One of the most under-publicized and under-discussed news events is the ongoing criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act of two employees of the American Israeli Political Action Committee ("AIPAC"), and more generally, the Bush Administration's broader, unprecedented assault on a free press of which the AIPAC prosecution is but a part.
I am no fan of AIPAC, to put it mildly, but as I’ve written about several times before before, there is a concerted effort well underway from this Administration to criminalize aggressive adversarial journalism, and this specific prosecution poses (by design) a very real and dangerous threat to press freedoms in our country. The New York Times this morning has a fairly thorough account of the issues raised by the AIPAC case:
The highly unusual indictment of the former officials, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, accuses them of receiving classified information about terrorism and Middle East strategy from a Defense Department analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. Mr. Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12½ years in prison, though his sentence could be reduced based on his cooperation in the case. . . .
Some legal experts say the prosecution threatens political and press freedom, making a felony of the commerce in information and ideas that is Washington's lifeblood. Federal prosecutors are using the Espionage Act for the first time against Americans who are not government officials, do not have a security clearance and, by all indications, are not a part of a foreign spy operation. . . .
But the case has set off alarms among the policy groups, lobbyists and journalists who swap information, often about national security issues, with executive-branch
officials and Congressional staff members. They were not reassured by a remark from the federal judge hearing the case, at Mr. Franklin's sentencing in January, that the laws on classified information were not limited to government officials.
"Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into unauthorized possession of classified information, must abide by the law," the judge, T. S. Ellis III, said. "That applies to academics, lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever."
A January legal brief by lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman — written in part by Viet D. Dinh, a conservative former assistant attorney general in the Bush Justice Department — argued that the charges were a dangerous effort to criminalize conduct protected by the First Amendment. That argument gets fervent support from people who may not share the Aipac officials' conservative views on foreign policy. . . .
"Leaving aside the idea that this might chill exchanges with the press, this is a guaranteed formula for selective prosecution," Mr. Raven-Hansen said. In other words, he said, so many people have conversations involving borderline-classified information that the government will not be able to prosecute them all and will have to pick and choose, raising a fundamental fairness question.
This article from this morning’s Washington Post reports on related efforts by the Bush Administration to investigate and intimidate journalists:
Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House.
"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."
We somehow managed to get through the 20th Century, win two world wars, and vanquish the Soviet empire without imprisoning journalists who inform Americans of the actions of their government which the government wants to keep secret. But along with the rule of law, due process, and so many other defining American principles, a free press is being thrown overboard in the name of the Administration's claimed inability to fight "The Terrorists" within the system of government we have had for more than 200 years.
So many of the principles to which our country has, by consensus, adhered for decades, through Republican and Democratic Administrations, are being attacked and destroyed by this Administration. This process is inexorably changing the kind of country we are and the system of government under which we live. That is the very definition of "radical," and that term applies to this Administration as much as it applies to anything.
Many people criticize the American media, and rightfully so. But the media still plays an irreplaceably crucial role in our country -- to serve as a watchdog over the government and to discover and expose government wrongdoing, including -- especially -- wrongdoing which the government is attempting to keep concealed. The only reason we have an NSA scandal, or know about so many of the other abuses of this Administration, is because someone in the press discovered and then reported it. As corrupted, lazy, confused, coddled, dysfunctional, and manipulated as our national media is -- and they are all of those things, in spades -- we still need them to perform their functions free of limitations and intimidation from the Government.
There is a reason this Administration is engaged in these efforts to restrict press freedom. Thomas Jefferson told us the reason long ago:
"Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."
As much as we may wish it weren't so, a free press is still the primary instrument by which citizens hold their government accountable. The Administration realizes this, too. And that's precisely why they are engaged in an all-out, truly unprecedented assault on press freedoms.
UPDATE: To get a flavor of how truly authoritarian and un-American many Bush followers are, one should review, if one can stomach it, this post from Scott "Big Trunk" Johnson at Powerline, in which he laments the fact that the Bush Administration isn't being much more aggressive in its efforts to imprison journalists:
One of the deepest secrets in the exposure of the National Security Agency surveillance of al Qaeda-related conversations by the New York Times is that the publication of the story is itself a crime. Publication of the story violates, for example, one highly specific provision (18 U.S.C. section 798) of the Espionage Act that prohibits the disclosure of communications intelligence. Violation of the statute is a felony punishable by imprisonment up to ten years.
The "nearly a dozen" current and former government officials who leaked information regarding the NSA surveillance program to the Times violated the statute. So did the Times itself. Yet the Times has barely mentioned its own legal jeopardy in its continued reporting and commenatary (sic) on the story.
The Bush administration of course asked the Times not to disclose the existence of the surveillance program, but the Times proceeded to publish the story when it satisfied itself that it "could write about this program -- withholding a number of technical details -- in a way that would not expose any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record."
This is an excellent, and very American, point which Big Trunk makes. Those criminals at The New York Times were clearly instructed by Our Leader not to publish the story of The Leader's violations of the law, but the journalists only obeyed the Order for a year until The Leader was re-elected. After that, they defied the Leader's Order and published this story -- a story which exposed government actions which people across the ideological spectrum, and a majority of Americans, believe is illegal. Off to the federal penitentiary they go! Everyone knows that it's improper in the United States for journalists to report on actions by the President which are highly controversial and which violate the law.
The real problem, of course, isn't that the Administration is threatening investigative journalists with prison. It's that they haven't locked them up fast enough:
The problem with the pending investigation of the NSA leaks is that the administration appears only to be talking about enforcement of the rule of law insofar as the New York Times is concerned. The Post reports that not a single reporter or editor has been interviewed in connection with the pending investigations.
So, to recap: We have to become a country where we imprison journalists who expose actions by our political officials which the politicians want to keep secret. If we don't, we may lose our freedoms. And we can't have that.
What I find most strange about this whole thing is that the press itself is so quiet and meek about this all. Hopefully, the 2 articles this morning in the Times and Post signal that they are stepping up.
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked in the Pentagon during the 70s and early 80s we used to joke that the WaPo knew more about what was going on in the next office over than we did.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wondered if they had access to my desk.
Much of the stuff leaked was stuff that SHOULD have been leaked and tended to stop in their tracks some of the mores stupid ideas the military came up with.
We NEED the press. Too bad they've surrendered their freedom of their own free will.
There is nothing strange in a meek press. Watch a smattering of cable television or the Sunday news shows this morning. Make a list of the commercial advertisers on these programs. This media plays a huge role in our economy; i.e. propping up the one thing that keeps our current economy going: Consumer spending.
ReplyDeleteIn October 2004, 60 Minutes (don't know how to link to transcript) interviewed the CEO of Viacom, the company that owns CBS, Simon and Schuster and a host of other media companies. He was asked about the presidential race. His comment: Kerry would be best for America but Bush was best for Viacom and thus he would support Bush.
Those outlyer media that critize Bush are easy to quash. The bigger question is whether the MSM will allow the ineviable to happen without comment; i.e. the collapse of the Bush administration. Stay tuned.
I just wanted to highlight a couple of important points from that Washington Post article.
ReplyDeleteFirst, as a journalism professor pointed out: we haven’t seen this kind of crackdown on leaks since the Nixon administration and its infamous “plumbers” – that, of course, is no coincidence, since both administrations are up to their “keisters” in leaks because they were up to their “keisters” in illegal activities.
Second, that as Rockefeller’s letter pointed out, that "damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of the intelligence agencies."
Which means it's not leaks themselves that the administration wants to punish – only those that make them look bad, leaks to their benefit will go unpunished.
Third, the final decision on whether to publish something has always been left to the editors in the media not the government. If that changes, it will be a first.
Finally, while there is no exemption for the media under the espionage act, there has never been such a prosecution. If that changes, another first.
In other words, the Bush administration’s actions, while conjuring up visions of Nixonian abuses, will be, unprecedented in our democratic system in several ways.
And could, if implemented, affect the way the press is able to operate the rest of our lives – once again, accumulating more power in an executive branch, above the laws and now beyond challenge from the media. There is no understating the threat this could pose to our democratic process.
I especially liked this quote from the NYT story:
ReplyDelete"To make a crime of the kind of conversations Rosen and Weissman had with Franklin over lunch would not be surprising in the People's Republic of China. But it's utterly foreign to the American political system."
That pretty much captures how radical the anti-leak prosecutions have become.
I agree of course with everything Glenn says about a free press and another great post.
ReplyDeleteBut I can't agree with the AIPEC analysis at this point.
A government official gives classified information to a friend who gives it to a foreign government.
Seems to me like the first two are guilty of espionage and both should be in jail.
What does this have to do with the press?
We lost our "freedoms" when the SCOTUS appoinded the chimperor by ruling you cannot count ballots to determine who wins an election (2000).
ReplyDeleteBy and large, our "free press" went along with that one. They willingly have "catapulted" this administration's propaganda.
No wonder chimpy thinks he can get away with it -- he has gotten away with some of the greatest crimes in US History, committed war crimes, treason, and crimes against humanity; and press hasn't said boo!
The NYT has played a major role in enabling the smirking chimp -- I am sure they are not doe "catapulting the propaganda."
Hopefully, the 2 articles this morning in the Times and Post signal that they are stepping up
ReplyDeleteI'm still "hoping" for fitzmas...
The press has not been "meek"; they have been active participents in this administration's crimes.
ReplyDeleteI think anyone really interested in the AIPEC scandal should begin by reading this piece, just to get this point of view, to endorse or discard:
ReplyDelete(You can find this article on line by putting in James Petras+AIPEC)
Treason in high places: Pentagon zionists, AIPAC and Israel
James Petras
Rebelión
The FBI investigation into Israeli espionage agents in the Pentagon is part of a major struggle between prominent Zionists in the Pentagon and the US security apparatus. Ever since the Bush regime came to power there has been a fierce political and organizational war between the Pentagon Zionists and their militarist collaborators, on the one hand, and the professional military and intelligence apparatus, on the other. This conflict has manifested itself in a series of major issues including the war in the Middle East, the rational for war, the relationship between Israel and the US, the strategy for empire, as well as tactical issues like the size of military force needed for colonial wars and the nature of colonial occupation. From 9/11/2001 to the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon Zionists and the civilian militarists had the upper hand: they marginalized the CIA and established their own intelligence services to “cook the data”, they pushed through the doctrine of sequential wars, beginning with Afghanistan and Iraq and projecting wars with Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. The Pentagon Zionists increased Israel’s power in the Middle East and promoted its expansionist colonization of Palestine, at the expense of US soldiers, budget busting expenditures and CIA objections......
It's a long, highly damning article and of course I have no ability to assess its accuracy, but it is certainly interesting.
I'm not disputing the first bit, but I am disputing that there is no evidence that these guys are not a part of a foreign spy operation.
ReplyDeleteYou may be right. But for purposes of this prosecution, proving that they are part of a foreign spy operation is NOT an element of the crime. To imprison them, he Government need only prove that they knowingly received classified information and then dislcosed it.
The Administration purposely framed the indictment so that it would apply to the activities in which investigative journalists engage every day - and in which they have to engage in order to be anything other than an impotent symbol.
You may be right (or not) that these AIPAC agents deserve to be in prison for spying. But that's not what they're being charged with. They're being charged with engaging in conduct which every investigative journalist in the country, by necessity, engages in every day.
Do you think FOX News will maintain its posture as the Bush News Network once its ratings begin to sink along with Bush's? I don't. It's all about the money.
I agree with all of this, but it's a separate problem. There are journalists who are fulfilling their journalistic responsibiliteis and doing it well. Seymour Hirsch - who could easily be imprisoned under the Espionage Act theories used in the AIPAC case - is one of many examples. But there are others at the NYT, WP and many other places.
The fact that the media is broken at its core doesn't mean that we have no investigative journalists tenaciously pursuing governmental wrongdoing. They are out there, and it's vital that they not be intimidated or threatened with criminal prosecution.
The NYT has played a major role in enabling the smirking chimp -- I am sure they are not doe "catapulting the propaganda."
ReplyDeleteHow did you find out that the Administration was breaking the law in order to engage in warrantless eavesdropping on Americans?
Alright, I'm going to play the devil's advocate here.
ReplyDeleteI wish people would stop misusing this phrase. If you actually hold the position you're arguing for, take responsibility for it.
I am disputing that there is no evidence that these guys are not a part of a foreign spy operation.
The only legitimate way to dispute a claim that there is no evidence is to provide evidence, something you have failed to do.
Israel allegedly withdrew a suspected Mossad agent stationed at its Embassy before we could catch up to him with this probe.
Huh? Where does this allegation come from, and what the heck does it have to do with Rosen and Weissman?
Alright, I'm going to play the devil's advocate here.
ReplyDeleteI wish people would stop misusing this phrase. If you actually hold the position you're arguing for, take responsibility for it.
I am disputing that there is no evidence that these guys are not a part of a foreign spy operation.
The only legitimate way to dispute a claim that there is no evidence is to provide evidence, something you have failed to do.
Israel allegedly withdrew a suspected Mossad agent stationed at its Embassy before we could catch up to him with this probe.
Huh? Where does this allegation come from, and what the heck does it have to do with Rosen and Weissman?
[blogger/blogspot sure does suck]
ReplyDeleteThe NYT has played a major role in enabling the smirking chimp -- I am sure they are not doe "catapulting the propaganda."
How did you find out that the Administration was breaking the law in order to engage in warrantless eavesdropping on Americans?
Fallacy of denial of the antecedent. Just because some of the NYT's articles have undermined Bush doesn't imply that others have not enabled him.
While we on the Left have an ethical and patriotic obligation to continue the fight to protect our historic constitutional freedoms, such as freedom of the press, the existence of an enormous mass of crazed knuckleheads (like the above quoted "Powerliner") portends our doom as a country.
ReplyDeleteFour justices with radical views identical to these idiots now sit on the Supreme Court, and they will radically alter our constitutional order over the next generation, to the delight of Johnson and his ilk.
We are now completely polarized, divided and dysfunctional as a nation, no longer agreeing on any basic political principles whatsoever. A house divided against itself cannot stand, as a great American once said.
Bush seems to be outsourcing authoritarianism along with everything else:
ReplyDeletePakistan's Most Famous Cricket Player Detained At Home During Bush Visit To Thwart Protest...
Reuters | Posted March 5, 2006 09:01 AM
Pakistan's most famous-ever cricketer, former captain-turned-politician Imran Khan, spent Saturday confined to his home where authorities detained him to thwart his plan to lead a march to protest against Bush's visit.
