Speculation Builds Over Why 'NYT' Put off Bush Spying Scoop

By E&P Staff

WASHINGTON President Bush has personally authorized a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States more than three dozen times since October 2001, a senior intelligence official told The Associated Press Friday night. Meanwhile, The Washington Post said in a Saturday article that The New York Times' revelation yesterday that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct domestic eavesdropping "raised eyebrows in political and media circles, for both its stunning disclosures and the circumstances of its publication."

The Times has said that it held off publishing the article for a year, explaining that the White House had asked the paper not to publish the story at all, "arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny."

Some speculated that the newspaper had waited for a "news peg" to publish the piece, perhaps finding it in the Patriot Act debate this week. But the paper did not say what had changed in the past year and "also did not disclose that the information is included" in a forthcoming book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," written by James Risen, co-author of the Friday story, the Post pointed out. The book will be published in January by Simon & Schuster. The Drudge Report first made the charge that the Times needed to beat-the-book early on Friday.

(rest of article below @ link)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001700305

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E&P Staff

The Times has said that it held off publishing the article for a year, explaining that the White House had asked the paper not to publish the story at all, "arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny."

As though terrorists don't already know that they might be under scrutiny. :eyes:

They know better than to talk openly about their operations, that's why Osama bin Forgotten uses couriers, it's slow but unless intercepted, foolproof.I think what was being done is monitoring ordinary citizens that oppose the war and those that speak out against the theo-fascist cleptocracy that is really running the show.

and I wouldn't be surprised if DU and those of us who've protested the war had been spied upon by our government.

If enough people are being monitored, they suffer from information overload and any real culprits will probably not get caught because of the delay in processing the information that is intercepted. Computers are only partially effective in sorting data. Someone has to eyeball or listen to it. That takes time.

even this so called 'echelon' system is trying to track a drop water in the lake of erie...'good luck you fukking pig bastards' i'd like to tell the Man (w/out balls) wearing jackboots

but Fearless Leader gives them their marching orders.

that's what pisses me off: the same jackanapes who freak at a single mom getting a decent welfare cheque scream silently (cuz they have no mouths) when they see vast sums thrown away by the bullybugs (who do seem to know how to make these screaming banshee nazipooh *holes 'mouthless')

perhaps $100K per year is not a far fetched figure. You can imagine how much it would cost to pull surveillance on even a few thousand people would be astronomical. I've seen firsthand how it works. What they are doing is definitely illegal, the question is how effective it is on a short term basis. It gets scary if you look at the long-term implication for a Big Brother society.

a year, but the way the media was covering the war a year ago makes me think the story would have been all but ignored. One of the nightly news stories led with the story and I don't think for a minute that would have happened a year ago. So shoot the messenger all some want, the story is out there and it is a big story because this is the month Bush went public with his silly speeches of how well it is all going. Now if we can get some hardcore video of Iraq, the kind that turned the stomachs of Americans during Vietnam, this war will come home and end quickly. 30,000 more or less. These were human beings, not a laundry list.

And do you think the DU has been spied on?

started discussing this article--he called it 'curious timing'--and wondered outloud why now!

Because it would have been unpatriotic to publish information detrimental to the president's re-election.

Mendacious use of "national security" to keep Bush's abuse of the constitution from becoming a campaign issue.

Even Spectre says it was a violation of the law.

government is, is if someone writes a book - so they can profit from the telling - instead of just serving a public good.

lololololol

All things considered, in America - that just makes sense.

lololololol

......"The decision to withhold the article caused some friction within the Times' Washington bureau, according to people close to the paper," the Post reports. "Some reporters and editors in New York and in the bureau, including Risen and co-writer Eric Lichtblau, had pushed for earlier publication, according to these people. One described the story's path to publication as difficult, with much discussion about whether it could have been published earlier."

In a statement Friday, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote that when the Times became aware that the NSA was conducting domestic wiretaps without warrants, "the Administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security."

"Officials also assured senior editors of the Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions," Keller continued. "As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time."

In the ensuing months, Keller wrote, the paper satisfied itself through more reporting that it could write the story without exposing "any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record."

Heaven forfend that they should put their responsibility to the public above being playas.

To the world: "We wouldn't want to, nor would we want to be seen as, influencing the Residential election. Besides, we have an OPSEC excuse from DC."

To themselves: "Let's see what happens if we sit on this and release it at an opportune moment."

The liberals there: "maybe we could topple the administration - that would secure the paper's reputation for the next 50 years, we're currently in trouble so we need a gimme."

The conservatives there: "wouldn't be prudent to give all these liberal pansies around here a gimme."

The power playas there: "we will be seen as arbiters of the American political scene. nuff said."

Schmucks.

"Officials also assured senior editors of the Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions," Keller continued.

So officials (care to take a guess who those officials where?) can explain and justify to the "adults" at Time why doing this is right and why its best for the "children" (the citizens of this country) that they just don't know about it. No sense upsetting us children ...


Why again is there a war on terrorism? Was it because terrorists want to change my way of life .. make it unsafe for me to live here? The terrorist are winning, because our Constitution has been gutted and left to flap in the wind.

I'm not sure who I am more irate with .. Times for being arrogant and greedy enough to sit on this f'n information or "officials" who just piss on the Constitution.

The heart of being an American, the heart of my way of life -- is living under the protection of the Constitution.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

because it could jeopardize ongoing political campaigns and alert opposition candidates that they might be under scrutiny...

... again.

Their pro-neoliberal, pro-Wall St, pro big business, pro-empire crap (whether it's rehabilitating Larry Summers in the Magazine, or finding ANY reason to put nice pictures of and articles about Arnold in the paper prior to the recall election, or if it's protecting and promoting Bush and his war, or if it's siccing KQ Seeley, Nagourney or Wilgoren on a Democratic nominee for president) has been the calling card for that paper for years now.

where it seems the press works hand in hand with the republican party. As to why now, it must have been getting ready to be exposed in a big way.

though. But you people in surrounding communities (New Jersey, Maryland, Virgina) had better watch out. We're talking major dicks here. And King Kong sized bladders full of toxic waste.

and the NYT allowing her to remain on staff after her WMD reporting, plus PlameGate and now this, it's patently obvious to me that the paper was more interested in protecting the President, and supporting his agenda than it was in doing it's job.

news source I'm going to lose it...

if the allegations came out in book form first. Seems like they've left it almost as late as possible.