Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence

The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency.

For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making. My queries concerned the timing of the exclusive Dec. 16 article about President Bush's secret decision in the months after 9/11 to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States.]

I e-mailed a list of 28 questions to Bill Keller, the executive editor, on Dec. 19, three days after the article appeared. He promptly declined to respond to them. I then sent the same questions to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, who also declined to respond. They held out no hope for a fuller explanation in the future.

.......

The most obvious and troublesome omission in the explanation was the failure to address whether The Times knew about the eavesdropping operation before the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election. That point was hard to ignore when the explanation in the article referred rather vaguely to having "delayed publication for a year." To me, this language means the article was fully confirmed and ready to publish a year ago - after perhaps weeks of reporting on the initial tip - and then was delayed.




http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/opinion/01publiceditor.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fThe%20Public%20Editor

is squelched, sometimes voluntarily, the Congress controlled by the GOP is not yet attacking the deed and by inference is letting the WH have full rein with its legality claims. Therefore the whistleblower(s) are being pursued without any protection of being material witnesses to a crime but as unshielded Ellsbergs, who only escaped a huge prison term because of the "technicality" of the break in into his psychiatrist's office. Since Ellsberg things have notably become worse for whistleblowers. The NYT in this article is being proposed- in the fog of unknowing- as possibly shielding their sources by yet incomplete reporting.

That is the wisest guess- in ignorance- that the OPED writer can make, a dilemma justified by being still out in the cold due to Congressional inaction. Once caught, the NYT would further have its back against the wall by its ties to a criminal leaker- such as ironically has NOT happened to that degree in the Plame case. This is a paper torn apart by its arrogant collusion with renegade power, soon to be dancing from one hot pool of water to another all because it still dares to carry on the activity of real journalism with heavily compromised and bad judgment and wildly irresponsible methodology. This meltdown is what you get when you marry the corruption of journalism with the presumption of doing the real thing.
Even more than just selling out to the bad guys is the eventual crisis self-produced of trying to conduct business as usual which would result in the fall of those bad guys.

He questioned! Ach!