It all blends together actually, the muzzling of the press, the surveillance of Peta gatherings, the restrictions on personal mobility.
It's all dictatorial totalitarianiam. Corrupt regimes can only rule by repressive measures.
Fallacy of denial of the antecedent. Just because some of the NYT's articles have undermined Bush doesn't imply that others have not enabled him.
ReplyDeleteI'm aware of this and wasn't arguing that the NYT has never enabled Administration wrongdoing, let alone offering the NYT article as "proof" for that proposition. I've written a lot about how the media, and the NYT, have done exactly that.
The point I was making was a different one: Just because there are major flaws in the way the media operates doesn't mean we should be indifferent to press freedoms. As flawed as it is, the media still does play a critically important function which would be lost - at great cost - if we allowed the Administration to criminalize what they do.
I cannot say how much I loath and despise the BushCo. neocons and all republicans/conservatives who support this crap, this fascism.
ReplyDeleteHowever they can be stopped, they must be stopped. This has gone beyond simply trying to 'vote' them out of office on the Diebold machines and their ilk.
Revolution will be seen as necessary.
Do you think FOX News will maintain its posture as the Bush News Network once its ratings begin to sink along with Bush's? I don't. It's all about the money.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think Fox News is going to sink too far, I think they’ll learn to adjust fairly quickly to Bush’s sinking fortunes and continue to tap into the hatred of the “liberal media,” “anti-Christian” Hollywood, “anti-American” professors etc. -- who will be held responsible for Bush’s demise and the failure in Iraq.
Limbaugh thrived under Clinton remember (America held hostage…) and I don’t think it will be much different for Fox. The focus will change somewhat, that’s all.
It will be about promoting a right-wing successor for Bush and demonizing “Hitlery” and those on the left who are in contention to take his place. Yes, it’s all about the money, but there’s a lot of money in promoting hatred of liberals and the left. Enough to keep Fox in business for a long time to come.
Even worse, they’ll still be pushing the authoritarian agenda that we’ve seen promoted in so many Bush policies.
I am disputing that there is no evidence that these guys are not a part of a foreign spy operation.
ReplyDeleteBut the key point, as Glenn and others have mentioned, is that they are not charged with espionage (although they are charged under the "Espionage Act").
If they were accused of spying, they could be prosecuted for that and found guilty or innocent and there would be no problem.
The problem is that they are accused of receiving and communicating "national defense information", something which every national security reporter does every day of the week.
"The fact that the defendants were not agents of Israel, or any foreign nation, does not negate any element of the offense, and cannot be exculpatory," according to a January 30 pleading by the government that was reported in Secrecy News, with a link to the source document.
Secrecy News, by the way, has provided the best continuing coverage of this case, IMO.
The point I was making was a different one: Just because there are major flaws in the way the media operates doesn't mean we should be indifferent to press freedoms.
ReplyDeleteIn the context in which you posted it -- a response to "The NYT has played a major role in enabling the smirking chimp -- I am sure they are not done 'catapulting the propaganda.'" -- your point is a non sequitur addressed to a strawman, since the quoted text doesn't refer to indifference. A fallacy is a fallacy, regardless of what "different point" is intended.
In any case, I think that reference to "press freedoms" in re corporate media misses the mark. This is not what the foundering fathers had in mind when they authored the 1st amendment. Their context was small independent presses issuing broadsides -- a role that today is better played by blogs like this one, as well as other investigative journalists. I think there's a lot to the argument that the corporate press in the U.S. plays much the same role as the state press does in other countries. Which is not an argument for indifference, or for squeezing out of the corporate press what pockets of resistance remain -- quite the contrary.
truth machine, I believe emptywheel is referring to Naor Gilon, a political official (a title in our own State Dept. system generally referring to a spook) with the Israeli embassy. Gilon was recalled to Israel immediately after Franklin was arrested.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting, and troubling, aspect of this case is that Weissman and Rosen were indicted for their presumed intentions. The indictment says they intended to pass on information received from Franklin to foreign officials and journalists, and to use the information to lobby the White House about policy.
Combining those activities into a single indictment immensely complicates the issue, because it lumps in what can rightly be considered espionage--passing classified information to officials of a foreign power--with exposure of that information to journalists.
The facts of the case make it even more complicated, in that there's been no indication that Franklin's intentions were to expose wrongdoing by the government--he was passing on technical evaluations of the strengths of third-party foreign countries, and those evaluations may have included some of his own biases for the benefit of Israel, which AIPAC officials certainly would have found helpful in their lobbying of the White House.
What makes this crazy is the inclusion of leakage of information to journalists. That is something the Pentagon does every day to further its own aims.
Let's go back to a much older case tried under the Espionage Act--the Rosenbergs. Nowhere in that case were the principals charged with intending to make the information public through journalists or with having done so. The Rosenbergs were conduits of that information to a foreign power. That made the charges directly related to espionage.
Had this indictment been restricted to Rosen's and Weissman's contacts with the Israeli embassy, and their attempts to pass information to that entity in secret, the charge might have been as clear-cut as any other charge under the Espionage Act. However, by including the intention to leak to "journalists" in the charge, the government has intentionally used an otherwise straightforward espionage case as a Trojan horse to challenge press freedom--and the public's right to know.
While all Ameican's should be concerned, it is hard to feel sympathy for the lying liars in the mainstream media. They went along with the administration for years, enabling everthing the neocons have done. Now they want to scream, "NO FAIR!"
ReplyDeleteGreat crimes demand even larger crimes -- those that got into bed with this administration will find that they are shoved out when it suites the neocon agenda. Let's be clear, however, chimpy is not actually calling all these shots and neither are cheny or rove. Its the military industrial complex that put these stooges in place that are the problem.
White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks
"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030400867_pf.html
Morons should have seen this coming when they were carrying the administation's water and slandering those that dared to disagree.
Not that now is the time to say, "I told you so." We need to build a broad coalition to fight chimpy and gang. Some of our partners, however, are really going to stink.
I just pray that we can all hold our noses and take care of first things first -- impeach the chimperor. Then we will have another day to discuss everything else.
The way things are going, if we don't stop chimpy now, there may not be another day to discuss anything -- it will be against the law.
Do you think FOX News will maintain its posture as the Bush News Network once its ratings begin to sink along with Bush's?
ReplyDeleteOF COURSE THEY WILL!!!!!!
Think about it -- FAUX NEWS is just a small part of a much larger empire. In fact, I am sure there will be some accounting "advantages" to have an "underperforming" asset like FAUX NEWS.
As long as the rest of murdoch's portfolio is doing fine -- FAUX NEWS is a net "plus" regardless of what the numbers say.
TO THINK THAT MARKET FORCES ARE GOING TO BE THE "INVISIBLE HAND" THAT CORRECTS THINGS IS INSANITY.
After all, it was the manipulation of those market forces that put us in this position in the first place.
PLEASE WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!
Glenn:
ReplyDeleteI generally agree with your post but one thing troubled me: "But along with the rule of law, due process, and so many other defining American principles, a free press is being thrown overboard in the name of the Administration's claimed inability to fight 'The Terrorists' within the system of government we have had for more than 200 years." This statement is wrong on a very deep level. This Administration (and its enablers) is willing to overthrow so many of our political values not for national security but for politics. Not for the preservation of safety but rather for the preservation of power. Not to advantage America but to advantage a particular political party and ideology. I'm not attacking you but simply pointing out how the frames and memes of the current debate infect our thoughts, even when we are trying to express our opposition to them.
Truth machine -- are you daft?
ReplyDeleteJudy Miller and company are what enabled the war of conquest in iraq based on lies.
Just in case you don't understand, let me spell it out to you.
1. Someone in the administration "leaks" a talking point by telling an insider at the NYT.
2. The NYT prints this lie as if it were a fact
3. The MSM "echo chamber" repeats the lie, citing the NYT
4. As the lie spreads, it becomes stated as an objective fact, there is no need to document sources at this point or even explain the situation.
5. The "news cycle" repeats
This Administration (and its enablers) is willing to overthrow so many of our political values not for national security but for politics.
ReplyDeleteIMHO -- this post exactly illustrates the problem and why the "culture of corruption" repeatedly get away with this.
All this verbage and NEVER ONCE mentioning the wholesale theft and economic fraud being perpetrated on the American people.
While we get distracted talking idealistic platitudes, they are STEALING BEYOND AVARICE!!!!!!!!
Who is steal? Follow the money trail... the military-industrial complex.
What else really matters....
Blah blah blah power, blah blah blah blah freedom, blah blah blah democracy, blah blah blah blah values...
unf'ingbelievable...
There was a party when the left was willing to talk economic issues. Perhaps the success of the right is that they have demonized that discussion.
A lot of people angry at the MSM fail to make the fine distinctions absolutely neccesary to win in politics - or, for that matter, to see and know truth and act effectively anywhere.
ReplyDeleteTo say that we shoulsn't give a shit about the MSM when this sort of things happen because they're all corporate whores is supreme ingratitude. Whether or not you can find examples of impure actions or not, the MSM stillplay a hugely important role on checking the power of this administration. I don't mean in theory - I mean right now.
If all the MSM were truly in the business of promoting Bush's policies and demonizing his opponents, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between FOX news and the New York Times. And don't fool yourself: of course you can.
We could live in a world where every broadcast network was FOX News and every newspaper was like the Washington Times. Russia is essentially like that now. The Bush administration is trying to create that world.
By all means, criticize the MSM when it is foolish or gullible or cowardly - but you can and MUST support it when it is threatened by the Bush admin. It wields, even now, quite a lot of political power, and its current behavior is nothing like what a real mouthpiece of the Bush Administration would act like. Things can get a LOT worse - and if the Bush admin is out there trying to throw the MSM in jail, and all there is on the other side are a bunch of fucking whining backseat drivers ripping the MSM for not fighting their own fight harder, of course the MSM will cave. And why not?
Show some fucking support. You wouldn't even know about the NSA scandal at all, period, unless the NYT showed some heroic guts. Do something patirotic: buy a subscription.
Glenn,
ReplyDeleteAs an example of the meekness of the press(there are many more examples)Tim Russert this morning is going to talk about the "anti-democratic" behavior of Pres Putin of russia. This is a slap in the face to the American public since he should be talking about the "anti-democratic" behavior of pres bush.
I believe that as things in our country gets worse, brought on by this administration,and which is already happening to a degree, is that bush is in the process, whether intentional or unintentional, of destroying the reputation of the executive branch(I.E. bush and his admin)and the republican party and of course the true conservative movement. This is why it amazes me that ,it seems,that the rank and file conservatives(34%-40%)still support this pres.
It is blantantly obvious that the policies of this admin is turning our country into something the founders were aware could happen and created a form of government to defend against. Hopefully, as the republicans and bush become more "anti" We the People and thier reputation continues to suffer they will implode and "We the People" of all political stripes will rise up together and change what we have become to what we were.
Even though thier is a lot of pessimmism out there, I remain hopeful and confident that this will be the case.
Glenn, this look grim and it is. But I don't think a ciminal trial for the NYT would go down the way Judith Miller went down. I think not only the left, but a lot of the country would rally around the paper, and I think the court would throw it out.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be a seminal overreach on the Bush admin's part.
So I don't think they'll do it.
Criminal trials for journalists might be popular among the fringe rigth, but the center would be very uncomfortable.
NO, instead they'll intimidate as much as possible going right up to that line, but not over.
Zack said:
ReplyDeleteIt will be about promoting a right-wing successor for Bush and demonizing “Hitlery” and those on the left who are in contention to take his place. Yes, it’s all about the money, but there’s a lot of money in promoting hatred of liberals and the left. Enough to keep Fox in business for a long time to come.
The corporate class made so much money in the bush years that they can continue their SOP during a demo administration.
Not unlike moon funneling $$$ into the washington times.
Or that drunk billionaire cutting check after check.
The corporate class knows that regardless of the administration's "party" they will get their cut.
Just that if the party happens to be republican, their cut will be massive.
When demos are in charge, we are not invited to the bamnquet but we can lick the plates after they've gone.
When repubs are in charge, we get to scrounge around, on hands and knees, on the floor looking for crumbs.
This statement is wrong on a very deep level. This Administration (and its enablers) is willing to overthrow so many of our political values not for national security but for politics. Not for the preservation of safety but rather for the preservation of power.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say that they are doing these things "in the name of fighting The Terrorists," I mean that this is the pretext and justification they are giving, not that it's the real reason and certainly not that it's a justifiable excuse.
Not that now is the time to say, "I told you so." We need to build a broad coalition to fight chimpy and gang. Some of our partners, however, are really going to stink.
This is an important point. When former Bush supporters have the scales fall off of their eyes and talk about how they were wrong to support the Bush movement and now want to work against them, I frequently see them being attacked with recriminations of "I told you so" or "this is all your fault." As tempting as that is, I think those conversions ought to be welcomed, not scorned, because that's exactly what we need. There are a lot of former Bush supporters who have become very disillusioned and that can only be helpful in causing the whole edifice to fall.
Similarly, it's unquestionably true that the media completely abdicated its journalistic role for several years after 9/11 through the 2004 election - and began actively serving as a propaganda arm for the government - a disgrace which, probably more than anything else, was responsible for what the Administration got away with. One could also say this failure pre-dates 9/11 and is still ongoing.
All of that would be true. But the reality is that we need the media to work against the Administration if its illegality and corruption is going to be exposed, so to the extent some journalists wake up and begin performing their function, I think it's important to avoid castigating them, as tempting as it is, and we should encourage that awakening (as belated as it may be) and use it to further the effort to hold the Administration accountable.
Nothing is pure in a war, and only a war is going to bring down this creaking dinosaur of an Administration and all of its appedenges and affiliates which are entrenched throughout the Government. Any allies in that effort ought to be welcomed, in my view.
Perhaps we have reached the point where we require an American Samizdat. Soviet dissident author, Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky stated it thusly,
ReplyDelete"I myself create it, edit it, censor it, publish it, distribute it, and [may] get imprisoned for it."
Of course, Mr. Greenwald, et al, are providing a kind of blogging Samizdat; although eventual censorship of the internet (or intimidation) may be the point of the recent CENTCOM “electronic media engagement team”" attempts to drive readers/writers to their site.
If the NYT’s and the WP’s writers keep shedding light on this salient issue, and if we all remain vigilant and take an active role in getting out the truth, even if it requires subversive methods and civil disobedience, then perhaps we can eventually prevail.
