Treasonous, slimy behavior. It’s something I would expect out of Cold War communist spies like Alger Hiss, or Harry Hopkins. This is the sort of thing I expect out of the French, or the United Nations.
But then there’s the New York Times. Since 2002, their stock has dropped 55%, and is there any wonder given their behavior?
In December, 2001, the terror-funding Holy Land Foundation was tipped off by "
a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent …that the FBI was about to raid its office … endangering the lives of federal agents." He was nice enough to tip them off on the day before. I can just see the amount of paper shredded and burned now, can’t you?
That same month, Times reporter Philip Shenon blew a Dec. 14, 2001, raid of the Global Relief Foundation. The much vaunted
Patrick Fitzgerald, the man who’s been sent to prosecute on the Valeria Plame affair, said in an Aug. 7, 2002, "It has been conclusively established that Global Relief Foundation learned of the search from reporter Philip Shenon of The New York Times," U.S. attorney wrote letter to the Times' legal department.
And what do my wondering eyes note? The Global Relief Foundation (GRF) was
designated a terror-financing organization in October 2002 by the Treasury Department, which reported that GRF "has connections to, has provided support for, and has provided assistance to Usama Bin Ladin, the al Qaida Network, and other known terrorist groups."
The Muslim charity had "received funding from individuals associated with al Qaida. GRF officials have had extensive contacts with a close associate of Usama Bin Ladin, who has been convicted in a U.S. court for his role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." Moreover, the Treasury Department said, "GRF members have dealt with officials of the Taliban, while the Taliban was subject to international sanctions."
Those would be Clinton sanctions, mind you. It’s not just a Bush problem.
Shenon's then-colleague, Judith Miller, had placed a similar call to another Muslim terrorist-front financier, the
Holy Land Foundation, a few weeks before Shenon's call to the GRF. She was supposedly asking for "comment" on an impending freeze of their assets. According to Fitzgerald in court papers, Miller allegedly also warned them that "government action was imminent." The FBI raided the Holy Land Foundation's offices the day after Miller's article was published in the Times.
The Times' reporters -- surprise, surprise -- refuse to cooperate with investigators trying to identify the leakers. The government is
appealing a ruling protecting the loose-lipped reporters' phone records.
And that’s just one incident. Let’s get even more recent, shall we?
Last year, the Times revealed a top secret program tracking phone calls connected to numbers found in 9/11 architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's cell phone. That would be a list we would like to follow up on, don’t you think?
We're in a battle for our survival and we don't even know who the enemy is half the time. As Liberals constantly remind us, Islam is a "Religion of Peace." One very promising method of distinguishing the "Religion of Peace" Muslims from the "Slit Their Throats" Muslims is by following the al-Qaida money trail. But now we've lost that ability — thanks to The New York Times.
In the latest of a long list of formerly top-secret government anti-terrorism operations that have been revealed by the Times, last week the paper printed the details of a government program tracking terrorists' financial transactions that has already led to the capture of major terrorists and their handmaidens in the U.S. It’s called the SWIFT program. Basically, follow the money.
And then they released an article on June 22nd, saying
“Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.
The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.
Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said.”
The blabbermouths who have just blown the cover on this program don't seem to care that they've sabotaged a successful counterterrorism tool:
“[The program] has provided clues to money trails and ties between possible terrorists and groups financing them, the officials said. In some instances, they said, the program has pointed them to new suspects, while in others it has buttressed cases already under investigation.
Among the successes was the capture of a Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort, several officials said. The Swift data identified a previously unknown figure in Southeast Asia who had financial dealings with a person suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda; that link helped locate Hambali in Thailand in 2003, they said.
In the United States, the program has provided financial data in investigations into possible domestic terrorist cells as well as inquiries of Islamic charities with suspected of having links to extremists, the officials said.
The data also helped identify a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges last year, the officials said. The man, Uzair Paracha, who worked at a New York import business, aided a Qaeda operative in Pakistan by agreeing to launder $200,000 through a Karachi bank, prosecutors said.
In terrorism prosecutions, intelligence officials have been careful to "sanitize," or hide the origins of evidence collected through the program to keep it secret, officials said.”
Now all their careful efforts have been destroyed by Bush-deranged reporters who fashion themselves the true protectors of America. Here's editor Bill Keller,the newspaper's executive editor, explaning why he ignored the Bush administration's argument for keeping the legal program secret: "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 data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."
Did I miss something? These yoyos knew it was a national security SECRET. They used the words “A secret Bush administration program.” But because it’s of public interest, it has to be broadcasted from the halls of Montezuma to the caves of Afghanistan?
