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| Who broke the law? |
Itsdb |
02/03/06 |
The NY Times or the president.
A fascinating article in Commentary Magazine lays out the case beautifully. Due to its length I will only offer excerpts - much of which has already been covered by experts here.
The article notes that according to section 798 of the Espionage Act, "Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information... (3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government...Shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
It points out that "With the bill narrowly tailored in this way, and “with concern for public speech having thus been respected” (in the words of Edgar and Schmidt), Section 798 not only passed in Congress but, perhaps astonishingly in hindsight, won the support of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. At the time, the leading editors of the New York Times were active members of that society."
As for the Whistleblower defense...
"As for whistleblowers unhappy with one or another government program, they have other avenues at their disposal than splashing secrets across the front page of the New York Times. The Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 shields employees from retribution if they wish to set out evidence of wrongdoing. When classified information is at stake, the complaints must be leveled in camera, to authorized officials, like the inspectors general of the agencies in question, or to members of congressional intelligence committees, or both. Neither the New York Times nor any other newspaper or television station is listed as an authorized channel for airing such complaints."
So much for that excuse.
"If it (the NY Times) has not inveighed directly against the war on terrorism, its editorial page has opposed almost every measure taken by the Bush administration in waging that war, from the Patriot Act to military tribunals for terrorist suspects to the CIA renditions of al-Qaeda operatives to the effort to depose Saddam Hussein. “Mr. Bush and his attorney general,” says the Times, have “put in place a strategy for a domestic anti-terror war that [has] all the hallmarks of the administration’s normal method of doing business: a Nixonian obsession with secrecy, disrespect for civil liberties, and inept management.” Of the renditions, the paper has argued that they “make the United States the partner of some of the world’s most repressive regimes”; constitute “outsourcing torture”; and can be defended only on the basis of “the sort of thinking that led to the horrible abuses at prisons in Iraq.” The Times’s opposition to the Patriot Act has been even more heated: the bill is “unconstitutionally vague”; “a tempting bit of election-year politics”; “a rushed checklist of increased police powers, many of dubious value”; replete with provisions that “trample on civil liberties”; and plain old “bad law.”
In pursuing its reflexive hostility toward the Bush administration, the Times, like the Chicago Tribune before it, has become an unceasing opponent of secrecy laws, editorializing against them consistently and publishing government secrets at its own discretion. So far, there has been only a single exception to this pattern. It merits a digression, both because it is revealing of the Times’s priorities and because it illustrates how slender is the legal limb onto which the newspaper has climbed.
The exception has to do with Valerie Plame Wilson.
The NY Times - guilty.
Question? Will the left ever admit to their blatant hypocrisy? Will the Times be held accountable?
Steve |
Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 02/05/06 6:28 am:
Steve
I had a thought yesterday even more disturbing then what you laid out .The Slimes as disgraceful as their disclosure is ,is still only the messenger . The justice dept. is investigating the source of the leak .Although there has been an NSA disgrunteled employee who has now gone public and want to testify before Congress,I do not believe he was the person who the Slimes used as a source.
I think the source is either Senator Jay Rockefeller(senior Democrat Senate Intelligence Commitee) or one of his staff working on his behalf and under his direction .Don't forget he has a history of (none dare call it treason) strong opposition aginst the polices of the United States. He admitted on Fox News that in 2002 he told Syria and other Arab nations that the Iraq invasion was going to happen as if he were "Paul Revere" on horseback, riding through the Syrian desert, shouting, "The Americans are coming, the Americans are coming!"
I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq
Imagine telling foreign heads of states, who are NOT friendly to this country, what our military plans are! This gave Saddam months of preparation in advance of our mobilization .In 2002, we were at war against Islamofascist terrorists, and Syria has long been listed by the US State Department as a terrorist-supporting state.
Rockefeller claims that after he had a meeting with VP Cheney expressing his "concerns "about the program ;he wrote 2 identical letters expressing those concerns .One he sent to Cheney . He claims to have gone to great lenghts to lock the other letter away (in a safe) so that not even other close members of the Senate knew about it.But the Slimes James Risen revealed the letter's existance in his initial NSA book excerpt. If not even Rockefeller's closest confidants, staffers, etc, knew of the letter's existance, how did James Risen know about it?
How long are we going to tolerate Senators and Congressmen who divulge our most closely-held secrets to the public in search of cheap political gain? We have laws that make those leaks serious federal crimes.Sen. Richard Shelby blew one of our most important secrets ; that we were bugging Osama bin Laden's cell phone, a fact that could have led to his capture ; by bragging about it to a reporter. Shelby's action has never been prosecuted. Why not?
If he is indeed the subject of this investigation it would not be the first time that Rockefeller was the subject of a leak probe. In early 2005, the CIA asked the Justice Department to look into whether Democratic Senators Dick Durbin, Jay Rockefeller and Ron Wyden leaked details about a secret “black ops” CIA satellite program in December of 2004. That investigation is still on going.
I don't know where all this is going . I smell a Constitutional crisis . There are no provisions for impeachment for Senators . But there are many laws that cover this activity . One of the lesser laws he may have violated is the so called Logan Act ,but I think ,given that he holds a high ranking position in the Intelligenc Committee and has access to some of our most classified secrets ,that the Logan Act fails to properly address his possible violations of national secuirty .
Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 02/06/06 9:49 am:
Wow, good work tom. I don't think Logan would have any weight as these guys can claim they have 'authority' as representatives. What would carry weight is if the media would jump on the "Justice Department Probing Durbin, Rockefeller CIA Leak" story with the same vigor as they pursued the Plame game or DeLay's troubles. But again, I'm not holding my breath
Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 02/06/06 10:09 am:
If what I suspect is true then I want Federal Indictments against him .I have not seen any provision for removal from office; Constitution or otherwise.Arron Burr sat in as VP and President of the Senate even though he was charged with the murder of Alexander Hamilton in New York and New Jersey. Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 02/06/06 10:29 am:
If what you suspect is true then federal indictments are imperative for the future of this nation.
Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 02/06/06 11:08 am:
When the crime was bribery (Abscam) no one protested that a sitting U.S. Senator ought not to be a target.No doubt the Slimes will be calling for a criminal investigation.
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