NY Times: All the Classified Information Fit to Print
We'll Print Any Classified Information We Want!!
Some here have hectored on the point " Why is everyone picking on the NY Times, when the Wall Street Journal and LA Times printed the story also"?
The NY Times printed the story first. They had been snooping around asking questions on SWIFT, and it became known that they were going to push the privacy angle. In news and editorial pieces ( hard to tell which is which ) they've repeatedly made the point that both the Wall Street Journal and LA Times printed essentially the same information.
Today, in a furious editorial, the Journal indicates that it does not like the NY Times hiding behind the Journal in its responses to criticism.
The Treasury Department didn't ask the WSJ not to print. They came to the Wall Street Journal, and apparently only did so when it was clear that the NY Times was about to go to press with this. The WSJ speculates that the government felt that the information was soon to go out anyway and that the WSJ " would write a straighter story". They said that if asked not to print they probably would not have.
The NY Times has said that their breach of security was in the public interest The WSJ begs to differ:
"Just as dubious is the defense in a Times editorial this week that "The Swift story bears no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals." In this asymmetric war against terrorists, intelligence and financial tracking are the equivalent of troop movements. They are America's main weapons."
The WSJ says:
"We suspect that the Times has tried to use the Journal as its political heatshield precisely because it knows our editors have more credibility on these matters."
The WSJ knows that this is wartime. It's been wartime for over 4 1/2 years. Pity the word never made it to West 43rd Street.