But then, suddenly, the Times blinked and apparently thought, “Wait a moment, maybe we could be shot for treason for doing this.” And then started backpedadling like mad.
New York Times ombudsman Byron Calame's belated defense of the Times' expose of the monitoring of the SWIFT banking program contained this revealing passage:
"There was a significant question as to how secret the (monitoring of the SWIFT banking program) was after five years. 'Hundreds, if not thousands, of people know about this,' (Executive Editor Bill) Keller claimed he was told by an official who talked to him on condition of anonymity."
"Hundreds, if not thousands, of people" have known about the program before the Times blabbed about it. Well, there's a scoop. So, why wasn't this reported in the original story and reflected in the original, front-page headline?
There was no printed follow-up from lapdog Calame about Keller's assertion, which goes a good bit further than the claim by Times' apologists Richard Clarke and Roger Cressey.
That mind-reading duo wrote in a Times op-ed that terrorists already assumed their financial transactions were being monitored. Calame curiously neglected to note that Keller's claim contradicted both the tone and facts presented in the Times' initial coverage by reporters Lichtblau and Risen. Which is just as well, since Lichtblau himself is now contradicting his own story, too. On CNN's "Reliable Sources," facing withering criticism from talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, Lichtblau blustered: "When you have senior Treasury Department officials going before Congress, publicly talking about how they are tracing and cutting off money to terrorists, weeks and weeks before our story ran. USA Today, the biggest circulation in the country, the lead story on their front page four days before our story ran was the terrorists know their money is being traced, and they are moving it into -- outside of the banking system into unconventional means. It is by no means a secret." (emphasis added).
Hmm. What was that headline over Lichtblau's story again? Oh, yeah: "Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to block terror." Meanwhile, finance regulators and top government officials in Belgium (who apparently aren't among the "hundreds, if not thousands" who knew about the program) have ordered a probe into SWIFT, which is regulated by the Belgian central bank and answers to Belgian law. Bush-undermining Eurowheedlers are launching a debate in parliament over the program next week, and a private human rights lobbying group has filed formal complaints against the SWIFT banking consortium in 32 countries.
Former September 11 Commission co-chairman Thomas Kean, who was briefed on the terrorist-finance tracking program and asked Times executive editor Bill Keller not to disclose it, called it “a good program, one that was legal, one that was not violating anybody’s civil liberties, and something the U.S. government should be doing to make us safer.” When asked whether publication of details about the program did any damage, Kean answered, “I think it’s over. Terrorists read the newspapers. Once the program became known, then obviously the terrorists were not going to use these methods any more.” And by the way, the other co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Democrat Lee Hamilton, also asked the Times not to publish.
To quote one particular constitutional lawyer,
“Freedom of the press means the government generally cannot place a prior restraint on speech before publication.
But freedom of the press does not mean the government cannot prosecute reporters and editors for treason — or for any other crime. The First Amendment does not mean Times editor Bill Keller could kidnap a child and issue his ransom demands from The New York Times editorial page. He could not order a contract killing on the op-ed page. Nor can he take out a contract killing on Americans with a Page One story on a secret government program being used to track terrorists who are trying to kill Americans.
What if, instead of passing information from the government's secret nuclear program at Los Alamos directly to Soviet agents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had printed those same secrets in a newsletter? Would they have skated away scot-free instead of being tried for espionage and sent to the death chamber?
Ezra Pound, Mildred Gillars ("Axis Sally") and Iva Toguri D'Aquino ("Tokyo Rose") were all charged with treason for radio broadcasts intended to demoralize the troops during World War II. Their broadcasts were sort of like Janeane Garofalo and Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio — except Tokyo Rose was actually witty, and Axis Sally is said to have used a fact-checker.
Tokyo Rose was convicted of treason for a single remark she made on air: "Orphans of the Pacific, you really are orphans now. How will you get home now that your ships are sunk?" For that statement alone, D'Aquino spent six years in prison and was fined $10,000 (more than $80,000 in today's dollars).
Axis Sally was convicted of treason for broadcasts from Germany and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Pound avoided a treason trial for his radio broadcasts by getting himself committed to an insane asylum instead (which I take it is Randi Rhodes' "Plan B" in the event that she ever acquires enough listeners to be charged with treason).
There was no evidence that in any of these cases the treasonable broadcasts ever put a single American life in danger. The law on treason doesn't require it.
The federal statute on treason, 18 USC 2381, provides in relevant part: "Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States ... adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000."
