The Newspaper fails to inform readers "news break" is tied to book publication
On the front page of today's NEW YORK TIMES, national security reporter James Risen claims that "months after the September 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States... without the court approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials."
Risen claims the White House asked the paper not to publish the article, saying that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny.
Risen claims the TIMES delayed publication of the article for a year to conduct additional reporting.
But now comes word James Risen's article is only one of many "explosive newsbreaking" stories that can be found -- in his upcoming book -- which he turned in 3 months ago!
The paper failed to reveal the urgent story was tied to a book release and sale.
"STATE OF WAR: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" is to be published by FREE PRESS in the coming weeks, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
Carisa Hays, VP, Director of Publicity FREE PRESS, confirms the book is being published.
The book editor of Bush critic Richard Clarke [AGAINST ALL ENEMIES] signed Risen to FREE PRESS.
Of course, the
First, the opening tag:
Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
Blatnatly false and incorrect reporting. For, buried elsewhere in the article, we find that some people DID know, in fact, many people knew about this "secret" directive.
Later briefings were held for members of Congress as they assumed leadership roles on the intelligence committees, officials familiar with the program said. After a 2003 briefing, Senator Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who became vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that year, wrote a letter to Mr. Cheney expressing concerns about the program, officials knowledgeable about the letter said. It could not be determined if he received a reply. Mr. Rockefeller declined to comment. Aside from the Congressional leaders, only a small group of people, including several cabinet members and officials at the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department, know of the program.
Aha! Jay Rockefeller is really part of the Bush anti-civil rights cabal, right? uhh....
It is not until the 16th paragraph that we get the context of the all important context in which the program was created and used:
What the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, the officials said.
Michelle Malkin has a KEY point, to the "secret" spying:
Those who actually read the piece will note that the paper must grudgingly acknowledge that it is talking about the NSA's monitoring of international communications (e-mails, cellphone calls, etc.) only; the agency still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
Michelle is dead on in this analysis. This only applies to international calls, etc. This is not Bush spying on your missives to Auntie Ethel. Of course, the Times wants you to think otherwise. Why, because it will sell books for Mr. Risen.
Michelle has more:
The Bush administration argues that the NSA program that helped uncover the Faris plot was necessary because officials needed to act quickly on large caches of information, such as the data found after the Zubaydah capture in March 2002. Normally, the government obtains court orders to monitor such information from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But the window of opportunity to exploit the names, numbers, and addresses of those associated with the top terrorist leaders was obviously small.
Contrary to the impression the piece and headline leave of an administration acting in complete secrecy and with total impunity and disregard for civil liberties, the reporters reveal that Vice President Dick Cheney, then-NSA director Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, and then-CIA director George Tenet called a meeting with Congressional leaders from both parties to brief them on the program.
The administration trusted that the briefing would remain confidential for the sake of national security. Obviously, they trusted too much.
These were not "secret" spying in the same vein as Nixon and the Vietname protesters. Members of Congress knew. Their outrage is a joke.
I will let Michelle close:
The Times then discloses key information beginning in the 34th paragraph of the piece:
In mid-2004, concerns about the program expressed by national security officials, government lawyers and a judge prompted the Bush administration to suspend elements of the program and revamp it.
For the first time, the Justice Department audited the N.S.A. program, several officials said. And to provide more guidance, the Justice Department and the agency expanded and refined a checklist to follow in deciding whether probable cause existed to start monitoring someone's communications, several officials said.
A complaint from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge who oversees the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, helped spur the suspension, officials said. The judge questioned whether information obtained under the N.S.A. program was being improperly used as the basis for F.I.S.A. wiretap warrant requests from the Justice Department, according to senior government officials. While not knowing all the details of the exchange, several government lawyers said there appeared to be concerns that the Justice Department, by trying to shield the existence of the N.S.A. program, was in danger of misleading the court about the origins of the information cited to justify the warrants.
One official familiar with the episode said the judge insisted to Justice Department lawyers at one point that any material gathered under the special N.S.A. program not be used in seeking wiretap warrants from her court. Judge Kollar-Kotelly did not return calls for comment.
A related issue arose in a case in which the F.B.I. was monitoring the communications of a terrorist suspect under a F.I.S.A.-approved warrant, even though the National Security Agency was already conducting warrantless eavesdropping. According to officials, F.B.I. surveillance of Mr. Faris, the Brooklyn Bridge plotter, was dropped for a short time because of technical problems. At the time, senior Justice Department officials worried what would happen if the N.S.A. picked up information that needed to be presented in court. The government would then either have to disclose the N.S.A. program or mislead a criminal court about how it had gotten the information.
So:
1) Certain elements of the controversial program have been "suspended" and "revamped." Which ones, the Times doesn't say. Is the NSA still monitoring phone calls to and from the US? or not The Times does not make that clear.
2) Did you catch this: "According to officials, F.B.I. surveillance of Mr. Faris, the Brooklyn Bridge plotter, was dropped for a short time because of technical problems." How long must we tolerate the screw-ups at the FBI?
3) For those who blithely suggest that the NSA had no reason to bypass the courts, note that Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly refused to issue FISA warrants based on the NSA info.
Once again, hindsight hypocrisy rears its head. If the Bush administration chose to pursue FISA warrants, failed to obtain them, let the information go to waste, and allowed another attack to occur as a result, is there any question the finger-waggers at the NYTimes would be the first to attack the President for failing to do everything necessary to prevent it?
Here is my final analysis. The
Powerline Gets it Right: Put the leakers in Jail!