“A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Concerning Big Trunk's post, his conclusion that the NY Times violated the Espionage Act by publishing the NSA story is both ridiculous and terrifying--terrifying because there are many powerful members of Congress and the Administration who agree with him. There's one particular underlying issues involved in the threats of possible prosecution of the Times that has been bothering me. Bush knew about what the Times had, knew for a year that it was likely that at some point the Times would publish the story, and was informed when the Times was actually ready to publish. Yet, Bush apparently did absolutely nothing to try to stop the Times except to politely ask them not to do so. If the publication of the NSA story was going to be so devastating to National Security, why didn't the Administration at least try to get an injunction? Glenn, you're the expert on First Amendment law, I'm certainly not, but from what I recall, I don't think there's anything in the Pentagon Papers case or the whole body of prior restraint cases that would prevent the government from at least trying to stop the Times before the story ran. So, if I'm right on this, two possibilities come to mind: First, of course, Bush would undoubtedly argue that they couldn't go to the courts for part of the very same reason that the NSA spying scheme was avoiding the FISA court in the first place, all that rubbish about secrecy, can't trust the court, more leaks, etc. I don't think that argument will fly very high since we all know that the government can get anything filed under seal, heard behind closed doors, etc. whenever it wants when it claims national security is involved. Claiming you didn't try to stop a huge leak to the press that you knew was about to happen because you were afraid of speculative security issues with the courts is just stupid.
ReplyDeleteSo, I think the real reason they didn't at least attempt to stop the publication is twofold: Most important, they knew they would lose. Once they lost that round, all of their arguments in defense of the NSA program would have been weakened. Second, once they tried to get a prior restraint injunction and lost, any threats to prosecute the Times under the Espionage Act would be weakened as well.
So, here's a thought: Did the Administration deliberately set up the New York Times to be the victim of its latest power grab, a power grab over our free press? As you wrote, Glenn, and I agree 100%, there is a concerted effort well underway from this Administration to criminalize aggressive adversarial journalism . . . This sounds paranoid, of course, like so many of our fears, but as the old saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean somebody isn't out to get you. As we've seen so many times before, very few things Bush and his Administration do are done by accident or without a carefully considered, detailed plan. I think the potential (and I am convinced it's going to happen) criminal prosecution of the New York Times is part of the plan as was very likely a set up.
Any thoughts? I'd love for somebody to show me just how wrong I am, I'd sleep a lot better at nights.
Kris C.
Truth machine -- are you daft?
ReplyDeleteNo, but you apparently are, as you have failed entirely to grasp the meaning of my comments, which were precisely about the fact that Judy Miller and the rest of the corporate media and have enabled Bush's war and other nefarious deeds.
Similarly, it's unquestionably true that the media completely abdicated its journalistic role for several years after 9/11 through the 2004 election - and began actively serving as a propaganda arm for the government - a disgrace which, probably more than anything else, was responsible for what the Administration got away with. One could also say this failure pre-dates 9/11 and is still ongoing.
ReplyDeleteUm ... "Remember the Maine!"
To say that it pre-dates 9/11 is quite an understatement. The media has a long history of abdicating its journalistic role -- mixed up with a long history of asserting its journalistic role. It's a complicated story, but the balance has shifted significantly as the number of corporations owning the bulk of the media has dwindled. When Ben Bagdikian published his first edition of "The Media Monopoly" in 1983 it was about 50; now it's only 5.
If that is not what you are saying, what are you saying?
ReplyDeleteyup - guess we agree. Guess the I am just tyring to point out the folly of even looking at the numbers at FAUX NEWS -- like the other lies that get thrown around, just distract us.
I do no believe the the current crop of crony-capitalists give a damn about the market forces they use to distract us and justify inequities.
Beyond some very simple, basic level, economic theory is another lie. Even Adam Smith, it's creator, knew he had to clearly spell out "assumptions" for his theories to make any sense.
These assumptions just told hold true in our economy == therefor, the whole idea of an "invisible hand" is null and void.
the MSM stillplay a hugely important role on checking the power of this administration
ReplyDeleteYou mean like judy miller's reporting on WMD's.
No, but you apparently are, as you have failed entirely to grasp the meaning of my comments, which were precisely about the fact that Judy Miller and the rest of the corporate media and have enabled Bush's war and other nefarious deeds.
ReplyDeleteMy bad - but thanks for setting me straight. I do think that we need to specifically discuss the dysfunctions of our economic system and the distractions that are used enable the takeover of our government by the military-industrial complex.
Guess you and I are on the same page, but we are highlighting different parts of it's content.
A lot of people angry at the MSM fail to make the fine distinctions absolutely neccesary to win in politics - or, for that matter, to see and know truth and act effectively anywhere.
ReplyDeleteTo say that we shoulsn't give a shit about the MSM when this sort of things happen because they're all corporate whores is supreme ingratitude.
I guess your ability to make distinctions isn't fine enough to detect that that's not what people are saying.
If all the MSM were truly in the business of promoting Bush's policies and demonizing his opponents, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between FOX news and the New York Times.
Indeed there's a difference between Fox News and the NYT: Dick Cheney didn't refer to Fox News stories in order to justify his claims about Saddam's nuclear threat, he referred to the credible NYT.
So many of the principles to which our country has, by consensus, adhered for decades, through Republican and Democratic Administrations, are being attacked and destroyed by this Administration
ReplyDeleteI saw a bumpersticker just before Christmas:
America: She was a helluva country, wasn't she?
I now regret not asking the owner where she got it.
If the administration had a clear cut legal case that the New York Times violated the Espionage Act (as Powerline insists in Glenn’s update) then why haven’t they charged the Times? If they had a case, why wouldn’t they pursue it?
ReplyDeletePowerline and the right-wingers sure don’t seem to have a good answer to that one. Are we supposed to be that Rove & Company are being lenient, just because they’re nice guys? Clearly, they don’t have a case, or a clue, and this is all bluster, intimidation and political tactics.
(And if you want a good laugh, see AJ Strata (linked to by Poweline’s Hindrocket in the update) who suggests that the reason this information was leaked was because the “leakers” were being paid by the Democrats, “The leakers are paid for their efforts by the party most likely to gain from the leak. Don’t let these people tell the lie this is about truth and the American way! It is about money.”)
This is not what the foundering fathers had in mind when they authored the 1st amendment.
ReplyDeleteOy. I really didn't intend that pun, as distressingly apropos as it is.
Anon l:05 post:
ReplyDeleteCombining those activities into a single indictment immensely complicates the issue, because it lumps in what can rightly be considered espionage--passing classified information to officials of a foreign power--with exposure of that information to journalists.
I was waiting for someone to point that out. In my view, that's the central point of the whole issue.
It is also why I suspect that there may be some real "shennanigans" behind the government's actions with regard to this matter. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if the whole thing is manufactured, with the aid of AIPEC.
It's an attempt to give government broader powers to restrict journalists by inextricably, yet trickily, combining two entirely different issues. It's like an "earmark" stuck in at the end of some congressional authorization concerned with something else.
To put it another way, it's like a prosecutor saying to the public "We have just arrested 1000 people, 999 of whom were irrefutably (actual video tapes) engaged in the sadistic torture and killing of children, and one of whom views pornography on his computer. We will be trying these people en masse to convict them and send them to prison."
This might be a very easy "prosecution" to sneak through, especially in terms of public sentiment.
It's the same thing here. I think it's more than likely, for many reasons, that Larry Franklin was working complictly with the government to construct a scenario which would enable DictatorCo to further advance its totalitarian agenda and cripple investigative reporting.
Anyone who doubts our government can, and does, do things like that should stop and think twice.
Finally, may I make one small criticism of our hugely beloved and highly esteemed host, something I am loathe to do but feel it will better this site.
Glenn, I said it before and will say it again: you have to be more willing to acknowledge when you are wrong, apologize, and move on.
As my mother always told me "It takes a big person to apologize", and as you are a mental giant and highly moral person, that should be easier for you than it seems to be.
Truth machine's observation was 100% on the mark. The minute he made his first post about that, I saw he was right beyond debate.
And that's the point: BEYOND DEBATE.
I think the proper thing to have responded would have been "Thank you for pointing that out. You're right. Let me rephrase my comment to reflect what my intent was but to avoid the logical error you pointed out."
Not responding in that way to truth machine leaves sort of a bitter taste, as he wasn't given his proper due, and justice is the name of the game.
Otherwise Glenn, you are POIFECT!
I still shudder when I think of that study that found 1/3 of highschool students believed the press should have to get gov't permission before reading a story. I wonder to what extent this is the result of the administration enculturing subservient nationalism.
ReplyDeleteThe Bush administration does indeed represent a radical departure from core American values.
What's disturbing to me is how often I look at writings of the Founders who were speaking against King George and find the writings to seem as if they were written in regards to President George.
Like, here , for instance, where John Adams advises a paper not to be scared into silence by King George.
Powerline and the right-wingers sure don’t seem to have a good answer to that one. Are we supposed to be that Rove & Company are being lenient, just because they’re nice guys? Clearly, they don’t have a case, or a clue, and this is all bluster, intimidation and political tactics.
ReplyDeleteThe wingnut bloggers are still congratulating themselves over the Rather/Killian memos, the closest they've ever come to a valid argument (which isn't very close, since Molly Ivins presented a valid case against Bush 4 years before CBS completely botched it).
peachkfc wrote:
ReplyDeleteSo, I think the real reason they didn't at least attempt to stop the publication is twofold: Most important, they knew they would lose. Once they lost that round, all of their arguments in defense of the NSA program would have been weakened. Second, once they tried to get a prior restraint injunction and lost, any threats to prosecute the Times under the Espionage Act would be weakened as well.
I'm not so sure about that. I couldn't understand why the Bush administration didn't try to stop the NY Times from publishing the story. Then I learned about the Pentagon Papers and ran across this:
That precedent comes from the Nixon administration, which contemplated indicting the three newspapers that published excerpts from The Pentagon Papers in the waning years of the Vietnam War – namely the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post – along with some of the individuals involved. Indeed, when the Supreme Court in 1971 turned down the Nixon DOJ’s request for an injunction against publication, there were three justices (Burger, Harlan, and Blackmun) who thought the court should have prevented publication altogether, and three (White, Stewart, and, again, Blackmun) who went out of their way to suggest that the DOJ consider indicting the newspapers after publication. The Nixon administration’s failure to prevent publication, warned justices White, Stewart, and (agreeing in his separate opinion) Blackmun, "does not measure its constitutional entitlement to a conviction for criminal publication." In other words, although the First Amendment might prevent a prior restraint on publication, this did not mean that publishing was legal or that the publishers could escape criminal prosecution.
The White-Stewart opinion, approved by Blackmun, proceeded to list numerous statutes arguably rendering such publication criminal, including the Espionage Act and a plethora of laws prohibiting communication of documents relating to the national defense, as well as the "willful publication" of any classified information concerning "communication intelligence activities" of the United States. Two justices (Burger and Harlan) did not specifically address the question of post-publication criminal prosecution of the newspapers, but their endorsement of the idea can be inferred from the fact that they approved of an injunction against publication in the first place.
So let’s not kid ourselves: five of the nine justices would have approved of criminal prosecution of the newspapers in the Pentagon Papers case, even though a majority would not authorize a pre-publication injunction. Therefore, this often-touted victory for freedom of the press was in fact quite limited and foreshadowed a battle of monumental proportions.
NIXON UNBOUND
In his authoritative 1972 book, The Papers and the Papers, Sanford J. Ungar concluded that the main reason Nixon and Attorney General John N. Mitchell did not prosecute media targets was because by that time the Watergate scandal had broken. (Disclosure: I represented Ungar during the Pentagon Papers episode.) Nixon was on his way to impeachment or resignation while Mitchell was on his way to indictment and federal prison. Later, Whitney North Seymour, the moderate Republican US attorney for New York at the time of the Pentagon Papers imbroglio, wrote in his autobiography that the DOJ sent emissaries to enlist the cooperation of Seymour’s office in securing an indictment of the newspapers and of individual employees, but that Seymour responded "Not in this District." Soon thereafter, Watergate came to the rescue.
But it is not far-fetched to assume that the current administration – just as obsessed with secrecy as Nixon’s and equally determined to cover up its derelictions and crimes, and with few if any voices of moderation the likes of Seymour’s – will pick up the cudgel the Nixon team abandoned. (From Could Publication of the Domestic-Spying Story Lead to Indictment of the New York Times? by Harvey Silverglate)
The wingnut bloggers are still congratulating themselves over the Rather/Killian memos, the closest they've ever come to a valid argument (which isn't very close, since Molly Ivins presented a valid case against Bush 4 years before CBS completely botched it).
ReplyDeleteI've never understood that either. I remember watching a PBS documentary on Bush and Kerry before the election which pretty clearly showed that Bush's National Guard record was splotchy at best, yet there was no uproar over that.
Could Publication of the Domestic-Spying Story Lead to Indictment of the New York Times?
ReplyDeleteBut the leaking of classified info to prepetrate the WMD lie and out Plame is "business as usual."
Times is just playings its role to "catapult the propaganda" and distract the public. We will see where this leads, but I wouldn't proclaim NYT has the "high road" here.
Frogger, thanks for the Secrecy News link. It touches upon something I have been thinking about a lot lately.
ReplyDeleteIt's a side issue now, and I hope the time never comes when it turns into an issue of primary focus, but if that time does come, I think this blog is going to have to take a close, hard look at everything to do with Ms. Condeleeza Rice.
But this isn't the time to be concerned with that very disturbing topic.
At least FAUX NEWS, most reasonable people know they are getting kool-aide.
ReplyDeleteNYT is much more devious -- they willing play the role of the "liberal media" which allows discussions about events to become demonized a "partisan."
But the overall content of the paper "catapults the propaganda" while allowing some to project their own attitudes, values, and beliefs into what they read.
Very clever propaganda. Undeniably the NYT has been the administration's "house organ" and I am not ready to proclaim that the editors have given that role up.
Maybe this is serious, maybe its another distraction, maybe this is the "cover" to allow the NYT to regain some "credibility" for the next set of lies that they will thrust into the "echo chamber."
I have given up trying to "predict" or undertand many of these events, its the outcomes and the way these meme FUNCTION that count anyhow.
Eyes wide open: Now I feel an urge to defend Glenn. :-) I think he's said "you're right" to commenters more often than 99% of the other bloggers out there. And I'm frankly impressed that he was cool enough to respond to me at all given some of the things I called him previously. It motivates me to be nicer. :-)
ReplyDeleteThat said, I don't see that anyone here has argued for indifference to limitations on press freedom, and I find that "point", made both by Glenn and glasnost, to be downright strange.
