NYT: All the (classified) news that's fit to print
The arrogance of Bill Keller knows no limits. The Times has done it again.
I'm speechless! Apparently to the NYT, if it's classified, it's news! Seriously. What can I say that I haven't said before? Newspaper editors aren't elected, are not above the law, and do not make policy for America's intelligence agencies. What's it going to take to get these three simple facts through their thick skulls?
Andy McCarthy has an idea:
It's come to this, I think.
UPDATE: Ever read the boy detective novels The Three Investigators as a kid? They were the best! You have your chubby brainiac for a leader, the introspective jock who practices the time honored football value of team loyalty and the skinny kid whose lack of judgement is more than made up by his enthusiasm. They work out of a secret HQ, a Winnebego buried under a mound of scrap in a junk yard, complete with a secret tunnel and trap door entrance. Rewarded for solving a particularly tough mystery on the behalf of the local limosine rental company, they travel in style: A chauffered Rolls Royce limo is at their disposal whenever they want. And when the going gets really tough, they emloy the "ghost-to-ghost hookup," a pyramid intel network wherein they call neighborhood kids and charge them with "keeping on the lookout" as well as calling ten others to do the same. They even have business cards. Business cards! Sure the adults think it's cute, and they chuckle and dote on our heros, but these kids mean business! They have cards and everything!
I suspect many an intrepid reporter read and loved these books (or ones like them) as a kid, as did many an intel puke like me. The problem comes when the reporters and intel pukes who still think they're living the boy detective dream employ their "ghost-to-ghost hookup." IT'S NOT A GODDAMN GAME.
Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
Published: June 23, 2006
WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.
I'm speechless! Apparently to the NYT, if it's classified, it's news! Seriously. What can I say that I haven't said before? Newspaper editors aren't elected, are not above the law, and do not make policy for America's intelligence agencies. What's it going to take to get these three simple facts through their thick skulls?
Andy McCarthy has an idea:
The anti-warriors know only the language of self-interest. It is the language that tells them the revelation of the nation’s secrets will result, forthwith, in the demand for the revelation of their secrets — which is to say, their sources in the intelligence community — with incarceration the price of resistance.
It's come to this, I think.
UPDATE: Ever read the boy detective novels The Three Investigators as a kid? They were the best! You have your chubby brainiac for a leader, the introspective jock who practices the time honored football value of team loyalty and the skinny kid whose lack of judgement is more than made up by his enthusiasm. They work out of a secret HQ, a Winnebego buried under a mound of scrap in a junk yard, complete with a secret tunnel and trap door entrance. Rewarded for solving a particularly tough mystery on the behalf of the local limosine rental company, they travel in style: A chauffered Rolls Royce limo is at their disposal whenever they want. And when the going gets really tough, they emloy the "ghost-to-ghost hookup," a pyramid intel network wherein they call neighborhood kids and charge them with "keeping on the lookout" as well as calling ten others to do the same. They even have business cards. Business cards! Sure the adults think it's cute, and they chuckle and dote on our heros, but these kids mean business! They have cards and everything!
I suspect many an intrepid reporter read and loved these books (or ones like them) as a kid, as did many an intel puke like me. The problem comes when the reporters and intel pukes who still think they're living the boy detective dream employ their "ghost-to-ghost hookup." IT'S NOT A GODDAMN GAME.