LAT: Critics Question Timing of Surveillance Story (NYT Story)

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-media20dec20,1,1407570.story

The New York Times first debated publishing a story about secret eavesdropping on Americans as early as last fall, before the 2004 presidential election.

But the newspaper held the story for more than a year and only revealed the secret wiretaps last Friday, when it became apparent a book by one of its reporters was about to break the news, according to journalists familiar with the paper's internal discussions.

<snip>

Politicians, journalists and Internet commentators have feverishly aired the debate over the timing of the New York Times story in the last four days — with critics on the left wondering why the paper waited so long to publish the story and those on the right wondering why it was published at all.

Conservatives suggested the Times had timed the story to persuade members of Congress to oppose reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the federal law that granted the government sweeping surveillance powers.

They also charged that the newspaper wanted to short-circuit good news for the Bush administration — Iraq's high-turnout, relatively violence-free elections.

Had this come out befor the election - it would have made a big stink and the election results could have been different. Why would the NYT support Bush this way. They seem to be in the center of the stories of the year - TraitorGate & Spygate. * needs to stop the lying & the spying.

. The initial Times statements did not say that the paper's internal debate began before the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election — in which Iraq and national security questions loomed large — or make any reference to Risen's book, due out Jan. 16.

But two journalists, who declined to be identified, said that editors at the paper were actively considering running the story about the wiretaps before Bush's November showdown with Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Top editors at the paper eventually decided to hold the story. But the discussion was renewed after the election, with Risen and coauthor of the story, reporter Eric Lichtblau, joining some of the paper's editors in pushing for publication, according to the sources, who said they did not want to be identified because the Times had designated only Keller and a spokeswoman to address the matter.

"When they realized that it was going to appear in the book anyway, that is when they went ahead and agreed to publish the story," said one of the journalists. "That's not to say that was their entire consideration, but it was a very important one of them."

...It can only help make the news better, I hope.

It's really not that complicated.

Friday news dump is to small bad news
as
Year-end news dump is to big bad news

I'm just glad they ran the story about our little spy*.
I'm sure they withheld it because of backlash that GFY cheney is talking about.
:dem:

the lies about the war, and in re-selecting the worst president in the country's history, bar none, and possibly the worst ever to take over a supposed democracy and turn it into a cash-cow for his buds in the war profit industry.

ALL of them engaged in the DOCTORING of the exit polls, late on election day, putting FALSE NUMBERS on everybody's TV screens, thus hiding strong evidence of a Kerry win from the public--possibly the worst journalistic crime I have ever witnessed. The crime of destroying American democracy.

So, I'm sorry, but the L.A. Times getting all huffy at the N.Y. Times, strikes me as just more smoke and mirrors to blind the American people to the catastrophic failure of the Fourth Estate, due to lack of regulation of corporate monopolies.

The NYT is just the most visible and obvious case of collusion with the Bush junta. The owners and managers could well be complicit in treason, spying, and other crimes, and in cover-ups of crimes. Their star reporter Judith Miller was involved in outing a CIA agent and an entire CIA network. They covered THAT up for a year, as well. And they most certainly bear some responsibility for the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, by ceaselessly promoting every lie that Bush junta told about this completely unjust, unnecessary and illegal war.

It appears, now, that they have published this info about Bush's criminal spying in order to make it appear, to the inattentive, that THEY "got the scoop"--that they are doing their job as journalists, and are being "tough" on the regime--when the truth is that they were about to "be scooped," by the upcoming book, on information they've been sitting on for a year.

However, if we've learned nothing else in the last five years, we should be cautious about appearances, in a context of so much lying, disinformation, "dossiers," hit pieces, secret operations, and machine gun politics. It's possible that the NYT was AFRAID to disclose this spying program a year ago. It has certainly occurred to me that a whole lot of blackmail and "secret dossier" business may be going on within the Bush junta itself, especially among the indictable Plame outers. It seems likely to me that people like Cheney and Rumsfeld would have a "dossier" of documented high crimes and misdemeanors on Bush, for instance--and a number of others--as backup protection in case of meltdown, or possibly as an on-going manipulation device. And who knows who else they are keeping dossiers on--whom they could ruin?) (It's the first thing that occurred to me re the NYT Bush spying revelations--that the NYT was trying to head off some sort of blackmail by getting the junta impeached and discredited before they could strike.)