Any thoughts? I'd love for somebody to show me just how wrong I am, I'd sleep a lot better at nights.
ReplyDeleteKris C.
Much as I would like to see you sleep better, I can't aid you in that endeavor, because I think you are right, at least to the extent that there is probably a whole lot more about this whole matter than presently meets the eye.
Anon l:05 post: [...]I was waiting for someone to point that out. In my view, that's the central point of the whole issue.
ReplyDeleteYes, that was a great post, informative and cogent -- thanks, anon.
I think everything we need to know is summed up by NYT coverage of Al Gore in 2000
ReplyDeleteIt was all lies and chimpy was presented as a "straight-talking" man of integrity.... A man that went by his "gut" -- as if rational thought and debate played no role in policy making and governance.
It was a lie then and it is a lie now -- NYT showed us their hand in 1999 before the election, many just were not willing to read the cards.
They slandered a good man and elevated a smirking chimp to the most powerful office in the world. Of course, they knew that the chimperor would not be in charge -- he is just a tool for the military industrial complex. The MSM and chimpy march to the same drummer.
They knew it then, they know it now, are we ready to talk "brass tacks" instead of distractions?
Important article about much of this thread by John Cory, a Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with V device, 1969 - 1970.
ReplyDeleteTwilight's Last Gleaming
Who are these people? These people who line their pockets with the lives of our loved ones? These gray men who lurk in shadows and kill the sunshine of democracy? These people who wear morality like a cheap suit pilfered from the collection plate of decency? Who are these people who have turned America into their own personal ATM machine? These are the people of the lie - Republicans.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030506Z.shtml
truth machine, I defer to nobody in my admiration for Glenn :) Truly.
ReplyDeleteBut on that one point you were 100% right, and when he answered you, he went past acknowledging the validity of your comment.
That's all :)
Glenn:
ReplyDeleteWe somehow managed to get through the 20th Century, win two world wars, and vanquish the Soviet empire without imprisoning journalists who inform Americans of the actions of their government which the government wants to keep secret.
You have it backwards.
Part of the reason we decisively won two World Wars as that the press before Vietnam did not routinely disclose top secret government programs to the enemy.
I challenge you to find violations of the Espionage Act by the press analogous to blowing the NSA program to al Qaeda during the first two World Wars.
One of the reasons it took so long to defeat the Soviet Union was because of the lack of operational security by the press starting during Vietnam.
The Constitution and the Espionage Act have not changed - the press standards have.
So many of the principles to which our country has, by consensus, adhered for decades, through Republican and Democratic Administrations, are being attacked and destroyed by this Administration.
The government should have stopped this long ago when it started during Vietnam.
I expect that the press' only real legal defense to their violations of the Espionage Act will be the precedent of non-enforcement.
Many people criticize the American media, and rightfully so. But the media still plays an irreplaceably crucial role in our country -- to serve as a watchdog over the government and to discover and expose government wrongdoing, including -- especially -- wrongdoing which the government is attempting to keep concealed. The only reason we have an NSA scandal, or know about so many of the other abuses of this Administration, is because someone in the press discovered and then reported it.
Actually, the NYT did not seem to be overly concerned with any criminal wrongdoing by the Administration in the NSA case. Indeed, in his book, Risen basically acknowledges the bases for the President's authority to conduct this program.
If you are generous, you can argue that Risen and the NYT had a policy difference with the President and they blew this top secret intelligence gathering program to the enemy to create a public debate.
If you are less generous, you can merely note that the authors are long standing and open political opponents of the majority party and particularly this administration and this illegal disclosure was meant only to cause the WH political damage.
Under either rationale, Risen and the NYT are not whistle blowers entitled to defense from the Espionage Act because they did not reveal any illegal acts by the Administration.
The New York Times this morning has a fairly thorough account of the issues raised by the AIPAC case:
Some legal experts say the prosecution threatens political and press freedom, making a felony of the commerce in information and ideas that is Washington's lifeblood. Federal prosecutors are using the Espionage Act for the first time against Americans who are not government officials, do not have a security clearance and, by all indications, are not a part of a foreign spy operation. . . .
Exactly what is the effective difference between a government official like Aldrich Ames and a NYT reporter like James Risen who both disclose top secret intelligence gathering information to the enemy?
Exactly what is the difference in the end result between a spy under the employment of the enemy who provides the enemy with top secret intelligence gathering information to the enemy and James Risen/NYT who provided the enemy with the same information for personal profit through the sale of books and newspapers?
But the case has set off alarms among the policy groups, lobbyists and journalists who swap information, often about national security issues, with executive-branch officials and Congressional staff members. They were not reassured by a remark from the federal judge hearing the case, at Mr. Franklin's sentencing in January, that the laws on classified information were not limited to government officials.
"Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into unauthorized possession of classified information, must abide by the law," the judge, T. S. Ellis III, said. "That applies to academics, lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever."
Actually, Risen and the NYT should be very very scared because they very likely do not have a legal defense to criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act.
As I posted here before and as the judge pointed out, the Press enjoys the same First Amendment protections as do you and I - nothing more. There is no First Amendment protection to betray your countries secrets to its enemies.
I would not want to stake my freedom over the next 20 years on the argument that the Clinton and Bush Administrations have been acting illegally and I was just a patriotic whistle blower.
Glenn, with all due respect, if you were advising the NYT before publication that they would be legally protected from criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act based an an argument that the Young case and the Necessary and Proper Clause provided the basis for FISA to bar the NSA Program, you would be liable for malpractice.
A January legal brief by lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman — written in part by Viet D. Dinh, a conservative former assistant attorney general in the Bush Justice Department — argued that the charges were a dangerous effort to criminalize conduct protected by the First Amendment. That argument gets fervent support from people who may not share the Aipac officials' conservative views on foreign policy. . . .
The NYT may be getting a very rude reminder that law generally has nothing to do with the political persuasion of the people writing the briefs. I have written briefs arguing persuasively for convicted defendants whom I knew were guilty as sin under the law.
"Leaving aside the idea that this might chill exchanges with the press, this is a guaranteed formula for selective prosecution," Mr. Raven-Hansen said. In other words, he said, so many people have conversations involving borderline-classified information that the government will not be able to prosecute them all and will have to pick and choose, raising a fundamental fairness question.
Selective prosecution is almost always a losing defense. All prosecution by definition is selective. As a criminal prosecutor, I decided every day which cases to drop, which to plea and which to bring to trial.
This article from this morning’s Washington Post reports on related efforts by the Bush Administration to investigate and intimidate journalists:
"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."
Hmmm...
On the other hand, the NYT does sound scared.
Good. Criminals should be scared. That is what deterrence is all about.
ej said...
ReplyDeletepeachkfc wrote:
So, I think the real reason they didn't at least attempt to stop the publication is twofold: Most important, they knew they would lose. Once they lost that round, all of their arguments in defense of the NSA program would have been weakened. Second, once they tried to get a prior restraint injunction and lost, any threats to prosecute the Times under the Espionage Act would be weakened as well.
I'm not so sure about that. I couldn't understand why the Bush administration didn't try to stop the NY Times from publishing the story. Then I learned about the Pentagon Papers and ran across this:
ej then quoted an article discussing the Pentagon papers case and how that case might affect the ability of the Bush administration to criminally prosecute the NY Times. The conclusion of the authors of the article was that the case would not prevent prosecution.
Thank you for the link to the article, ej, I will read it carefully and also will take alook at the Pentagon papers case itself; I don't think I've actually read the case since I was in law school. You and the article make some very valid points. As I said in my post, I'm not an expert in First Amendment law and before I get too involved in detailed arguments on this isssue, I should bone up a little bit.
In any event, I did not mean to suggest that losing an attempt to get an injunction preventing the Times from publishing the NSA story would have prevented the Administration from prosecuting under the Espionage Act or some other applicable law. However, regardless of whether the majority of the Burger court thought that the Times could have been prosecuted, that does not establish that the prosecution would have been successful. First, there are the legal issues involved in whether the Espionage Act (or the other laws possibly applicable) really would apply in this situation. Second, I also was thinking as a trial lawyer, putting together what I do remember about the law with how a such a case might need to be presented to a judge and jury, and concluding, or more accurately, speculating, in my own head that losing the injunction fight might have some detrimental effect on the case. Finally, there are the potential political ramifications of attempting such a prosecution which have been raised by some of the commenters here and in other arenas, some of which could prevent or impede prosecution. As the article you quoted points out, political considerations were at least part of the reason why no charges were ever brought against the Times for the Pentagon papers story.
Anyway, it's an interesting, complex question and I have to admit that as a lawyer, this kind of stuff is fascinating to me from an intellectual perspective. (It's hard sometimes for my non-lawyer friends and others to understand that, yes, this is actually fun for me.) But I don't want to lose sight of the big picture here, which is doing everything we can to figure out just what the hell is going on with these people so we can stop them. That's the main thing I was trying to accomplish with my post: try to raise some additional issues to consider in trying to get a handle on this mess.
I find it comical that
ReplyDeletefor weeks now I have read
"no one is above the law" on
this blog yet clearly the
NY Times violate the Espionage
Act yet now Glenn is defending their right to do so.
This is almost too funny for words.
Thanks, peachkfc - and I apologize - somehow I cut off the end of my post. Your question: "Did the Administration deliberately set up the New York Times to be the victim of its latest power grab, a power grab over our free press?" As an educator who is trying to understand, that crossed my mind when I asked myself the question, "Why didn't Bush try to prevent the NY Times from publishing?" Letting the NY Times publish seems to be the best way of picking up where Nixon left off.
ReplyDeletequestionmark said...
ReplyDelete'blowing the NSA program to Al Qaeda' - pffft. This has been decisively shown to be a ludicrous red herring that can only be defended by suggesting that Al Qaeda might have forgotten they were being surveilled until the publication of the piece on the NSA program. I pity the poor fool who has to base their argument on this dreck that was debunked months ago at this point.
You are wrong legally and practically...
1) The government does not have to prove damage to the national security to gain a conviction under the Espionage Act (or for treason for that matter).
2) Even if there were such a requirement, that would be easy to prove. The NYT and WP have disclosed that this program has been used to bust multiple terrorist plots in the US and the program identifies at least ten targets in the United States each year against whom Justice seeks subsequent FISA warrants.
I challenge you to find violations of the Espionage Act by the press analogous to blowing the NSA program to al Qaeda during the first two World Wars.
ReplyDeleteBart - What did Al Qaeda learn from James Risen's article that they didn't already know?
That said, I don't see that anyone here has argued for indifference to limitations on press freedom, and I find that "point", made both by Glenn and glasnost, to be downright strange.
TM - This is what I don't get. I wrote a post expressing alarm over the fact that the Administration is seeking to criminalize investigative reporting. In response, a lot of people made comments saying, in essence, that the press is horrible, broken, corrupt, and has even aided the Administration.
That seems like the original fallacy of which you accused me. If the purpose of those comments isn't to say that it's not that big of a deal if we lose press freedoms (because the press is so horrible), what is the point of those comments?
Michaelgalien said...
ReplyDeleteBut that is strictly speculation right? That they're prosecuting the NY Times for this I mean.
Yes.
If I had to wager, I think Justice will duck the fight and nail the leakers alone.
That is incredibly unjust. The leakers will be spending decades in prison for the same thing that Risen and the NYT will get away with...
The other question is: is the White House threatening to press charges against the NY Times as well, or is that speculation?
ReplyDeleteIt’s beyond speculation. The Washington Post:
“The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.”
This is about creating a climate of fear for journalists, so that they are intimidated enough from publishing leaks detrimental to the White House, but will still publish leaks beneficial to the administration.
It’s about power. It’s once again about destroying any checks and balances against an all-powerful executive branch. They’ve done it against the courts, Congress, and now it’s the media.
It’s about power and secrecy – secrecy being the means to keep their power:
Here’s David Gergen today (h/t Crooks and Liars):
GERGEN: I am glad you brought that up. This administration has engaged in secrecy at a level we have not seen in over 30 years. Unfortunately, I have to bring up the name of Richard Nixon, because we haven't seen it since the days of Nixon. And now what they're doing -- and they're using the war on terror to justify -- is they're starting to target journalists who try to pierce the veil of secrecy and find things and put them in the newspapers.
Now, in the past what the government has always done is go after the people who leak, the inside people. That's the way they try to stop leaks. This is the first administration that I can remember, including Nixon's, that said -- and Porter Goss said this to Congress -- that we need to think about a law that would put journalists who print national security things to...bring them up in front of grand juries and put them in jail if they don't -- in effect, if they don't reveal their sources.
Michaelgalien said...
ReplyDeleteBut that is strictly speculation right? That they're prosecuting the NY Times for this I mean.
At this point yes, that is correct, no charges have been brought against the Times or anybody esle involved in the NSA leak. However, a number of very powerful Congressmen and members of this Administration have expressed a very strong desire to see the Times, in particular, prosecuteed for publishing the NSA story. So, many of us feel that the speculation has a very strong liklihood of becoming reality, which is why we are so concerned and are spending so much time on the issue.
Zack has a good point about this, too.
Glenn Greenwald said...
ReplyDeleteBart: I challenge you to find violations of the Espionage Act by the press analogous to blowing the NSA program to al Qaeda during the first two World Wars.
Bart - What did Al Qaeda learn from James Risen's article that they didn't already know?
Before we begin, I will take your non-answer to my actual question as a concession that the Press was not violating the Espionage Act during the World Wars like Risen and the NYT have here.
As to the question with which you replied to my question...
al Qaeda learned the basic means and methods of the NSA program.
al Qaeda obviously did not know they were being monitored by this program if at least ten targets are being identified in the United States each year with enough confirming evidence that Justice is going to the FISA court for warrants for criminal investigation searches.
We have no idea how many more targets are being identified overseas.
You simply cannot claim with a straight face that al Qaeda knew that they were being monitored if they keep operating in the open and keep getting identified under this program.
ej said...
ReplyDeleteThanks, peachkfc - and I apologize - somehow I cut off the end of my post. Your question: "Did the Administration deliberately set up the New York Times to be the victim of its latest power grab, a power grab over our free press?" As an educator who is trying to understand, that crossed my mind when I asked myself the question, "Why didn't Bush try to prevent the NY Times from publishing?" Letting the NY Times publish seems to be the best way of picking up where Nixon left off.
Exactly. It's deja vu all over again.
al Qaeda learned the basic means and methods of the NSA program.
ReplyDeleteThis is vague to the point of meaninglessness.
