The Times Uproar

[UPDATE: There's a wonderful joint statement that's been put out by the editors of the NY Times and the LA Times, normally rivals. It can be read here and is well worth a read. It should especially be read by anyone considering leveling a charge of treason or seriously considering any sort of officially sanctioned censorship of our news media. Someone on the Fox morning program earlier this week actually suggested (seriously) that we needed a "Department of Censorship", as though that wasn't in diametric contradiction to our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. Read the statement, it might shed some new light on how the press actually makes these decisions. --Liam.]

It's been a while since I posted much in the way of updates on here, but today we've got several. First, there's a report on a recent Countdown with Keith Olbermann (I don't know which day, I've gotten behind on watching them, so I just watched the last three day's worth or so on my TiVo) regarding the hullabaloo surrounding last week's NY Times article on the “secret terrorist financing tracking” program.

The article dealt with a U.S. program to access and monitor the databases of the "Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications", or SWIFT. Much of the response has been to denounce the Times as traitorous, unpatriotic, and damaging to our national security. The Administration and its supporters and apologists have made the somewhat ludicrous claim that if this article hadn't come out, terrorists would have had no idea that we might be trying to track their financing, in spite of the fact that it's been reported before that al Qaeda has taken to trying to hide their moving of money by doing it though banks in countries where the requirements for information gathering is looser, a step which they clearly would not have taken, if they didn't believe we were trying to track them.

Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow said that he was quite certain al Qaeda was unaware prior to the Times article of the existence of SWIFT.

But that argument becomes almost ludicrous when you discover that SWIFT has a web site, http://www.swift.com. This web site states clearly that one of the organization's goals is "Cooperating in the global fight against abuse of the financial system for illegal activities". SWIFT also puts out a magazine, called "Dialogue". So clearly, as Mr. Olbermann put it, SWIFT is about as clandestine an organization as Wachovia.

But back to the original argument that this program and our tracking of terrorist financing was somehow a great secret, Countdown then goes on to play a montage of no less than nine times over the last five years in which President Bush has publicly stated that we had programs dealing with the finances of terrorist organizations. In one, from September 24, 2001, Bush says "today we have launched a strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network". Three months later on December 20th, "the assets of more than 150 known terrorists, there organizations and their bankers have been frozen by the United States". So we're to believe that al Qaeda could find us trying to shut down their financial transactions but be unaware that we were tracking their financial transactions?

The best quote, though, is this one from March 23, 2004 (coincidentally my brother's 36th birthday), "We've got a strong network of cooperative governments trying to chase down terrorist money, and to prevent that money from being spread around to cause harm."

So you tell me, was there really anything new in the New York Times article, that President Bush had not himself already told the nation, the world, and of course the terrorists (who almost certainly track his public statements)?

Or does it look more like a tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing, this uproar over the Times article?

All I can say is this: Be very careful before you go buying into the meme that the Times should be censured and reigned in. Because to me, this looks like one more power grab by the Administration, this time in the form of trying to discredit and justify muzzling our free press. They may not be much, and heaven knows that since 9/11 they've been seriously lying down on the job, but we're certainly much better off having them then not.

And I ask you this: If the Administration truly is doing nothing wrong, not violating any of our laws, what reason could they possibly have for trying to shut down the free press, particularly over a story which becomes increasingly clear was not in any way harmful to our nation.

Liam.