What is more, there are so many suspicious deaths stacking up on the junta's door--the 3,000 on 9/11, Paul Wellstone, Mel Carnahan, David Kelly, Clint Curtis' journalist contact (election fraud), those who died in the anthrax mailings, the four strung up military contractors in Falluja, Nicholas Berg, the victims of military contractor death squads in Iraq, and the nameless dead of Bush torture prisons--that anyone (even the non-innocent like the NYT) could feel naked fear in opposing them, at any point. (Say, the NYT fed this monster and got their war, but then saw that things were out of control--maybe they were spying on NYT editors--and wanted to reign them, but decided NOT to, because they didn't want to end up like David Kelly, an insider white guy, stricken with conscience mid-war, whistleblows to the BBC, and turns up dead, under highly suspicious circumstances--four days after Plame was outed, as a matter of fact.*)

Lessons of Cambodia/Laos and how it might bear upon Iran/Syria:

Nixon's demise began with this: Spying on his political enemies. Burglarizing the Democratic Party headquarters during the 1971-2 election campaign, and the offices of Daniel Ellsberg's (Pentagon Papers whistle-blower's) psychiatrist's office. All about war, too. To get dirt on people who were against war. The Dem candidate McGovern opposed the Vietnam war; so did Ellsberg). The Watergate burglary was exposed by the Washington Post. The Pentagon Papers, by the NYT.

Perhaps we ought to go back and revisit that era to investigate how these news organizations may have been profiting from the Vietnam war, while pretending to be honest journalists, and getting all righteous about dirty political activities that pale before the atrocity of Vietnam/Southeast Asia: upwards of 2 million dead. How did they help to legitimize Henry Kissinger? At what point did they learn about the secret bombing of Cambodia (while Nixon and Kissinger talked peace in public), and at what point did they expose it?

We tend to think of that era as the golden age of investigative reporting. Was it? I mean, really. Was Watergate a distraction from the on-going military/corporate boondoggle war profiteering in Southeast Asia?

It stopped eventually because the Vietnamese WON--not because of anything the NYT printed.

And is that what is happening re Iran/Syria now? Cover. Distraction. While they cook up "Gulf of Tonkin II"? (Not many people know that the junta was killing Syrian soldiers and bombing Syrian/Iraq border villages all during Katrina, and likely still are.)

We tend to interpret things politically here at DU--what can help get Dems elected. But we often fail to see the forest for the trees. The forest being war profiteers.

Also, people tend to think that Bush is much worse than Nixon. And it's true that the Bush junta's assault on the Constitution is much more thorough and devastating than Nixon's was. Also, items like the gutting of FEMA would have been unthinkable to the Nixonites. But as to the numbers of dead directly caused by their policies, Bush is way behind Nixon. (Est. 50,000-100,000 vs. 1 million.) (--the latter being about half the Vietnam/Southeast Asia carnage). (A war profiteering comparison might also be interesting.) Also, the Dems started the Vietnam war (also with damn lies), and were responsible for about half of the deaths. Nixon completed the slaughter. Are we in the reverse situation now--the Repubs got it going, the Dems are going to finish it? Sad to think of, but realistic. And neither the NYT nor WaPo did anything significant or effective to stop either one.** Then, as now, they objected to spying; not war.

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*(Interesting connection of Judith Miller to that death. Kelly's last email, on July 17, 2003, the day he died, was to his old colleague and correspondent Judith Miller. In it, he expresses concern about the "many dark actors playing games." Miller failed to disclose this email, or her close connection to Kelly, in the obit she wrote about him in the NYT.

**The publication of the Pentagon Papers was after the fact (in 1971). The war was first escalated under LBJ in 1964. Congress' 1964 resolution giving away its war powers had only 2 "no" votes. (The Iraq resolution had 133!) So the entire national power structure supported it, at first, likely including the NYT and WaPo. The 133 mostly Dems who opposed giving war powers away to Bush likely did so on the lessons of Vietnam. But the NYT and WaPo either did not learn those lessons. They WANTED this war.

The NY Times was more interested in protecting Judith Miller than it was in protecting the public interest.