What specifically did Al Qaeda learn from Risen's article? Show me in Risen's article exactly where he disclosed information about surveillance that Al Qaeda did not already have.
You want Risen to be in federal prison for the next 20 years because he endangered the national security of the United States, so I'm sure that you'll have no difficulty pointing to the part(s) in his article where he gave specific information to Al Qeada that they didn't already have.
Something else I ran across that could make me dangerous...
ReplyDeleteDoes the administration even need to prosecute the NY Times under the Espionage Act? Couldn't they prosecute under some other laws if there were no national security damage cause by the story?
Attorney General John Ashcroft is making good on his word to aggressively prosecute leaks - or at least some leaks. Again, the target has been a low-level employee, a Morison for the new millenium. He is Jonathan Randal, an intelligence research specialist with a Ph.D. who had worked at the Atlanta office of the DEA.
Randal's alleged crime? Leaking negative information about one of the richest men in the U.K., Lord Michael Ashcroft (no relation).
[...]
In February 2002, Duffey's office confronted Randal with a twenty-count indictment. The impact of the indictment was to criminalize Randal's leak. But to do so, prosecutors didn't bother to draw from an official secrets act - since they didn't have one. Instead, they twisted the existing law to issue an indictment to the same effect.
Count One is based on the general theft statute - with information, once again, alleged to be the "thing of value" stolen. Count Two relies on a statue adopted in 1994 designed to protect information in government computers, where most government information now resides. The government charged that Randal "knowingly and with an intent to defraud" the government, exceeded his authorized use of the DEA computer by pulling information about Lord Ashcroft.
Counts Three through Eighteen are based on the mail/wire fraud statutes; there are sixteen counts because Randal allegedly accessed DEA computers to obtain information about Lord Ashcroft sixteen times.
From Bush's Unofficial Official Secrets Act:
How the Justice Department Has Pushed to Criminalize The Disclosure of Non-Security Related Government Information
By JOHN W. DEAN
Good. Criminals should be scared. That is what deterrence is all about.
ReplyDeleteDoes this also apply to 50 USC 36?
This Nixon comparison is ludicrous.
ReplyDeleteTo start, Gergen is completely wrong that the last time we saw this kind of dedication to operational security was during the Nixon Administration. The Reagan CIA under Casey was almost hermetically sealed. Casey made it well known through the ranks that leaks would be dealt with ruthlessly.
Next, the Nixon surveillance needs to be divided into two groups. He won all the cases which involved conducting intelligence gathering on foreign groups and their agents in the US. These federal courts of appeal decisions and the denial of cert by the Supremes provide the basis for the Bush NSA program today.
What being referred to here is Nixon's abuse of the FBI and CIA to spy on domestic political groups similar to the way Bobby Kennedy wiretapped MLK and the Clintons were busy rifling through the FBI files of political enemies.
As soon as you find even a scintilla of evidence that Mr. Bush is following in Kennedy, Nixon and Clinton's footsteps, you let me know...
Until then, all such claims are simply slanders.
TM - This is what I don't get. I wrote a post expressing alarm over the fact that the Administration is seeking to criminalize investigative reporting. In response, a lot of people made comments saying, in essence, that the press is horrible, broken, corrupt, and has even aided the Administration.
ReplyDeleteThat seems like the original fallacy of which you accused me. If the purpose of those comments isn't to say that it's not that big of a deal if we lose press freedoms (because the press is so horrible), what is the point of those comments?
Isn't it true, at least in part, that the press is horrible, broken, corrupt, and has even aided the administration? The post which you responded to the last paragraph of, said that we lost our freedoms when the SCOTUS selected the chimp; isn't that true, in part? Where in any of those comments is there an assertion that it's not a big deal if press freedoms are further curtailed and journalists are put in jail? They all seem to be stressing the fact that loss pf press freedom is a big deal. The second post here, by julian, explicitly said: We NEED the press. Too bad they've surrendered their freedom of their own free will. How could it be clearer that the claim isn't that it's no big deal? As for why people make these comments, I can think of numerous reasons that have nothing to do with thinking that further limitations of freedom of the press is no big deal: frustration, despair, venting, hyperbole, free association ...
If you frequently find yourself unable to understand why people say or believe the things they do, you might consider Asperger's syndrome.
Did Al Quaeda even know the secret program existed? Did they know the program is what caught Mr. Faris?
ReplyDeleteThe Espionage Act has multiple sections that the N.Y. Times could be charged under.
I just want to know why the sudden shift in attitude from "we are a nation of laws" to "we are a nation of laws except for the press". I think we all know the bias shown here, I just find it extremely hypocritical.
Bart declares:Glenn, with all due respect, if you were advising the NYT before publication that they would be legally protected from criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act based an an argument that the Young case and the Necessary and Proper Clause provided the basis for FISA to bar the NSA Program, you would be liable for malpractice.
ReplyDeleteDo you suffer from the delusion that the NYT lacks for lawyers -- some of the most seasoned and competent ones on the planet? Yet the NYT published anyway.
The Bush Administration is bringing us into constitutional crises on so many fronts, it makes my head spin. Attacks on the rule of law and authority of Congress; attacks on federalism and the state judiciaries with that inane Terri's Law II; attacks on the free press; attacks on the rights of states to legislate as they see fit regarding assisted suicide; a huge explosion in the number of federal, sealed criminal prosecutions (mostly drug-related) kept from public view....the list of the Adminstration's vicious sundering of basic American values and our political order is simply breathtaking.
I cannot fathom how a true patriot would not be alarmed and horrified by it all. If that means I must forge alliances with left-wingers, and elect some Democrats, so be it -- we have to take the country back from Bushism. Sincerely, Bart, I despair that bright people like you do not see the imperative here.
Glenn Greenwald said...
ReplyDeleteBart: al Qaeda learned the basic means and methods of the NSA program.
This is vague to the point of meaninglessness.
What specifically did Al Qaeda learn from Risen's article? Show me in Risen's article exactly where he disclosed information about surveillance that Al Qaeda did not already have.
I see that you only address one of my two points. I take it that you are conceding that Risen informed the enemy that we were in fact successfully intercepting his open telephone calls successfully.
That alone is damaging enough.
However, without learning the means and methods of this interception, al Qaeda may simply assume that its phones are physically bugged. They may continue to use the telephones and internet, but take the precautions of sweeping for bugs and switching cell phones.
Such precautions would be useless against an NSA program listening in on communications trunks.
Unfortunately, Risen described how international calls were funneled through US controlled hubs and that the telecom companies had allowed NSA to tap these lines.
Now, the enemy could have assumed that its would be unlikely that his particular communications could be actually intercepted at the hubs because that would take literally millions of people listening 24/7.
Unfortunately, Risen also revealed to the enemy that we have super computers which can replace those millions of people and those computers are mining for certain phrases and landmarks before they will actually stop to record actual transmissions.
Once again, al Qaeda did not have known this before or they would not be intercepted.
You simply cannot claim with a straight face that al Qaeda knew that they were being monitored if they keep operating in the open and keep getting identified under this program.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to tell whether this "argument" is a matter of vast stupidity or vast intellectual dishonesty or some combination of the two. But I can tell you with a straight face that drivers know that the police watch for speeders with radar guns even though speeders keep getting caught.
DXM said...
ReplyDeleteGood. Criminals should be scared. That is what deterrence is all about.
Does this also apply to 50 USC 36?
To the extent that FISA is not unconstitutional, yes.
You notice that the WH is so worried about criminal liability that they are actually campaigning on this issue.
Re Bart's comments, Al Qaeda would have to be completely incompetent to assume that they WEREN'T under constant threat of surveillance of every kind imaginable. Any organization like this would already have complex compensatory strategies in place.
ReplyDeleteSurveillance of suspected terrorists isn't some radical new innovation that the NYT stumbled onto. If Risen's article didn't get into specific, detailed means then really, I don't see that you have any sort of argument.
And by the way, what's bart's take on the Plame outing, hmm?
- mercury
Michaelgalien said...
ReplyDeleteBart: You simply cannot claim with a straight face that al Qaeda knew that they were being monitored if they keep operating in the open and keep getting identified under this program.
Well, I cán say that with a straight face. You said at least '10' attempts of terrorist attacks were being halted. Okay that's very good. In the last year no terrorist attack happened on US soil, so this múst mean there were only 10 tries or at least not many more right?
Not at all.
The WP reported that Justice is getting FISA warrants for 10 new al Qaeda agents identified each year by the NSA program.
They didn't say anything about ten new plots.
The key here is to bust the agents before the plots if at all possible.
24 may be a lot of fun to watch, but in real life Jack Bauer rarely gets the bad guys with only 24 hours notice. Rather, the bomber will blow up LA...
Once again, al Qaeda did not have known this before or they would not be intercepted.
ReplyDeleteSupercomputers ... who would have thought?
Funny, but I knew all of that, as did anyone who was even vaguely familiar with the technology. For instance, you can subscribe to or search http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/ , a discussion group that includes prominent members of the telecom industry
(IP is a pun referring to "interesting people", "internet protocol", and "intellectual property") where such matters are discussed openly. The only thing that wasn't (but now is) discussed openly was the fact that eavesdropping was done without warrants.
truth machine said...
ReplyDeleteBart: Once again, al Qaeda did not have known this before or they would not be intercepted.
Supercomputers ... who would have thought? Funny, but I knew all of that, as did anyone who was even vaguely familiar with the technology.
What you claim to have known is irrelevant.
It is what the enemy knows and the undisputed fact is that the enemy would not have continued to allow themselves to be intercepted if they had known about this program.
If a bank executive gives a criminal confidential bank information which he knows will allow the criminal to break into the bank, he is probably guilty of being an accessory to that crime. It is irrelevant of this knowledge could have been discovered by the criminal by other means.
Here's a nice post from 2003:
ReplyDeletehttp://lists.elistx.com/archives/interesting-people/200304/msg00258.html
Internet Service Providers have had to respond to legitimate requests from law enforcement agencies to intercept communications for years, regardless of how distasteful they may believe that it is.... Think twice before buying a network-based VPN or security service from your ISP, rather than one that's implemented and operated yourself. That is, a site-to-site VPN service where the crypto (and the keys) are your responsibility, and not outsourced to someone who will fork them over without your knowledge. Security, like transport protocols, ought to be end-to-end. Think about it: why on earth would you trust a phone company with the security of your data? ... "Protecting" your data on the backbone doesn't really defend you against some types of attacks, such as tapping the T-1 access link in the basement of your building, which is trivial to do. If you're worried about industrial espionage, worry about this kind of attack. "But, it's just as secure as a frame relay VPN!" the carrier might tell you. But we can do better today with end-to-end assurances on the privacy and integrity of your data using things like IPSEC, without handing over the keys to a third party.
But hey, according to Bart, Al Qaeda had no way of knowing that the only real security is through end-to-end encryption until they read the NYT.
questionmark said...
ReplyDeleteBart - there isn't an election going on right now, so it's pretty dumb to say the White House is 'campaigning' on the issue.
Perhaps you missed it. In about 6 months, we elect a new Congress.
They're trying to sway public opinion, like they did for their Social Security program.
Why would they need to do that? The program has over 70% support according to the last Pew Survey Glenn cited.
Perhaps you missed the Rove plan to use the Dems attacks on national security and the war against them in the upcoming election. Mr. Bush is not only declining to run from the NSA Program. He is using the Dem's claims that the program is illegal to beat the snot out of them at nearly every speech.
That's not a sign of strength, but of weakness. Everything you say here seems to be deliberately constructed to be foolish and wrong. Are you onboard with Bush's long-term program to destroy the GOP for good?
:::heh:::
I have posted here continuously begging you Dems to run on this issue. If you do, the GOP wins 20 seats easy.
Anyone who claims he can't see the difference between leaks of classified informataion, with the purpose of exposing and hence stopping government lawbreaking, and leaks intended to cover up government lawbreaking in order to allow it to continue, is either a useful idiot or a quisling stooge.
ReplyDeleteCare to disclose which it is in your case, Bart?
What you claim to have known is irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteWhat I knew was knowable by Al Qaeda in the same way I knew it -- thus it is quite relevant.
It is what the enemy knows and the undisputed fact is that the enemy would not have continued to allow themselves to be intercepted if they had known about this program.
I disputed it, making you indisputably wrong. As I noted, drivers continue to speed despite knowing that some speeders get caught, and knowing all about the technology by which they are caught. The same applies to smokers. Your "undisputed fact" is BS, based on inane mislogic. You're just a smoke-blowing Bush-felching troll.
Michaelgalien said...
ReplyDeleteGood point, but is it not true, the government could even ask the FISA court to get the warrant 48 after they listened into the conversations?
Actually, it is 72 hours for a retroactive warrant.
As a side note, retroactive warrants are barred by the 4th Amendment. Therefore, FISA is not meant to enforce the 4th Amendment.
I am assuming that they are only listening into those coversations because they already suspect those people from being agents. Or because a known or suspected Al Qa'ida member in a foreign country contacts them. At the moment that happens, probable cause probably exists already so the government will get the warrant to make the previous eavesdropping 'legal' and to keep on eavesdropping on those persons.
NO.
Once again, the mere possession of a telephone number by a bad guy does not provide probable cause that the people talking on that number are bad guys. Therefore, without anything more, you cannot get a FISA warrant to tap a captured telephone number.
The 72 hour retroactive warrant is useless unless you can identify a bad guy on the line and then draft a affidavit in three days. The WP has made a big deal of the fact that it takes months to find only a small number of targets from hundreds of numbers. Therefore, you would need a retroactive warrant of a year or so to fit the NSA Program under the FISA warrant system.
Actually, I should have said "Bush-felched", recognizing that our manly President is a "top" to all the fawning "bottoms" like Bart.
ReplyDeletetruth machine said...
ReplyDeleteAs I noted, drivers continue to speed despite knowing that some speeders get caught, and knowing all about the technology by which they are caught. The same applies to smokers. Your "undisputed fact" is BS, based on inane mislogic. You're just a smoke-blowing Bush-felching troll.
The comparison is silly...
Traffic radar is commonly known. This program or the technology which it uses was not as shown by the several dozen posts I have made on this blog attempting to explain the program to otherwise intelligent and computer savvy Americans.
As corrupted, lazy, confused, coddled, dysfunctional, and manipulated as our national media is -- and they are all of those things, in spades -- we still need them to perform their functions free of limitations and intimidation from the Government.
ReplyDeleteThis is dead on, and what frustrates me to no end.
The best way I can describe my frustration with the media, and the dictatorial methods of the Bush Administration, is this.
