Dan Froomkin: Intimidating the Press After 9/11

from the WaPo, via Truthout:



Intimidating the Press
By Dan Froomkin
The Washington Post

Thursday 03 April 2008

It's a case study in how the Bush administration intimidated the press after 9/11.

The publication of a new book by Eric Lichtblau, one of the two New York Times reporters who in late 2005 broke the story of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program, is calling attention to how the White House successfully persuaded the Times to suppress its expose in the fall of 2004 - when it might have had a profound effect on President Bush's reelection hopes.

In an interview with Terry Gross that aired yesterday on NPR, Lichtblau spoke about the paper's decision.

"Why didn't it run then?" Gross asked.

Lichtblau: "Well, this was obviously a decision made by the top editors at the paper, and I think it was a very tough one. I think you got to remember, these were somewhat different times for the media in 2004. We were only, at that point, a couple of years after 9/11. I'm not sure, in hindsight, there were many newspapers that would've gone ahead and published that story, given the intense, intense pressure and the claims that were made by the White House. Our reporting had shown a lot of things about the cracks in the program, about the concerns about the legal foundations. The White House was armed and ready to refute every single one of those with what, in hindsight, turned out to be, I believe, misstatements about how every lawyer at the Justice Department, for instance, had found this program to be legal. We certainly know that now in hindsight not to be true.

"But, you know, in 2004, those were difficult things for the newspaper to refute; and we had the White House, at the highest levels, insisting that this program would harm national security were we to write about it. And I think the concern from the editors - and I didn't necessarily agree, you know, I pushed for publication, I don't think that's any secret. The concern from the editors was would we be merely outing an operational program that was on a firm legal foundation, and they made the decision that we could not do that at that point."

But is there a happy ending here? Did the Times's decision to run the piece in 2005 - even after a personal warning from Bush that it would be responsible for the next terrorist attack - signify the end of a period of fear and intimidation?

In an excerpt from his new book "Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice" published in Slate last week, Lichtblau writes about the terrified, credulous environment in the nation's top newsrooms that lasted for several years after the 9/11 attacks that the White House was able to exploit. He writes that "a healthy, essential skepticism ... was missing from much of the media's early reporting after 9/11, both at home in the administration's war on terror and abroad in the run-up to the war in Iraq." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040308T.shtml

...were they to publish illegal wiretapping story before November 2004.

A "credulous environment" my eye. The New York Times helped Bush sell America on an illegal and immoral war.

They weren't "forced" into anything. Most of them happily carried the water for the Bush administration. THey're going to bitch about things being difficult to "refute".

Show of hands, how many people here just bought what the administration told them after 9/11? Anyone? Bueller?

believe them, especially *about* 9/11.

They are hiding something and it is far more than mere "incompetence."

The corporate media has turned its back on America, and chosen to lick republcion booty with a propaganda tongue...

when he reported that the FBI was spying on peace groups.

As far as I'm concerned, everything that Bush has done since he stole Kerry's election is the fault of the New York Times and the rest of the sniveling, cowardly corp of presstitutes. They have blood on their hands.

to cover their asses?

The whole "You're either with U.S. or with the terra-ists" arguments is nothing more than a cheap, handy blanket which, when it fails, is backed up by calling anyone who disagrees "unpatriotic" or an outright threat to national security.

National Security isn't limited to preventing the U.S. from attacks by foreign agents, it's a comprehensive concept of security - economic, social, health, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Rule of Law and all the other "perks" upon which our society based. The attack of 9/11 did nothing to threaten our national security, but this administration has done a hell of a job mopping up in the aftermath.

When George Bush speaks of "The War on Terra", every world citizen should be asking themselves if he's actually mis-speaking. If nothing else, what has happened over the past seven years is a direct assault on the planet, it's resources and it's people.

this is how a man might commit a murder.

This is how our rogue government has and is intimidating and neutralizing our press.