Well, tortured logic, anyway. How else could you explain the NYT’s attempt to occupy the moral high ground by claiming to discern a convenient distinction between the Plamegate affair on the one hand, and their revealing of the NSA terrorist monitoring capability on the other?
The first at its heart involves nothing more than the usual inside-the-beltway rough and tumble: A partisan operative tries to make political hay against the other side, who in turn attempts, in classic form, to impeach the critic’s motives and integrity.
The NSA leak fiasco on the other hand exposed an exceptionally sensitive and extremely classified technical capability, one that a wartime Commander-in-Chief avers prevented actual terrorist attacks against the nation. It is a program that, despite the full-throated howls of those whose outrage is ever tailored to fit their political perspective, continues to be publicly and vigorously defended as legal, appropriate and necessary.
Capabilities like this are jealously guarded and access carefully controlled. Leaking that capability was a felony crime, as the leaker had to know, and the damage done to national security in a time of war by publishing the leak has the potential to be exceptionally grave.
Now contrast that with the fact that only current indictment emanating from the Plamegate investigation came not from the ostensible and narrowly defined crime being charged, but from the sequelae of the investigation itself. Add to that perversity the fact the “outing” itself was no more than an off-hand confirmation of something so well known inside a notoriously loose-lipped political culture so as to render it intrinsically worthless.
Internalize all of that and then read this:
When the government does not want the public to know what it is doing, it often cites national security as the reason for secrecy. The nation’s safety is obviously a most serious issue, but that very fact has caused this administration and many others to use it as a catchall for any matter it wants to keep secret, even if the underlying reason for the secrecy is to prevent embarrassment to the White House. The White House has yet to show that national security was harmed by the report on electronic spying, which did not reveal the existence of such surveillance – only how it was being done in a way that seems outside the law. (Emphasis mine.)
Now, firstly watch as the Times asserts as true (because they say so!) the ludicrous and self-serving accusation that this capability was classified in order to avoid embarrassing the White House. Far from being embarrassed, the Administration is clearly proud of what they’ve done to defend the country. Then read that last bolded bit, as impenetrable as it is and ask whether it was crafted by a J-school grad from Columbia, or an L-school grad from Harvard. The kind of guy who could look you in the eye and, just for example, bite his lip a little and tell you that it depends upon what your definition of “is” is.
Forgivable perhaps, in a politician. Pathetic and absurd in the journal of record.
Perfectly reasonabe distinction, sir, if you take the view that the highest function of the press is to act as watchdog against our government–and if you accept the planted (and rather comforting) axiom that the biggest threat to Americans is that government overstepping its boundaries.
In this view, the Plame leaks are appalling, because they exemplify the government, or someone acting on its behalf, using its powers to hurt a critic.
On the other hand, the leaks on NSA wiretapping are commendable, because they were motivated by worry that the government was acting improperly, and by the desire to keep it honest.
I reject the above view, with some vehemence and even scorn; I’m just trying to get into the heads of my opponents, since I am nearly surrounded by people who would make this argument with a straight face.
You called the second bolded portion “impenetrable” for good reason. Perhaps you picked and chose, I thought, for effect. So I read the whole thing. The second part highlighted by you is still impenetrable.
After reading the op-ed I have the same reaction I did when I heard about the NSA program from the NYT: “Gosh, whose side are the editorial boardmembers of that ‘newspaper’ on?”
If their reply would be, “There’s more than two sides,” then they’re really being suckered into the “enemy of my enemy” thing.
Well JPS I admire your ability to crawl inside such fevered minds and return with your own sanity intact
While I can agree with the first part of your first paragraph’s statement unreservedly, a free press being a critical check on an unconstitutional accumulation of power, the second part I wonder about, in a time of war. “Inter arma silent leges,” is a sentiment I cannot entirely endorse, sworn as I am to support and defend the Constitution, but it is a sentiment whose thrust I understand.
In New York, of all places, you’d think they’d have a finer sense of who the real enemy is. For those of your friends who’d support that interpretation, ask of them for me if it really makes consistent sense that the only appropriate leaks which can occur in a time of war are those that damage the Commander-in-Chief, while those that support his efforts are intolerable. I’m not saying that he’s got a free pass, far from it, but if I was to have to choose between cutting slack to those who are sworn to defend me, or those who have sworn to kill me, I think the choice would be pretty easy.
Reese- it’s amazing, isn’t it? The Times burns a highly classified system on their front page, after having sat on the story for a year! on account perhaps of the People’s Right To Know, and then throws it back on the Executive to prove why the subject should have been classified to begin with. Seems to me like it’s skipping a step or two.
Perhaps the other thought is to question whether the argument is being made in good faith. Sometimes an argument is just an argument.
Among friends (perhaps among individuals generally) extending an assumption of good faith seems the gentlemanly and courteous thing to do; mutual respect assumes sincerity in the exchange of ideas. But among institutions, organizations, parties…well, the integrity of this wonderful intellectual dialogue almost always defers to other interests. And if you assume that rather weak arguments like this one are made not in good faith but rather to shield an interest…well, they become much less infuriating. They’re actually kind of entertaining in a peculiar way, like a mouse playing a banjo. Ha! “Did not reveal the existence of such surveillance”! And with those tiny little paws!
I’ve always thought that the most insulting response to an adversary’s argument is not a vile string of epithets, but uncontrollable, unfeigned, utterly nonresponsive laughter.
(Yes, the broader consequences of having this sort of thing pass as informed opinion in the grand public debate are not very funny — but on this point, I have a certain faith in American common sense.)
/L-school grad, who seriously thinks the last sentence of the article turns on what the meaning of “existence” is
Since the distinction between the two leaks seems to hinge on motive, at least in the NYTs’ eyes, I found this interesting:
Russ Tice, a whistleblower who was dismissed from the NSA last year, stated in letters to the House and Senate intelligence committees that he is prepared to testify about highly classified Special Access Programs, or SAPs, that were improperly carried out by both the NSA and the DIA.
link here
RJL – You’re one of two L-school grads I know of that drop by here, and the other one hasn’t been around in a while, so thanks especially for your point of view.
You know, there was a time in the way back when that I thought I might leave the service and dip my toe in the legal waters. I don’t know that I’d have been able to take the evident joy in disputation that good lawyers seem to do, nor yet become entertained by this sort of twisted reasoning. But I do, like you, entertain a higher regard for the public’s common sense than does their herald.
Steve – Ah! The white knight revealed at last. A whistleblower, or an axe-grinder? Both, a little, probably.
But those will be the frames.
The only NYT’s metric I care about:
http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=NYT&script=300&layout=-6
That Lex is the bottomline.
re Mr. Tice:
Read his staement- “I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency and with the Defense Intelligence Agency,” Mr. Tice stated in the Dec. 16 letters”
Probable? What a pontificating statement……White Knight? We’ll see. I’m sure there are Joey Wilson types at the NSA, too.
B2