I feel like I'm at an orgy, but I have permanent erectile dysfunction.
Once again, the mere possession of a telephone number by a bad guy does not provide probable cause that the people talking on that number are bad guys. Therefore, without anything more, you cannot get a FISA warrant to tap a captured telephone number.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Gonzales' "never mind" letter to the Committee from the other day, the standard for getting a warrant under FISA is exactly the same as the standard used to determine whether they can eavesdrop under the NSA program.
Hilariously, they had to claim this because someone from the DoJ testified in 2002 to the Senate that they had no greater eavesdropping powers at that time than they did before the year before. In fact, they had adopted the NSA program in the interim, which would make that claim a lie.
As a result, Gonzales said in his letter that the claim was true because the FISA "probable cause" standard is EXACTLY THE SAME as the "reasonable basis" standard under the NSA program.
That means, Bart, that you have no idea what you're talking about. If you can't get a FISA warrant based on someone's phone number being in a "bad guy's phone," then by definition, they also can't eavesdrop on that person under the NSA program.
Hey Bart,
ReplyDeleteCould you tell me why our vicious civilization threatening enemies would decline to encrypt their VoIP/email/chat conversations over a generic SSH tunnel?
I'll be awaiting your answer. How you answer will determine how much you understand about our technologically based society.
From FDL. David Gergen.
ReplyDeleteThis administration has engaged in secrecy at a level we have not seen in over 30 years. Unfortunately, I have to bring up the name of Richard Nixon, because we haven't seen it since the days of Nixon. And now what they're doing -- and they're using the war on terror to justify -- is they're starting to target journalists who try to pierce the veil of secrecy and find things and put them in the newspapers.
Now, in the past what the government has always done is go after the people who leak, the inside people. That's the way they try to stop leaks. This is the first administration that I can remember, including Nixon's, that said -- and Porter Goss said this to Congress -- that we need to think about a law that would put journalists who print national security things to...bring them up in front of grand juries and put them in jail if they don't -- in effect, if they don't reveal their sources.
I probably need to provide a microtutorial for all the lawyers here. The following is true: given two pcs running any OS you care to, it is possible to connect them together, over any internet in the world, via any of a number of free software packages, such that:
ReplyDelete1. Any TCP/UDP port can be proxied, transparently, and
2. The transmitted bytestream is opaque, protected by, oh I suppose lets call it munitions grade encryption. By "munitions grade", I simply mean that all the supercomputers on the earth, working together, have only a vanishingly small probability of decrypting the byte stream.
This has the unfortunate implication that the NSA spying program Bart so religiously supports, is almost entirely a program for identifying Teh Stupids from amongst the pool of (actively communicating) terrorists.
Bart, ignorance is no excuse for destroying the Constitution, and our Freedoms, in the pursuit of technoligical solutions that are, sadly, completely irrelevant.
Ellsworth said...
ReplyDeleteAccording to Gonzales' "never mind" letter to the Committee from the other day, the standard for getting a warrant under FISA is exactly the same as the standard used to determine whether they can eavesdrop under the NSA program.
Give me the quote which you claim says this along with a link to the entire letter to give context.
That means, Bart, that you have no idea what you're talking about. If you can't get a FISA warrant based on someone's phone number being in a "bad guy's phone," then by definition, they also can't eavesdrop on that person under the NSA program.
My friend, between the two of us, I am the only one who has actually drafted search warrant affidavits for the police. Feel free to find me any case law which grants warrants under the circumstances which I laid out.
computers are sooo hard said...
ReplyDeleteI probably need to provide a microtutorial for all the lawyers here.
The fact that you feel the need to do so merely reinforces my point that this subject matter is not commonly known, even my some of the most educated in our society, nevertheless by some Jihadi whose education came from reading the Quran in a Madrassa...
Bart, ignorance is no excuse for destroying the Constitution, and our Freedoms, in the pursuit of technoligical solutions that are, sadly, completely irrelevant.
1) If they were irrelevant, we would not be identifying bad guys.
2) Which parts of the Constitution to which you are referring? The 4th Amendment does not require warrants for intelligence gathering on foreign groups and their agents in the US.
3) Which part of your freedoms are being compromised? Are you making overseas calls to al Qaeda phone numbers?
michaelgalien said:
ReplyDelete"As I understand it the FISA court never denied the government a warrant once asked. In other words: 'normally' the government ís able to produce the necessary information required in order to obtain a warrant."
You are completely incorrect. The reason the FISA Court of Review had to be convened was because the FISA Court was using Clinton era rules and refused to accept the newer Patriot Act era rules and were denying warrants. In addition, if you check more current press reports more and more warrants were being denied contrary to the earlier "rubber stamp" press reports.
Oh, I see Bart or Gedyalia or whatever has taken over this thread and it is no longer remotely related to "Bush's attacks on press freedoms” or Glenn’s post.
ReplyDeleteToo bad. I'll check back another day, and hope for a interesting discussion which (as David S. pointed out) was how this thread started….
Oh, well. Trolls happen.
Bart,
ReplyDelete"The fact that you feel the need to do so merely reinforces my point that this subject matter is not commonly known"
I was sooooo hoping you would say this. But I didn't think you could be so stupid. Question for yah Bart: Does your law firm use a VPN between offices? Think about that for a minute.
Yep. You really are that ignorant.
Lets walk you a little bit farther down the path. What fraction of worldwide long distance business is conducted over VPNs? Think about that for a little bit more. What sort of protocols do those corporations, governments, and heck individuals tunnel over those VPNs?
VPN boxes are about $100.
Feeling irrelevant yet?
For everyone else reading, I apologize for the snark, but gawdaffully technologically illiterate people are going to be the doom of our society.
A few simple words for Bart: Anyone transmitting sensitive information unencrypted over any sort of network these days is utterly suicidally (personally or organizationally) stupid. That's all your precious program can intercept. You're done. Go away.
The comparison is silly...
ReplyDeleteOf course, Bart, you have to say that, despite it being manifestly untrue, because it is not part of your job description as a troll to ever yield an inch. The point of analogies of smoking and speeding are quite clear to intelligent and honest people: that some behavior involves a risk is not proof that people won't engage in it unless they don't know of the risk. DUH.
You say that it is undisputably true that Al Qaeda could not have known that such monitoring was possible, otherwise they never would have been identified. That requires more than just saying the comparison is silly, it requires that you offer an iron-clad proof that it doesn't apply. But you don't even have proof that these 10 FISA warrants actually caught Al Qaeda members -- probable cause isn't the same as proof, else we wouldn't need courts at all.
What's truly silly here is your pathetic trolling merely reveals you as a dishonest stooge, and gives us the ego satisfaction of at least being able to wipe the floor with you, even if our struggle with your string-pullers is a lot tougher.
Off to the federal penitentiary they go! Everyone knows that it's improper in the United States for journalists to report on actions by the President which are highly controversial and which violate the law.
ReplyDeleteNah, Glenn, federal potentiary is too good for them. Its off to Gitmo.
It’s about time we started locking up the leakers. These people are traitors, pure and simple. I do think they should stand trial as usual, though conceivably they could be declared enemy combatants in some cases.
The fact that you feel the need to do so merely reinforces my point that this subject matter is not commonly known, even my some of the most educated in our society, nevertheless by some Jihadi whose education came from reading the Quran in a Madrassa...
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to how to fly a plane into the Pentagon, which is commonly known, and is the sort of thing that a Jihadi can learn by reading it in the Quran in a Madrassa.
Know thy enemy, you moronic troll.
zach said:
ReplyDeleteOh, I see Bart or Gedyalia or whatever has taken over this thread and it is no longer remotely related to "Bush's attacks on press freedoms” or Glenn’s post.
Too bad. I'll check back another day, and hope for a interesting discussion which (as David S. pointed out) was how this thread started….
Oh, well. Trolls happen.
No, it is exactly on topic. The topic is an allegation that Bush is somehow stopping freedom of the press. You just don't like it when someone offers cogent arguments back. The allegation is that the administration is trying to criminalize journalism and stop leaks -- moreso than other administrations. Yet, no one wants to discuss exactly what the media can or can not do under the law. You just want to bitch with no facts to back it up.
Which part of your freedoms are being compromised? Are you making overseas calls to al Qaeda phone numbers?
ReplyDeletegoogle niemoller.
"You just want to bitch with no facts to back it up."
ReplyDeleteThis troll smells a lot like gedaliya. Note the psychological undertones, the "Tokyo Rose" techniques that a previous commenter pointed out. Maybe Glenn can take a look at the comment stats and see if the IP address matches. I was completely expecting gedaliya, and then bart, to start deploying sock puppets.
Whew! Exhausting round of whack a troll. Now off to real life.
All rhetoric aside, chimpy (actually the people behind his agenda, this moron can't even speak 3 clear sentences) clearly did not steal 2 elections to promote democracy of freedom at home or abroad.
ReplyDeleteIs anyone really suprises? Who is really the problem? chimpy, cheney and rove or the people that launched them into power?
Great -- the "know it alls" are "debating a 'copy and paste' troll again...
ReplyDeleteway to go -- give the trolls a larger platform than glenn...
more rhetoric completely disconnected from reality is needed on Aisle 5.
ReplyDeleteThe digital sewer that the copy and paste crowd go back to to "refill" their clipboard knows no end.
Feeding the trolls is just a sign of ignorence
...or its actually another from of trolling...
Bart - Atta had an engineering degree which despite your pretensions of superiority indicates that the collective technical knowledge of Al Qaeda exceeds yours dramatically. Perhaps lay off the preening wankage for a second if you want to collect yourself and deliver a point of view worthy of more than raspberries.
ReplyDeleteYes, Bart makes pathologically stupid arguments. So stupid that one might even have reason to suspect that he doesn't believe them. Then again, there must be a reason that he's a Bushie, and having a capacity to believe pathologically stupid arguments would help explain it. Especially pathologically stupid arguments that are based on phenomenally ignorant and chauvinistic arrogance.
When the Shah was in power in Iran, he sent lots of young men to the U.S. to get engineering degrees; they were all over American campuses. They were supposed to go back when they got their degrees, but many stayed (despite the threat of the Savak, the Iranian inelligence service, which operated freely in the U.S.).
I wonder what they're up to these days.
The digital sewer that the copy and paste crowd go back to to "refill" their clipboard knows no end.
ReplyDeleteFeeding the trolls is just a sign of ignorence
...or its actually another from of trolling...
Ah, I see the meta-troll is back -- the one whose every post is a troll attacking people who respond to trolls with real content.
Zack said...
ReplyDeleteOh, I see Bart or Gedyalia or whatever has taken over this thread and it is no longer remotely related to "Bush's attacks on press freedoms” or Glenn’s post.
How so?
Glenn's post addressed recent news reports concerning criminal violations of the Espionage Act by the Press.
Glenn calls this "Bush's attacks on press freedoms.”
I pointed out that there that the Press has no more freedom to inform the enemy about top secret intelligence gathering programs than Aldrich Ames had to inform the KGB.
Then we had a very interesting debate concerning points made by both sides.
I am sorry that you were looking for something else than a debate...
computers are sooo hard said...
ReplyDeleteBart: "The fact that you feel the need to do so merely reinforces my point that this subject matter is not commonly known"
I was sooooo hoping you would say this. But I didn't think you could be so stupid.
Question for yah Bart: Does your law firm use a VPN between offices? Think about that for a minute. Yep. You really are that ignorant.
No because I am a solo law firm and I don't have a network yet
However, I freely admit that I am ignorant about most of what you posted about. Moreover, I am willing to wager than less than 5% of the American population knows and far less than 1% of your average al Qaeda does.
Which is my point.
For everyone else reading, I apologize for the snark, but gawdaffully technologically illiterate people are going to be the doom of our society.
I could say the same thing about technologically savvy people who are ignorant about the law and basic operational security in the face of a military enemy.
A few simple words for Bart: Anyone transmitting sensitive information unencrypted over any sort of network these days is utterly suicidally (personally or organizationally) stupid. That's all your precious program can intercept. You're done. Go away.
And yet they were doing so on a regular basis, which is the beginning and end of this utility argument.
For the militarily illiterate among you, only a fool would discard a valuable weapon because the enemy is foolish enough to leave themselves vulnerable to the weapon.
Only a bigger fool would inform the enemy that he was being stupid so that your weapon would not work any longer.
Give me the quote which you claim says this along with a link to the entire letter to give context.
ReplyDeleteBART - You are 100% wrong, and I will prove it RIGHT NOW.
The quote I referenced is from the letter that Gonazles just issued three days ago. If you haven't read it, you sure aren't keeping up with this issue that you like to pontifficate about.
Here's the link (it's pdf) Gonazles letter to Committee
Here's what Gonzales said:
He was addressing (Page 2) the September 10, 2002 testimony before the Commtitee of Deputy Attorney General David Kris, who said: “we cannot monitor any one today who we could not monitor last year.”
Sen. Feingold asked about this, because it's obviously false - with the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," they could monitor more people than they could under FISA, which is the opposite of what Kris testified.
Gonazles said that Kris' statement was true because:
In any event, his statements are also accurate with repsect to the Terrorist Surveillance Program because the Program involves the interception of communications only where this is probable cause (“reasonable grounds to believe”) that at least one party to the communication is an agent of a foreign power (Al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization”).
Gonzales is claiming that the "probable cause" standard under FISA and "reasonable grounds to believe" standard under the NSA program are EXACTLY THE SAME.
Therefore, Bart, even Gonazles says that FISA and the NSA program have the same exact standard for when they can eavedsrop, and that Kris' statement - that they can eavesdrop the same under FISA as under the NSA program - is therefore true.
That means that your whole defense of the NSA program - that we have to eavesdrop outside of FISA because the whole probable cause standard is too stringent and we need to eavesdrop more broadly - is exactly wrong.
Do you have an iota of hoensty in your body to admit you were wrong? It's VERY clear cut. Let's see it, Bart.
Well?
truth machine said...
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you feel the need to do so merely reinforces my point that this subject matter is not commonly known, even my some of the most educated in our society, nevertheless by some Jihadi whose education came from reading the Quran in a Madrassa...
As opposed to how to fly a plane into the Pentagon, which is commonly known, and is the sort of thing that a Jihadi can learn by reading it in the Quran in a Madrassa.
Know thy enemy, you moronic troll.
OUTSTANDING ANALOGY! Thank you for proving my point...
None of the enemy in the 9/11 cell knew how to fly commercial aircraft any more than they knew how to defeat the NSA surveillance methods.
They only knew they wanted to fly commercial aircraft the same way they want to defeat our surveillance to that they can carry out their attacks.
