Newspapers Reject White House Request to Kill Records Story

Same ilk; same sin.

Hmm, they should be forbidden!

The USSR and the communist countries as well as other dictatorships had and have those nice laws re media and newspapers ...

Oh you'ee so clever in you irony Walter!

Of course being in Germany where you let Islamic extremists flourish so you will not be a target of their evil, you get to be ironic.

You're sure, you're confusing something?

Lichtblau of 'NYT' Explains Attempt to Halt His Bank Records
Lichtblau of 'NYT' Explains Attempt to Halt His Bank Records Scoop
By Joe Strupp
E & P
Published: June 23, 2006

Eric Lichtblau, one of two New York Times' reporters who broke today's story of a secret government monitoring of private banking records - which the Bush Administration sought to block - said the White House arguments to halt the story were not as strong as those that had kept a previous report on secret wiretapping out of the paper for a year.

"They were similar in terms of the objections raised not to publish," Lichtblau told E&P today. "That the bad guys knew we were listening to them, but they don't know exactly how." But he said the objections "did not rise to as high a level as last time."

But Lichtblau stressed that the paper gave as much consideration to the White House concerns on the banking story as on the wiretapping report, actually spending several weeks in discussions about the Bush Administration objections.

"I don't think we could reasonably be accused of moving too quickly," he said. "We waited so long that the competition caught up to us."
This comment referred to the Los Angeles Times' posting a story about the bank records program on its Web site last night. That paper said it had also been asked by the administration to hold off.

Lichtblau said that in the case of the previous Pulitzer-winning story, which detailed a National Security Agency (NSA) program of wiretapping, President Bush himself had gotten involved. The president was not been directly part of the effort to halt publication of today's story. "It was done at the cabinet level this time around," Lichtblau said.

Lichtblau, who co-wrote both stories with Times reporter James Risen, said that in each case the newspaper believed that the information it was reporting would not put anyone in harm's way. "I think we came down on the same side in both questions," he said of the two stories. "That this is not giving away information that is tangibly helping terrorists know what they don't already know."

Risen declined to comment, while Times Executive Editor Bill Keller did not return a call seeking comment.

In the wiretapping story, which ran in late 2005, the paper revealed that it had held off running the story for more than a year after Bush had intervened and requested it be held. In the latest case, Lichtblau said, the administration first sought to block the story several weeks ago, but declined to provide an exact date. "There were complex factors in each case," Lichtblau said, without giving specifics. "But the objections of the administration did not rise to as high a level as last time."

Lichtblau added that the reaction to the wiretapping story, which included both criticism and support for the paper, made it easier to go with this story. He noted that there had been no proof that the previous story had endangered national security.

"Our belief that it did not have any tangible impact has been borne out," he said. "That was in the back of our minds this time." He also said that "the intense public interest in the NSA story showed that this is obviously a matter of intense public interest. We see similar interest in both cases, the pendulum, as far as public disclosure versus national security, has swung in the direction of public disclosure....

"We went about this in a thorough enough way," he added.

Odd how the Washington Post entered the equation - and the Wall Street Journal disappeared from it, in Finn's apparently subconcsiously selective perception of reality.

Is the Wall Street Journal also "Same ilk; same sin", Finn?

Should the Wall Street Journal now also be "shut down for aiding and abetting the Enemy"?

I don't think the papers themselves should be sanctioned, any of them, really - and I have noted and am a bit peeved by "The Right Wing" tendency to overlook the WSJ in this instance - but I do think the reporters and editors directly involved should be held responsible, and beyond that, I think the Administration officials responsible for the leaks in the first place should be held responisible to the extent example be provided such that idiocy of this sort becomes far, far more rare.

The mainstream media is not necesarilly by intent a tool of the foe, but it does little to prevent the foe from making tools of what the mainstream media sets before the public.

According to Belgian media, this might easily lead to a goevrnment crisis in Belgium since both the fnance as well as the justice minister are said to have known about it "informally".

(Data from 7800 bancs in 200 countries, I still can't get it.)

This program had very little oversight and a questionable legal basis. Again the quote the New York Times Link

"The program…..overseen by the Treasury Department, has allowed counterterrorism authorities to gain access to millions of records of transactions routed through Swift from individual banks and financial institutions around the world. The data is obtained using broad administrative subpoenas, not court warrants".

"Senator Arlen Specter Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had sent letters on Friday to both Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on the issue. While he declined to release the letters, he said he was concerned about the legal authority for the operation"
.
"Mr. Specter has been at odds with the administration over another previously secret counterterrorism operation, the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. The senator said he was particularly troubled that the administration had expanded its Congressional briefings on the financial tracking program in recent weeks after having learned that The New York Times was making inquiries.
"Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?" the senator asked. "That's a big, important point."


"Swift has said that its role in the program was never voluntary,…"

Specter is a boob. What it it going to take to get the Government to begin excercising tighter control over sensitive data, and what is it going to take to make such leaks unappealing to those who would publicize them - a successful massive attack accompanied by explicit thanks to the NYT for having issued the heads up that allowed the attack planners to avoid discovery?

