on a firm legal footing. And the man who presided over it and defended it was handily confirmed for promotion as the head of the CIA.
“A secondary argument against publishing the banking story was that publication would lead terrorists to change tactics. But that argument was made in a half-hearted way. It has been widely reported – indeed, trumpeted by the Treasury Department – that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash.”
Posted by Mike Pride at June 28, 2006 08:07 AM
Comments
Your review of the NY Times alleged treasonous disclosure of classified administrative review of bank records was well done. We now have a Supreme Court ruling that the Bush administration lacks that self-appointed authority.
However, what is most disturbing is the administrative mental set that believes it can act unilaterally. The administrative position that "if you disagree with us, you are supporting the enemy" is more dangerous than any enemy might be.
After enactment of the Patriot Act, a woman was quoted in a Monitor article, saying, "I don't mind giving up a little bit of my freedom if it means I'll be safer." Widespread, that terrible statement can be the beginning of the end. Fortunately, there is evidence surfacing that the country's population is not that gullible.
Posted by: John Stohrer at June 30, 2006 10:48 AM
I thought you might find today's WSJ editoral relevant. Here is the nut graf:
"Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn't mind seeing in print. If this was a "leak," it was entirely authorized.
Would the Journal have published the story had we discovered it as the Times did, and had the Administration asked us not to? Speaking for the editorial columns, our answer is probably not. Mr. Keller's argument that the terrorists surely knew about the Swift monitoring is his own leap of faith. The terror financiers might have known the U.S. could track money from the U.S., but they might not have known the U.S. could follow the money from, say, Saudi Arabia. The first thing an al Qaeda financier would have done when the story broke is check if his bank was part of Swift.
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 this asymmetric war against terrorists, intelligence and financial tracking are the equivalent of troop movements. They are America's main weapons.
The Times itself said as much in a typically hectoring September 24, 2001, editorial "Finances of Terror": "Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities." Isn't the latter precisely what the Swift operation is?
Whether the Journal News department would agree with us in this or other cases, we can't say. We do know, however, that Journal editors have withheld stories at the government's request in the past, notably during the Gulf War when they learned that a European company that had sold defense equipment to Iraq was secretly helping the Pentagon. Readers have to decide for themselves, based on our day-to-day work, whether they think Journal editors are making the correct publishing judgments."
Posted by: Jonah Lehrer at June 30, 2006 12:24 PM