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http://rt.com/usa/158780-nyt-justice-withheld-nsa-info/
(This goes back to the early Bush administration.)
"The New York Times and the Justice Department are under fire for bowing to the National Security Agency and either hiding (the Times) or misinforming (DOJ) the public about crucial pieces of the NSA’s secret spying programs.
An episode of PBS Frontline focuses on the 2004 decision by New York Times editor Bill Keller to kill a story on the NSA in the run-up to that year’s presidential election. The two-part program is called 'United States of Secrets,' and reveals “the dramatic inside story of the U.S. government’s massive and controversial secret surveillance program—and the lengths they went to trying to keep it hidden from the public.”
The report looks back at what the NSA called 'The Program' - the NSA’s decision to spy on Americans’ electronic interactions by spying on telephones, internet communications, metadata from emails, and almost all forms of electronic communications - all without warrants. Scandal broke out when the secretive agency’s spying techniques were revealed to the world - but not by Edward Snowden in the summer of 2013. The NSA first landed in hot water nearly eight years before the government whistleblower began leaking documents.
On Dec 16, 2005, New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau broke the news to the world of President George W. Bush’s 2002 presidential order authorizing the NSA’s use of The Program. Their source was Department of Justice attorney Thomas Tamm, who questioned its legality from the start, PRI reported in an episode of 'The World.' But Bill Keller, the New York Times editor working with Risen and Lichtblau, decided to run the story past top White House officials to get the government’s side of the issue.
According to Frontline’s Michael Kirk, the government used three arguments to convince the Times not to run the story, including: “It is completely legal; it is a vulnerable secret that, if you reveal it, hundreds of thousands of Americans may die in the next attack; and it is working,” Kirk told The World. So the paper delayed the story from when Tamm first talked to the Times reporters in the summer of 2004 until after the presidential election - 18 months after first contact.
Just half a month after the first of Risen’s NSA stories hit the pages of the Times, reports began to surface of the delay in publication. “The administration first learned that The New York Times had obtained information about the secret eavesdropping program more than a year ago and expressed concern to editors that its disclosure could jeopardize terrorism investigations," one of its own articles stated on December 31, 2005. “The newspaper withheld the article at the time, and the government did not open a leak investigation at that time, presumably because such an inquiry might itself disclose the program.”
But readers cried foul. In an April 2006 website feature, Eric Sullivan asked Keller, “I’d like to know why you sat on the N.S.A. story. You probably changed the course of an election and likely history to come.”
Keller responded, “Whether publishing earlier would have influenced the 2004 election is, I think, hard to say. Judging from the public reaction to the N.S.A. eavesdropping reflected in various polls, one could ask whether earlier disclosure might have helped President Bush more than hurt.”..."
(right!)
(I'm reading an e-book by Molly Ivins and Lou DuBose called BILL OF WRONGS -- The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights, which goes into great detail on this and other abuses from a legal and Constitutional standpoint. You can read it at american-buddha.com.)
(This goes back to the early Bush administration.)
"The New York Times and the Justice Department are under fire for bowing to the National Security Agency and either hiding (the Times) or misinforming (DOJ) the public about crucial pieces of the NSA’s secret spying programs.
An episode of PBS Frontline focuses on the 2004 decision by New York Times editor Bill Keller to kill a story on the NSA in the run-up to that year’s presidential election. The two-part program is called 'United States of Secrets,' and reveals “the dramatic inside story of the U.S. government’s massive and controversial secret surveillance program—and the lengths they went to trying to keep it hidden from the public.”
The report looks back at what the NSA called 'The Program' - the NSA’s decision to spy on Americans’ electronic interactions by spying on telephones, internet communications, metadata from emails, and almost all forms of electronic communications - all without warrants. Scandal broke out when the secretive agency’s spying techniques were revealed to the world - but not by Edward Snowden in the summer of 2013. The NSA first landed in hot water nearly eight years before the government whistleblower began leaking documents.
On Dec 16, 2005, New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau broke the news to the world of President George W. Bush’s 2002 presidential order authorizing the NSA’s use of The Program. Their source was Department of Justice attorney Thomas Tamm, who questioned its legality from the start, PRI reported in an episode of 'The World.' But Bill Keller, the New York Times editor working with Risen and Lichtblau, decided to run the story past top White House officials to get the government’s side of the issue.
According to Frontline’s Michael Kirk, the government used three arguments to convince the Times not to run the story, including: “It is completely legal; it is a vulnerable secret that, if you reveal it, hundreds of thousands of Americans may die in the next attack; and it is working,” Kirk told The World. So the paper delayed the story from when Tamm first talked to the Times reporters in the summer of 2004 until after the presidential election - 18 months after first contact.
Just half a month after the first of Risen’s NSA stories hit the pages of the Times, reports began to surface of the delay in publication. “The administration first learned that The New York Times had obtained information about the secret eavesdropping program more than a year ago and expressed concern to editors that its disclosure could jeopardize terrorism investigations," one of its own articles stated on December 31, 2005. “The newspaper withheld the article at the time, and the government did not open a leak investigation at that time, presumably because such an inquiry might itself disclose the program.”
But readers cried foul. In an April 2006 website feature, Eric Sullivan asked Keller, “I’d like to know why you sat on the N.S.A. story. You probably changed the course of an election and likely history to come.”
Keller responded, “Whether publishing earlier would have influenced the 2004 election is, I think, hard to say. Judging from the public reaction to the N.S.A. eavesdropping reflected in various polls, one could ask whether earlier disclosure might have helped President Bush more than hurt.”..."
(right!)
(I'm reading an e-book by Molly Ivins and Lou DuBose called BILL OF WRONGS -- The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights, which goes into great detail on this and other abuses from a legal and Constitutional standpoint. You can read it at american-buddha.com.)