If this president exercises any tighter control over government information they wont bother telling common citizens like me and you who is elected president in the next election for fear it will help the terriosts.

There was an article in either the New York Times or the New Yorker, I forget which, some years ago about how Bin Laden protected himself while moved money. It was mostly through commodities transfers. Honey was the favorite commodity for a while. This suggests that Al Quada has already assumed that wire transfers would be monitored These extra legal searches are unnecessary. Had they gone about it properly the Bush administration would have gotten most, probably all, that they requested. But they are more interested in using the terrorist threat to expand executive power than they are in catching terrorists.

There's the crux of the matter--these jokers cannot be trusted, and i applaud the press for keeping a spotlight on them.

Yeah, they are more on the ball now - but they started about 5 years too late, IMO.

I agree with that as well--for a long time, the plan of loud-mouthed conservatives to silence dissent in the news media through constant niggling criticism and accusations of ideological bias was all too successful.

The most likely upshot of all of this will be cause for yet more impotent outrage from those who perceive The Current Administration in ill light.

a long post....very sorry.
It's good that this record keeping had so many controls, but before this story was run how were the american people to know that?

The records involve thousands of americans and others right? how many thousands?!!?!!?



as you can see the records mostly involve wire transfers and most of the records are not of transactions here in the states.

MOST???!!!??

say I had records on 32,000 transactions(thousands). If say 28,000 were not of transactions and the states and of wire transfers I could still make a claim that these were most of the transactions. That would still be 4,000 other kinds of recorded financial records. What else are they looking at?


and to say that the gov't is doing everything within the law b/c they had an independent agency look at the records? well if it's an organization hired by the same people who are collecting the records how can you trust it? Maybe the next time the IRS wants to audit me I'll tell them before they come in, "oh that won't be necessary I had a third party independant accountant I hired look over my finances and he said everything is legal so you can go." The government knows better than to trust so much, so should the people.

everything the executive brach does should be at LEAST be overseen by congress. Afterall this administration has been trying to expand executive power since the beginning, often by hiding behind the we are fighting a war on terror idealogy.

of course the people can't fully trust congress either. That's why most things, including these records should be told to the people. If record keeping like this is allowed behind any kind of closed doors then any kind of information might be next.

afterall what other secret and possibly more threating projects are out there?




they aren't traitors and they aren't doing this JUST because it will sell alot of papers. Actually it's just the opposite, in my opinion printing these stories is incredibly patriotic. The media is supposed to conduct oversight of the government. THAT'S ONE OF ITS MAIN PURPOSES!

I would rather die at the hands of terrorists than let the government secretly conduct a program that COULD in ANY way erode my freedoms or make it easier for them to intimidate or control me.

If we lose our freedoms in such a manner then it won't matter if we do beat the terrorists physically they will have defeated us already by taking away our freedoms.

if we allow them to take a even a little here then a little there then maybe one day many of our freedoms will be gone.

Sure the terrorists are the enemy, but so is the government SOMETIMES. We the people need constant vigilance over the Gov't. in order to make sure they don't become our enemy. I believe most things can and should be done in the open.

It may be harder to find terrorist networks, but it beats the alternative of having a government that can look in on anyones personal life with little or no accountability. Sure they SEEM to have put on some checks and balances this time, but what about in the future.

I am not saying we shouldn't hunt for the terrorists, but when the hunt involves anything to do with american freedoms, then it needs to be conducted more openly.

The real danger is that the executive branch probably has even more programs like this we don't even know about. How good are the controls on those?

how long do they get to use "the war on terror idealogy" to do such secretive and borderline illegal things.

Terror after all is an idea, it is not anything tangible. A war on an idea could last forever. They could then expand their power forever.

But the war isn't really on terror that's just the propaganda, the war is on the actual tangible terrorist networks you say?

well that is true but how long have terrorist been around? do you think we will ever be rid of terrorism? There have been terrorists in america who were full blooded american citizens that grew up in the U.S.A.(YAY redundancy) If we can produce such criminal behavior then it can be produced anywhere. There will always be terrorism.

Sure we need to fight and try to prevent terrorism, but since we will never be rid of it then any measures that are made to combat it should be evaluated on there long term consequences. Any measures taken to combat it could be around indefinitely. any measures that might take american freedoms may take away those freedoms indefinitely.

THAT IS SOMETHING I CAN NOT AND WILL NOT EVER ACCEPT!!!

This really isn't that much about the current administration for me as it is about a healthy distrust of the government in general, no matter who is in charge.

and it's not rage but concern.

You are, or course, correct - The LA Times and The WSJ ran the story not the Washington Post

Good point.

I don't believe the WSJ was requested to hold from publishing the story, but it matters little. They displayed the same arrogance and disregard for national security. Yes, they should be shut down as well.