The enemy came to the United States to have our flight schools train them in how to fly the commercial aircraft. One of the major failures of our pre-9/11 counter terror effort was the failure to monitor such flight schools so we could deny the enemy that knowledge.
In the case of our surveillance of the enemy, there is no evidence whatsoever that the enemy was aware they were being overheard in this way. However, all they have to do to learn this information is read our Press.
If we are now monitoring flight schools to keep them from training the enemy in publicly available, but not commonly known knowledge, exactly why should we allow the press to inform the enemy about our most closely held intelligence gathering secrets???
truth machine said...
ReplyDeleteBart: Which part of your freedoms are being compromised? Are you making overseas calls to al Qaeda phone numbers?
google niemoller.
You are changing the subject from classified military programs to corporate data, but I'll bite...
The subpoenas to which you seem to be alluding are asking for search data which does not identify the user and is commonly sold by internet providers to marketing firms.
Hardly the same thing...
questionmark said...
ReplyDeleteBart - Atta had an engineering degree which despite your pretensions of superiority indicates that the collective technical knowledge of Al Qaeda exceeds yours dramatically.
Atta was the exception which proves the rule.
Atta came up with and developed this idea, which was indeed brilliant. Arguably the most brilliant terror attack in history.
However, he had to explain and sell it to the al Qaeda high command, which did not share his expertise. No one on his team had this expertise. Indeed, most were "muscle" and just barely literate.
Guess what? Despite Atta's great intelligence and training, he had very little knowledge about the most basic operational communications security.
He was communicating in the open on the telephone and by the internet. The Able Danger data mining program based on publicly available business and internet records identified Atta because he was operating "on the grid." If the NSA telephone data mining program was in place, there is a fair chance they could have intercepted some of his open communications.
Glenn and everyone:
ReplyDeleteI think you misunderstand the purpose of this exercise. The basic purpose is to muddy the waters around the disclosure of sensitive information.
Then, "discretion" can be exercised. A few "Hershes" and "Fisks" (as it were) will be let off.
Oh, and then "discretion" will also be applied to the Plame case. After all, I'm sure you'll agree that GOP voters believe Cheney and Libby deserve some discretion...
Okay, as Michaelgalien just stated, its been established beyond any reasonable objection that the program under discussion is both illegal and unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteThe question then becomes what exactly can we do about it. Can we seriously expect Congress under its current leadership to address this issue in any meaningful sense?
Perhaps a direct challenge to the media outlets (letters to the editor and the like) might prove a more fruitful effort, if only to raise public awareness.
Any responses?
Why am I not surprised at this latest assault on the press? It's never the illegal actions that seem to offend the administration, rather the reporting of it. Much like the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Abu Ghraib photos.
ReplyDeleteIn defense of reporters, (As corrupted, lazy, confused, coddled, dysfunctional, and manipulated as our national media is -- and they are all of those things, in spades) their is nothing free about the press. A hotdog reporter digs up serious dirt on some tycoon and his editor say's, "Great story, it will only cost us half a million in legal fees if we run it." Many such stories have been killed or seriously delayed, from car dealers in Oklahoma City to Mike Wallace's tobacco story, from legal intimidation.
This most recent assault will not continue on this path, I fear it will get worse. Neocons are very adept at controlling the dialogue and they easily stain journalists as informing our enemies of national secrets.
emptywheel at "the next hurrah"
ReplyDeleteargues the facts differently than glenn does here.
go read her post. i think it is very well reasoned.
i'd love to hear glenn's response.
there's a lot to be considered in this discussion.
p.s. this topic may have been covered above but 140+ comments is too many to plow thru right now.
Ah, I see the meta-troll is back -- the one whose every post is a troll attacking people who respond to trolls with real content.
ReplyDeleteYou really need to get a new handle...
the one you use now is sooooooooooooooooooooooo misleading...
you are the ultimiate metatroll here, but say what you wish.
I suspect you feel a little guilty about your mindless copy and pastes here too
Ellsworth:
ReplyDeleteThank you for being one of the few here who actually provide cites to support their posts.
Also thanks for the good point. Unlike most of this other name calling and glib responses, you made me work on this response.
The Kris statement you brought up referred to the affect of the Patriot Act amendments of FISA, which was the subject of the In Re Sealed Case decision, not the NSA Program.
However, after Mr. Gonzoles distinguished the Kris testimony, you are correct that the AJ added the following aside:
In any event, his statements are also accurate with respect to the Terrorist Surveillance Program because the Program involves the interception of communications only where this is probable cause (“reasonable grounds to believe”) that at least one party to the communication is an agent of a foreign power (Al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization”).
Gonzales appears to be acting as the Executive's attorney here and covering all bases. In case the FISA court of review is incorrect and FISA does apply to foreign intelligence gathering, Gonzales may be insisting without any precedent of which I am aware that the NSA program actually follows the probable cause standard.
However, you will notice that Gonzales tries to redefine the probable cause standard by equating it with "reasonable grounds." Jeff Rosen over at TNR has noted that "reasonable grounds" sounds very much like the lower standard of "reasonable suspicion" which fall short of the probable cause needed to arrest (or search) someone, but is enough to perform an investigatory stop.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060227&s=rosen022706
I am uncertain what the AG is getting at. This is not explained in his testimony or the Justice white paper on the NSA program.
I am not going to put words in his mouth, but I stand by my position that merely capturing a telephone number from al Qaeda is not probable cause that the user of that number is al Qaeda.
Like most -- will come back when you and the other regular troll finish empying your "clipboards" in your battle of the mindless copy and paste trolls...
ReplyDeleteThe lead article in this month's Commentary asks the question "Has the 'New York Times' violated the Espionage Act?" in connection with the NSA enquriy. Another example of the right's echo chamber in which coordinated repetition from various outlets creates the image that there is, if not public support, then certainly, repectability in the most outrageous of its, and the Bush adminitration's, actions, enlisted, in this case, in attempts to change the subect from the Adminstration's lawlessness in the NSA business.
ReplyDeleteRosen and Weissman were acting as unregistered agents of a foreign power. Noar Gilon was yanked back to Jerusalem as soon as the indictments were announced. the more interesting part of their upcoming trial is this:
ReplyDeleteFormer and current intelligence officials have said the two men may have stumbled into an American intelligence operation involving electronic monitoring of Israeli interests in the United States. The indictment includes what it indicates is a verbatim quotation from an April 1999 conversation Mr. Rosen had with an official of a foreign country, identified as Israel by government officials who have been briefed on the case.
Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman are accused of orally passing on to a journalist and to foreign officials classified information about American policy options in the Middle East, an F.B.I. report on the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda.
the threats to journalists and whistleblowers is real, but so is the influence of spies, and the powerful lobby that employs spies, in the formation of US Government policy.
passing classified secrets to an intelligence agent of a foreign power is very different from publishing classified secrets in a newspaper.
Bart wrote in response to Truth Machine:
ReplyDelete“OUTSTANDING ANALOGY! Thank you for proving my point...
None of the enemy in the 9/11 cell knew how to fly commercial aircraft any more than they knew how to defeat the NSA surveillance methods.”
The only thing you are doing by snarking the analogy is proving TM’s point.
If it is conceivable to you (as it should be) that the enemy could learn to fly jets (on our own soil, while being on security watch lists, no less), why is it that you can’t imagine that they would not be able to draft some technologically expert people to discern possible surveillance techniques or just take advanced classes in telecom technology?
Your assertion that something of informational significance was actually leaked to the enemy by Risen is utterly ridiculous. You can make all the broad statements you want, but you have no facts to support them. Unless of course you know Al Qaeda members personally and have some information you’re not sharing.
Truth Machine:
On another thread, I had a somewhat heated debate with you. I must say after reading a lot of your posts, particularly the new, kindler, gentler Truth Machine (without all the cussing) I really enjoy and get a lot out of what you say. Like Glenn said, you do contribute well to the comments section, even when dripping disdain and snarkyisms. I actually find your sarcasm quite refreshing and sometimes very funny. So, being a victim of one of your many tirades, I say keep up the good work.
Bumper Sticker wisdom!
ReplyDeleteAs much as I hate the mentality of reducing complex issues to idiot proof, simpleton statements, it seems to be what the lazy media picks up and runs with and what the non-critical thinking Bush fan club seems to identify with.
While reading Glenn’s piece, he mentioned:
“…there is a concerted effort well underway from this Administration to criminalize aggressive adversarial journalism…”
I couldn’t help but think of that pathetic right-wing ploy to dodge the many issues of corruption by spinning a little jewel they called “the criminalization of politics.” I believe it was a statement by Tom Oliphant [sp.?] (a more liberal writer from I think the Boston Globe?(not sure).
Anyway, if we could get the MSM to pick up on Glenn’s “Criminalization of Journalism” tidbit, it may be helpful to the cause. Lord knows the serious journalists have a vested interest in maintaining a free and vibrant press, as well as protecting First Amendment rights. Just a thought, but if it is propagated enough, it could shift public opinion by sparking debate.
propulgate sayeth:
ReplyDeletewhy is it that you can’t imagine that they would not be able to draft some technologically expert people to discern possible surveillance techniques or just take advanced classes in telecom technology?
Note the bolded section. The suggestion is completely unnecessary. It is considered generally accepted corporate security practice, (or to use lawyerspeak that I'll probably botch, because I don't fucking care what technologically illiterate fascist hack lawyers think,) a duty all responsible fiduciary agents should perform, to install Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) between entities connected via the internet.
Over these VPNs, which are these days, free to cheap in price (not so in the late 90s, yep another Bart fuckup, comparing tech then to tech now), and capable of streaming every media type ever invented, all the way from voice (truly truly minimal bandwidth requirements) up to streaming video, completely invisible to the NSA, the Chinese Gov., the competitor, or the hacker with cheetos residue all over his fingers. That would be bart. Only he's not a hax0r. He is a cheetos addict.
Back to the substance. Anybody who has ever set up a network can install a VPN box in an hour or two.
It would take me maybe 30 seconds.
But I type fast.
I cry for America, that we spend time arguing over whether the NSA should snoop on all unencrypted communications illegally, and whether anyone should go to jail for reporting this fact, when the underlying reality is that the whole fucking technological approach will not prevent the terrorists from hitting us again. And again.
Yes, I'm looking at you bart. As long as you divert resources from the real battles, you're objectively pro terrorist. A traitor. And you're such a dupe, you didn't even know.
At the risk of enraging the meta-trolls,
ReplyDeletebart said...
As soon as you find even a scintilla of evidence that Mr. Bush is following in Kennedy, Nixon and Clinton's footsteps, you let me know...
Isn't it awfully peculiar that the setup specifically created to prevent such footsteps is being sidestepped by Mr. Bush?
I find it peculiar. I might even call it overt.
Much like the buyers of radar detectors.
Glenn said...
So to recap: We have to become a country where we imprison journalists who expose actions by our political officials which the politicians want to keep secret. If we don't, we may lose our freedoms. And we can't have that.
It's not just 1984 that is being given life to, but Animal Farm as well. That paraphrased quote has so much Squealer-esque logic behind it. bart and Gedaliya have openly displayed their Squealer cred', both claiming either outright or some variant of "compromises in civil rights" are necessary or the tur'rists will win.
Hypatian hero and alleged free speech crusader Hirsi Ali of the cartoon controversy claims if we respect the taboos of others (WRT to images of Mohammed) it is not an act of respect but an act of submission. So if the terrorists consider some or all of the definitively American and American by definition civil rights taboo...
It is worthwhile to note that a majority in the seminal Nixon Administration press case, New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971) held that, while the government could not engage in the prior restraint of speech by obtaining an injunction against the publication of classified documents like the Pentagon Papers, the Government could prosecute the NYT after the fact under the Espionage Act and several other statutes.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi-page/documents/05189676.asp
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/631lksqg.asp?pg=1
Thanks. propulgate. I left a long response to your long comment in that ("teetering") thread, if you can still find it. And I didn't cuss. :-)
ReplyDeletethe new, kindler, gentler Truth Machine (without all the cussing)
ReplyDeleteI hope you didn't overlook "Bush-felched".
Truth Machine:
ReplyDeleteI did read your post in the other thread. Good stuff. I'm still struggling with a couple of the legal issues, but I'm not a lawyer, so I will do more research.
Anyway, thanks for the thought provoking debate, unresolved though it may be (at least for me).
Anyway, keep up the good work. I look forward to seeing more of your arguments on upcoming threads.
Ciao'
one good thing that possibly come out of this.when press is attacked they tend to cling together to defend and that might really spell problems for republicans coming up for reelection.you dont attack the ones that you need positive reports from but when you attack press that is an attack on all of them.
ReplyDeletebr3n
Hey, Bart:
ReplyDeleteGlenn challenged you several times to point to any information, any specific information at all, that Al Quieda did not have before NYT disclosed the secret, illegal wiretap program, and afterwards.
Eventually, you responded with this
owever, without learning the means and methods of this interception, al Qaeda may simply assume that its phones are physically bugged. They may continue to use the telephones and internet, but take the precautions of sweeping for bugs and switching cell phones.
Such precautions would be useless against an NSA program listening in on communications trunks.
Unfortunately, Risen described how international calls were funneled through US controlled hubs and that the telecom companies had allowed NSA to tap these lines.
Now, the enemy could have assumed that its would be unlikely that his particular communications could be actually intercepted at the hubs because that would take literally millions of people listening 24/7.
Unfortunately, Risen also revealed to the enemy that we have super computers which can replace those millions of people and those computers are mining for certain phrases and landmarks before they will actually stop to record actual transmissions.
Once again, al Qaeda did not have known this before or they would not be intercepted.
Bart, this is a collage of hypothetical absuridties and ludicrous supposition. First of all, you're claiming that Al-Quieda thought its phones were physically bugged? It's a joke. I'm a political science major with no technological experience whatsoever, and I've assumed since the first book I ever read on intelligence that if the government knows who I am and wants to listen to my conversation, they can, period, no trouble at all. There have been a million and one articles describing the government's efforts to do this. There have been articles on the chips installed in cell phones to track the positions of individuals. There have been articles on the use of LOJACK to monitor positions. There has been extensive reporting on the US' ability to intercept sattelite telephone signals, including the technical info.
The technology of data mining is well known and widely understood, and no semi-intelligent chimpanzee could have imagined that the US government doesn't use computers to pattern-analyze data. I've read 25 articles in major media between 2001 and 2004 talking about the NSA and the Pentagon and their electronic pattern-analysis abilities, usually in the context of an article bewailing the lack of analysts to decipher all the data.
