Fairplay Revisited

On July 24th of this year, in direct response to the NYT's desire to help the jihadists who are trying to kill me daily, I wrote down my thoughts on what might be a fair turnabout.  This was all based on the idea that the NYTs understood how dangerous it was to write about the SWIFT program, and how much it helped the jihadists.  But at least back then they held to the line that it needed to be exposed, even at the cost of innocent American lives, because it was such a dire threat to American liberties and because it was a blatantly illegal program run by the Bush Administration. 

Now we find, via the NYT's, that even though the publishers understood that it was sure to help the jihadists, they decided to publish the story anyway because they though it might be illegal, and it might be a threat to civil liberties. 

"My (BYRON CALAME) July 2 column strongly supported The Times’s decision to publish its June 23 article on a once-secret banking-data surveillance program. After pondering for several months,  I have decided I was off base...I haven’t found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal under United States laws... Also, there still haven’t been any abuses of private data linked to the program, which apparently has continued to function. That, plus the legality issue, has left me wondering what harm actually was avoided when The Times and two other newspapers disclosed the program. The lack of appropriate oversight — to catch any abuses in the absence of media attention — was a key reason I originally supported publication. I think, however, that I gave it too much weight.

Hey Dickhead, how about wondering about what harm was actually done when you disclosed the program in your newspaper!  You knew what would happen, and you were taking a very biased guess at what "harm" might happen.   The fact that your newspaper's hatred of the Bush Administration moved you towards letting it publish knowing it would endanger fellow Americans makes your newspaper incapable of ever again being trusted as to what should and shouldn't be published.  Your newspaper just dropped down a few rungs underneath CNN in trustworthyness.  CNN was willing to self-censor news coming out of Iraq in order to keep access, and you are willing to disclose fully legal intelligence operations in order to maintain pressure on an administration you disagree with. 

Sleep well tonight.  There's no reason to believe that your disclosure was at all responsible for the jihadis having more money over the last few months.  That would be a coincidence.  Maybe there is no connection between that increase in money available to the jihadists and the increase in the number of American servicemember deaths in Iraq since you published that article.  Just keep telling yourself it was all because of something else.  Something the Bush Administration had done, nothing you did.  You are, after all, a patriot.  You must be, right?  Dissent is the highest form....and all that? 

Comments

[MissBirdlegs in AL]

Love your sarcasm! Too late to regret the article now. Betcha they'll jump right on the next "secret" thing they can get their hot little hands on & publish it because the "American people deserve to know everything". No research and no second thoughts, just hit "publish".

[Linda Morgan]

I just don't know which is nuttier: That he would (1) make us privy to his ruminations on the matter with the elections this near to hand (doesn't he know how libs question timing?); (2) shamelessly bury (try to hide?) his staggering admission of error so deep under a bland headline, in an article that begins by announcing the paper's acquisition of "a perfume critic"; or (3) make an offhand reference, just ahead of his disclosure, to "[t]he many Times readers who are consumers of serious news" -- like he continues, from time to time, to think fondly (or vaguely) of them. Whoever they may be.

Sure hope this costs him whatever power and prestige he thought invulnerable to the lethal recklessness of his judgment. Of course, the loss of his sorry reputation is nothing compared to the life's blood of the soldiers he probably doesn't think of even now.