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Jul

3

Arrogance — Thy Name Is Bill Keller

Posted By: 'Okie' | 1:30 pm — 7/3/2006 | Comments Off See comments below:

I don’t think it put any lives at risk.

Beating up on the New York Times is red meat for the Conservative Base.

If You’re Under The Impression That The Press Is Neutral, That Couldn’t Be More Wrong.

I’ve just finished viewing yesterday morning’s Face The Nation interview with NYT Editor in Chief Bill Keller, and I’m so beside myself that there are two or three of me sitting here writing this! The above three quotes are made by Keller in one of the most casual displays of arrogance that I have ever witnessed. Expose the Left has the link to the video.

But, go back to first Keller quote at the start of this post, “I don’t think it put any lives at risk.” Then consider this excerpt from the original NYT article:

Among the successes was the capture of a Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort, several officials said. The Swift data identified a previously unknown figure in Southeast Asia who had financial dealings with a person suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda; that link helped locate Hambali in Thailand in 2003, they said.

In the United States, the program has provided financial data in investigations into possible domestic terrorist cells as well as inquiries of Islamic charities with suspected of having links to extremists, the officials said.

The data also helped identify a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges last year, the officials said. The man, Uzair Paracha, who worked at a New York import business, aided a Qaeda operative in Pakistan by agreeing to launder $200,000 through a Karachi bank, prosecutors said.

So, outing a successful-secret anti-terror program that had already accomplished much doesn’t “put any lives at risk”? Really? How can someone reach the stature of NYT Editor-in-Chief with logical reasoning like that?

Quote #2: “Beating up on the New York Times is red meat for the Conservative Base.” No kidding — but intimating that this entire brouhaha is just partisan politics fails to come to grips with the reality of the mood of the people. According to the 6/29 FoxNews poll:

[T]here is strong support for the Treasury Department program tracking financial transactions in search of terrorist funding. Seven of 10 Americans support the program, including majorities of Republicans (83 percent), independents (67 percent) and Democrats (58 percent).

I’m sure that Mr. Keller has no regard for what “seven of 10 Americans” think. Mr. Keller is one of the elites of the Fourth Estate who very easily could remark, “Who cares if the rabble are concerned that our broadcasting leaked-classified information to our enemies in a Time-of-War might get throngs of them killed, ’cause — didn’t you see what I said in quote #1?”

Quote #3: “If You’re Under The Impression That The Press Is Neutral, That Couldn’t Be More Wrong.” Keller follows that up with what he, and Dean Baquet at the LA Times have been repeating ad nauseum:

Make no mistake, journalists have a large and personal stake in the country’s security. We live and work in cities that have been tragically marked as terrorist targets. Reporters and photographers from both our papers braved the collapsing towers to convey the horror to the world.

We have correspondents today alongside troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others risk their lives in a quest to understand the terrorist threat; Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journal was murdered on such a mission. We, and the people who work for us, are not neutral in the struggle against terrorism.

No, folks — they “are not neutral in the struggle against terrorism”, they are aggressively, and relentlessly against the administration’s struggle to keep us safe — their actions border on the suicidal. I keep coming back to the same conclusion. Liberals in this country are so consumed with Bush hatred that they are willing to risk the lives of not only common folk, like yours truly, but of their very-elite-assed selves, too. That’s some scary you-know-what!

Expose the Left points out more of Keller’s arrogance:

Keller attempted to play the sympathy card, saying the public doesn’t know when the NY Times DOES NOT publish sensitive information. If that wasn’t disgusting enough, Keller continued his defense and summed up the leak as “one man’s breach of security is another man’s public relations.”

Patterico has more:

Keller, you’re a smart guy, and I know you know better than this. There is a difference between publishing a story saying “Government Monitors International Banking Transactions,” which, without detail, would be greeted by a big yawn — and publishing the story that you did publish, which exposed the classified details of how the government does this. As See Dubya has already observed, you can’t have it both ways. Either this story revealed nothing secret and sensitive, in which case it didn’t deserve front-page coverage and the agonizing that you and Dean Baquet and Doyle McManus say you went through — or it did, in which case you can’t credibly argue that the terrorists were told nothing useful.

Watch the whole thing and see if you can avoid getting extremely angry.

I did, and I couldn’t!

And then there’s SeeDubYa’s take on all this:

So maybe the authorities thought that if the program had already caught three money men, a courier, and a major terrorist organizer there might be one or two more Al-Qaeda operatives somewhere in the world who hadn’t gotten the memo about the Swift program surveillance…and so it might be a good idea to keep it a secret.

Oh, well: they’ve heard of it now. Thanks, New York Times!

Yeah, thanks again guys. Lookin’ forward to the next Intelligence expose! Lookin’ forward to standin’ in line at LAX and getting blown all to shit by a freakin’ Islamic Jihadi, who wasn’t caught ’cause your blissful arrogance compromised a program that would have stopped, intercepted or alerted our anti-terror forces to his plans and facilitated his capture. Actually, I’ll be more than happy to pass up and leave that last experience for you. Be my guest. No problem — I insist! After all, arrogance should have its privileges . . . (db)

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