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Call it the Washington Beltway's "Axis of Abuse": irresponsible reporters and editors collaborating with agenda-ed, unnamed "leakers."
The exposure of a legal and productive counterterror intelligence operation on the front page of the June 23 edition of the New York Times is the latest abusive and dangerous example of this Beltway hustle. "Leakers" in this particular case is too weak a term -- exposing the finance-monitoring program amounts to spying for terrorists.
The New York Times acknowledged the program it exposed was limited "to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry. " The paper also admitted these intelligence operations helped nab al Qaeda's Southeast Asia terror kingpin, Hambali, the man who planned the 2002 Bali massacre...
So why expose this fruitful, legal operation? Why expose necessary secrets that protect American lives?
The simple power to do it is one explanation -- and that's the power of a bully. Add arrogance and greed, and we have a "most likely" explanation. The New York Times obviously believes it can expose intelligence secrets and pay no penalty. Hot stories sell newspapers. This "revelation," however, is manufactured sensationalism. The Times has demonstrated it will manufacture scandal no matter the national cost.
There is much still to admire at the New York Times ? Correction, there are admirably talented people working at the Times producing world-class work (John Burns is the world's top foreign correspondent). However, editorial responsibility and judgment are seriously lacking. The Times' editors appear to be wedded to the two "press templates" of Vietnam and Watergate. "Get Bush" is their current "Get Nixon." ...