Thanks to The New York Times, the easiest job in the world right now is: "Head of Counterintelligence — Al-Qaida." You just have to read The New York Times over morning coffee, and you're done by 10 a.m.”
So, the Times has no problem splattering national security secrets all over the place. NSA secrets, no problem. Money trails, no problem.
WMDs found in Iraq—whoa, hold up there now, let’s not be hasty.
On December 01, 2005, I noted a few items found in Iraq. I elaborated on the material found.
1.8 tons of partially enriched uranium.
Stockpiles of RDX.
1,500 barrels of miscellaneous bioweapons and chemical crap you really don't want in you backyard, or even the same hemisphere--
VX nerve gas [for full visual effects, see the film "The Rock"].
Henta virus-- a hemorragic virus that's airborn [think airborn Ebola, you have an idea].
Anthrax... I don't think I need to explain anthrax, I hope.
In June, 2004, the United Nations weapons inspectors confirmed not merely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but that he smuggled them out of his country, before, during and after the war.
The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) briefed the Security Council on Saddam's dismantling of missile and WMD sites before and during the war. UNMOVIC executive chairman Demetrius Perricos detailed not only the export of thousands of tons of missile components, nuclear reactor vessels and fermenters for chemical and biological warheads, but also the discovery of many (but not most) of these items - with UN inspection tags still on them -- as far afield as Jordan, Turkey and even Holland.
And somehow, Syria doesn’t rate a mention on this list. Curious, that. Iraq's western neighbor Syria has its own Baath Party, just like Saddam's, and refused even the thought of an UNMOVIC inspection. Israeli intelligence reported the large-scale smuggling of Saddam's WMD program across the Syrian border since at least two months before the war.
This should have been the biggest news story of 2004. Yet you haven't heard about it, have you?
Even Canada's former Prime Minister Paul Martin -- a socialist and no friend of America—addressed a group of 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal in May of 2004. Martin stated terrorists acquired WMDs from Saddam. “The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Huseein had, we don't know where they are…. [T]errorists have access to all of them,” the Canadian premier warned.
In April 26th, 2004, Jordanian intelligence broke up an al Qaeda conspiracy to detonate a large chemical device in the capital city of Amman. Directed by al Qaeda terrorist leader Abu al-Zarqawi – now deceased-- the plotters sought to use a massive explosion to spread a “toxic cloud”, meant to wipe out the U.S. embassy, the Jordanian prime minister's office, the Jordanian intelligence headquarters, and at least 20,000 civilians (and only 3,000 died on 9/11). Over twenty tons of chemical weapons were seized from the conspirators, who were just days away from carrying out their plot.
Where does twenty tons of nerve gas and sarin came from? Wal -Mart? In a July 2003 interview with Larry King, even Bill Clinton said “it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there [was]…a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for” in Iraq. Every intelligence agency in the world -- French, British, German, Russian, Czech, you name it -- agreed before the war; Jordanian intelligence can certainly confirm their opinion today.”
At current count, the United States has found 500
chemical weapons in
Iraq since 2003. Including the mustard gas, sarin nerve agent, etc. And not only that, there is evidence that there’s even more out there.
So, just to recap: according to the NYTimes, US government programs that can get civilians, army officers, cops, and FBI agents killed are okay to be broadcast to the general public. Anything that can help terrorists get away with murder, escape detection and prosecution, is also safe to be broadcasted to the world at large. However, doing anything that could be construed as supporting the work of any non-terrorist—like the UNMOVIC, the USArmy, the FBI, the treasury department, etc, is supposed to be buried.
Got that?
Links:
Michelle Malkin ·
June 24, 2006 10:07 PMThe Editors on Leaks on National Review OnlineA syndicated columnTerrorist tiping timesStephen SpruiellThe NYTimes has
in-house produced video showcasing Licthblau as he "reveals a secret Bush administration program to access to financial records."
ABP:
Bryan Preston:Patterico:
More Michelle Malkin [http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27266841.shtml]
Jeff Goldstein:
GOP Senators speak out on the
dangers of classifed leaks. A
House GOP resolution is in the works.
Howard Kurtz plays the violin for the NYTimes/LATimes.
Hugh Hewitt's not having it.
The Los Angeles Times
thumbs its nose and national security:
Contact info:
Send a letter to the editor by e-mailing letters@nytimes.com or faxing (212)556-3622.
Snail mail:
Letters to the EditorThe New York Times229 West 43rd StreetNew York, NY 10036