So, in the end, your attempt to provide quanitifiable evidence of anything is the statement "Al-Quieda must not have known, or who would we have been intercepting?"
So, hypothetically, if we've interecepted ten more Al-Quieda suspects' communications since the publishing of the article, that would demonstrate that their behavior and knowledge were not affected in any way whatsoever by the article, yes?
I'm sure you'd disagree, and you're right to, because the argument was dumb to begin with. Al-Quieda has been trying to train its members to avoid all forms of electronic communication for years. To the extent that they do it anyway, it's because they're stupid, and or lazy, and/or gamble that the government can't intercept 'everything'.
The article didn't reveal any technological specifics of any kind beyond what would have been totally uncontroversial, generalist boilerplate if it had been used in, say, a pro-military argument decscribing the *capture of a terrorist. All the technological methods were the same as those used under FISA. The only real information in the article was that the admin was bypassing FISA. The methods used by the Pentagon are so inherently generic and unremarkable that, if I worked for a think tank, I'd enjoy tracking down 10 or 25 prior articles that mention the US cooperating with telecoms, using computer pattern analysis, or tapping hubs.
It's nothing like cutting-edge technology. It's nothing like unimaginable or even surprising methods. It's nothing that hasn't been done. It's just the illegal chain of authorization used. That's the only new thing.
meta troll = truth machine
ReplyDeleteLike you gain so much 'credibility' by copying and pasting tangent posts under an essentially anonymous handle...
Thanks for elevating bart to the level of superstar, with more direct verbage and quotes than anyone else, including glenn.
Can't blame the trolls, that's what they do
Can question the intellegence of the meta - trolls that enable the whole charade.
Glenn: So what to do with people who influence policy in behalf of a foreign power to have us in a religious war by proxy?
ReplyDeleteThe AIPAC spy nest was busted after Chalabid, the darling of the Neocon cabal was found in posesion of national secrets, namely the code breaking of the Iranians. Franklim was working under Feith...But the lies that come to us were channaled throught AIPAC.
Let's face this war only benefit the most Israel and their amen corner of war profiteers in the USA.
The spies are now ducking under the freedom of speech, the same tactic, Judith Miller and the New York Time took not to mane Libby as the source for for a year, hence allowing Bush reelection.
AIPAC loyality is with Israel not with this country, rather that ideological or national AIPAC spies have a religious identification with the state of Israel.
AIPAC is responsinble for having the Democratic party paralized in matters of foreign policy.
Using the torpedo greymail defense, a la Libby, to get the NPB, only to have the case dismissed ought not derail the prosecution in this traitors with intellectual blood in their hands.
Libby try the greymail tactic, so that the Executive branch would refuse to turn over the PDBs as a matter of national security torpeding his case , But the PDBs are neither material nor essential.
When Fitz, round the case we will see the large conspiracy, all using the Freedom of speech...
AIPAC spies should be next door to Pollard, for the rest of their lives.
I find it notable that Procurator-General Bart has used the word 'enemy', by my count, 23 times in his posts to this thread. Put me in mind of Richard Hofstadter:
ReplyDeleteSince what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Nothing but complete victory will do. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated - if not from the world, at least from the theater of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for unqualified victories leads to the formulation of hopelessly demanding and unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid's frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same sense of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.
Oh, Hell, I disagreed with our P-G. Now I'm the Enemy. Damn.
Bart:As a criminal prosecutor, I decided every day which cases to drop, which to plea and which to bring to trial.
ReplyDeleteBart:No because I am a solo law firm and I don't have a network yet
I'm not a lawyer but these seem contradictory to me.
I find it notable that Procurator-General Bart has used the word 'enemy', by my count, 23 times in his posts to this thread.
ReplyDeleteSo what additional "proof" do you need to recognize that this is just a "copy and paste" troll -- mindlessing filling his clipboard, dumping it into the thread, and waiting for some moron to snatch the bate.
Honest to god, like you or any of the other idiots are making "profound" statements by pointing this out or trying to refute the tangent, inane talking points that are obviously just being dumped here.
Guess some people have an overwhelming need to feel important and smarter than everyone else...
But responding to a "copy and paste" troll is the most stupid behavior anyone can do here.
Unless, of course, the real intention is to be a "meta-troll," right truthie boy?
Guess some people have an overwhelming need to feel important and smarter than everyone else...
ReplyDeleteTook the words right out of my mouth, asswipe.
Glenn:
ReplyDeleteI am no fan of AIPAC, to put it mildly, but as I’ve written about several times before before, there is a concerted effort well underway from this Administration to criminalize aggressive adversarial journalism, and this specific prosecution poses (by design) a very real and dangerous threat to press freedoms in our country.
Not sure whether it's fair to characterise the AIPAC folks as "journalists". And it may not even be all that good of a bet to say they are not "part of a foreign spy operation" (as the N.Y. Times does).
While it is true that the criminalisation of receipt and/or possession of such materials will, down the road, possibly also put journalism at risk, these folks were really not "journalists" digging at the truth, but in fact political operatives just as much as the NSA/maladministration was when they were snooping on the internal deliberations and positions of the wavering Security Council members in the runup to the Iraq war....
Make a case that receipt of classified material is protected (and that only the divulging of such is a crime), if you will, but please don't call this case a "freedom of the press" case. The N.Y. Times has already abused this privilege enough with their Judith Miller crapola; we don't need lots more claims like this to further weaken sympathy for actual freedom of the press.
Cheers,
Took the words right out of my mouth, asswipe.
ReplyDeletewell the simpleness of your prose and your inability to control your ego-driven rhetoric does really suggest that you are not capable of having anything worthwhile "taken" from your mouth.
But thanks for the homage anyhow!
Here is a place I come to think
ReplyDeleteLeave a load and smell the stink
When inside I feel I might explode
If I don’t find a place to dump this load
Back to this blog I come, again and again
And leave fresh crap for my dear old friends
When I return it matters not where I’ve been
Glenn’s blog has become a toilet – always flushing itself clean.
Forgive me if someone else already brought this up, but i was reading this thread from the top and came across Bart's question about whether the press was guilty of espionage before Viet Nam. I read the next few comments but didn't see this mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI've seen forms of this argument from the right before. When they discuss the difference bewteen the way the press handles war reporting now vs how they did it back in the good ol' days. It's usually along the lines of "if the press acted this way in WW2, we'd have pulled out the first time Americans got shot at."
In this case, Bart wants to blame the press for changing its attitude toward the govt in terms of how it handles secrets that he thinks might be of aid the the enemy.
I won't even address whether that's actually the case. I don't think it is, but the attitude of the press toward our govt in war times certainly has changed. In the first 2 world wars, we went to war for reasons that virtually every American agreed were absolutely sound. If our govt stuck to the same criteria for deciding to take the country to war that it used during the first half of the 20th century, the press would have maintained its abiding faith in the govt, and respected its requests for secrecy or anything else it required to prosecute a war.
The difference is not due to a failing of the press, but a failing of the govt to maintain the same standards it once did. We now go to war for reasons far different than those that took us into the 2 world wars.
It's too late to go into the details, but i believe any thinking person understands the point. I'm tired of hearing this line of argument from the Bush backers who want the press to be as deferential now as it was in the "good ol' days."
At the risk of pissing off others here, I once more address the exemplay of current Republican thinking, Bart...
ReplyDeleteBart sez:
It is worthwhile to note that a majority in the seminal Nixon Administration press case, New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971) held that, while the government could not engage in the prior restraint of speech by obtaining an injunction against the publication of classified documents like the Pentagon Papers, the Government could prosecute the NYT after the fact under the Espionage Act and several other statutes.
Oh, yeah. Right. Go after the journalists (which they didn't do even after the fact, I'd note). But I heard you spouting off recently that under the Constitutional "right to lobby", such receipt of secrets by lobbyists couldn't be infringed. AAMOF, your claims on this count had to do with precisely this very pair of crooks now under consideration....
Now, can I assume you're sufficiently shamed WRT your sophistry here to STFU for a couple of posts? Or would that be giving you too much credit.....
However, without learning the means and methods of this interception, al Qaeda may simply assume that its phones are physically bugged. They may continue to use the telephones and internet, but take the precautions of sweeping for bugs and switching cell phones.
As I pointed out previously (what a surprise), you don't have the foggiest as to how intercepts are done. Even more unfortunately for your argument, the terrorists do have a better understanding of this. "Sweeping for bugs" has nothing to do with modern wiretap (and just a FYI, this holds even for land lines). As has been pointed out to you, the terrorists (no dummies; all they have to do is look at what drug dealers do...) have been switching phones for quite some time ... or simply not using them ... or even using them to actually mislead the snoopers (as they did when OBL skedaddled from Tora Bora). To sum up, you're really rather obtuse here....
Cheers,
The NSA spying issue is a little bit like the FDA regulating cigarettes. They basically came out and said that if the FDA regulated nicotine, it would be a schedule 1 drug, and therefore, illegal.
ReplyDeleteI think Roberts and Frist know that if they open a can of worms, its going to end with indictments of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Gonzales, and anybody else who commented on, or even knew about, the program. So its not that they think the POTUS has the authority. They just don't want to bring the entire US Government to a crashing halt.
Bart:
ReplyDeleteGad, you're dense...
Such precautions would be useless against an NSA program listening in on communications trunks.
Written up by James Bamford a couple decades ago..... *sheesh*
Unfortunately, Risen described how international calls were funneled through US controlled hubs and that the telecom companies had allowed NSA to tap these lines.
They aren't. What ever gave you that idea? I think you managed to confuse a couple different things WRT wiretapping.....
This isn't the first time I've told you this. Care to explain why you continute to ignore my corrections of your mistaken notions? I mean, outside of the fact that your MOP is to do just that, ignore what any one else says. and pretend that your ol' song and dance hasn't been shot out of the water.... At this point, I'd have to raise the fact that you don't really engage in dialogue here, and that, like Gedaliya, if you aren't going to address the responses you get, you ought to be given one shot to say as much as you want about your story and then STFU. Fair 'nuff?
Cheers,
Here's yet another freedom under attack - paying your credit card bill.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=RAISEALARM-02-28-06
(btw, how do I link that url in the text?)
Bart sez:
ReplyDeleteTraffic radar is commonly known. This program or the technology which it uses was not as shown by the several dozen posts I have made on this blog attempting to explain the program to otherwise intelligent and computer savvy Americans.
Ummm, hate to say it, Bart, but the moment I start trusting you to be my authoritative source for either computers or wiretap technology is the day I sign my resignation letter from a job that requires CALEA skills (not to mention basic computer and telecom literacy ... or even Google skills). You see, you're FOS.
And that's the last I say on this subject until you figure out you haven't a clue and start trying to figure out what's really going on.
Cheers,
Bart said:
ReplyDeleteI challenge you to find violations of the Espionage Act by the press analogous to blowing the NSA program to al Qaeda during the first two World Wars.
A false question Bart. The way you worded it the person who answers has to accept your view that the press blew the NSA program to Al Qaida. I reject the notion that they did.
There was however a case during WWII in which the press did violate the espionage act.
The press published a report on a naval battle that gave not only the numbers and types of Japanese ships but also the names of many of them. Which because of the detail, it allowed the Japanese to determine that their code had been broken. Something that they could not have determined any other way.
No methods or means were revealed by the NYT article which is what the Espionage act requires for it to be a violation.
The idea that Al Qaida would think that they were not being monitored or that attemps were not being made to monitor them is patently absurd. Especially since they did find out that their satellite phones were being monitored and quit using them as a result of that knowledge.
There was no drop off in cell phone usage after the NYT report which would indicate they already knew they were being monitored but were unconcerned by that knowledge.
I dunno...I could have sworn I remembered hearing, once upon a time, if we let the terrorists keep us from shopping, we were letting them win. So we shopped.
ReplyDeleteAnd I guess we can radically alter the way we interpret American Ideal, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights because of the idea of The Terrorists...but as long as we keep shopping, they will not have won.
It's good to have clear formulas to live by.
Good morning!
ReplyDeleteTo Michael Galien, ej, Zack, David Shaughnessy, and the others who were involved in this discussion yesterday, I see that despite the best efforts of Michael in particular, this thread seems to have drifted irretrievably off topic. Do you think we can bring it back or should we try to move to a new thread somewhere? Or maybe you already have? I'll look around, I'm just signing on this morning.
Kris C.
Armagednoutahere - You are quite wrong about the First World War. Many, many Americans opposed entry into this war, for what many historians feel are excellent reasons. (See e.g. Walter Karp's The Politics of War). America entered for one main reason, Wilson's ardent and deceitful desire to go to war. Roughly on this topic, I believe Glenn is quite wrong about how Bush's use of the Espionage act is unprecedently far-reaching. There were prosecutions, I believe under this act, for monstrous crimes like reprinting Wilson's "antiwar" speeches, once he had, with an immense propaganda campaign, dragged an initially pacifistic nation into the conflict.
ReplyDeleteBush is a monster, but his assault on a free press is hardly unprecedented - and things have gotten a bit better over the last century.
No need for any safe harbor status. What journalists (and their lawyers) need to do is to convince federal judges that the classification process is meant to preserve national security, not to cover up fouls up, embarrassments and out-right crimes.
ReplyDeleteYou are quite wrong about the First World War. Many, many Americans opposed entry into this war, for what many historians feel are excellent reasons.
ReplyDeleteQuite so. Few people are aware that Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous dictum about "shouting fire in a crowded theater" referred to distributing fliers opposed to the draft during WWI.
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." -- George Santayana
Anyone who did NOT demand White House scalps in the Plame outing may want to skip this post.
ReplyDeleteOh, you're all still here, uh? Please consider: 1) Disclosure of classified information is illegal.
2) Whistleblowers have procedures and channels to ensure their protection and bring illegal
government activity to the attention of proper authority. These channels and procedures do not
include disclosing classified information to NYT or any other public media.
Glenn Greenwald said...
"...conduct which every investigative journalist in the country, by necessity, engages in every day."
Every investigative journalist, by necessity, seeks out and discloses classified information?
Hypatia said... "I cannot fathom how a true patriot would not be alarmed and horrified..."
I am a combat veteran and USAF retiree, Hypatia. I am alarmed and horrified that nearly half
of our country thinks it's just peachy to expose classified information. Unless, that is, their own
(Plame) ox is being gored.
Senators are well aware of these procedures, but apparently, Durbin, Rockefeller and Wyden have
chosen to violate the law. They're going DOWN folks. Start prepping their replacements.