World War II was probably the Golden Age of journalism, from the reader's perspective. Reporters told our country how the war was progressing and encouraged the people back on the Home Front to hold tight and keep supporting the war effort.
Right now, though, we're in the Tarnished Age of journalism. If reporters remember at all that we're in a war, they have trouble remembering which war it is--the war on the Bush administration, or the war on the Islamofascist thugs who want to destroy all of us even reporters who hate President Bush. Usually they think we're in the former.
And while the press fights its war against the President, their tactics undermine the war the President is fighting and make all of us less safe. Somehow, the MSM doesn't seem to care about our safety, and their disregard for national security has brought things to the point that Porter Goss, head of the CIA, felt compelled to write a column for the New York Times on February 10 2006, defending his agency's efforts in the Global War on Terror and explaining why the leaking of national secrets is both dangerous and criminal.
AT the Central Intelligence Agency, we are more than holding our own in the global war on terrorism, but we are at risk of losing a key battle: the battle to protect our classified information.
Judge Laurence Silberman, a chairman of President Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said he was "stunned" by the damage done to our critical intelligence assets by leaked information.
Exercising one's rights under [the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act] is an appropriate and responsible way to bring questionable practices to the attention of those in Congress charged with oversight of intelligence agencies. And it works. Government employees have used statutory procedures — including internal channels at their agencies — on countless occasions to correct abuses without risk of retribution and while protecting information critical to our national defense.
On the other hand, those who choose to bypass the law and go straight to the press are not noble, honorable or patriotic. Nor are they whistleblowers. Instead they are committing a criminal act that potentially places American lives at risk. It is unconscionable to compromise national security information and then seek protection as a whistleblower to forestall punishment.
And that's exactly where the mainstream media is at. They accept and print leaked classified information, protect their sources, and defend the national security damage they cause with the ubiquitous, "The public has a right to know."
But they don't stop there. After the leaked information is out, they focus on the Kennedy/Pelosi/Boxer outrage that the President could do such nefarious things as defend the country against attack, and they ignore or mischaracterize the Administration's defense of its now useless (thanks to the leakers and their MSM enablers) methods.
I can't decide if the MSM is just incredibly stupid and inept in the way they report the GWOT, or if they're so incredibly partisan that they would put the country and even themselves at greater risk for the sake of bringing President Bush down. Neither option speaks well for their intellectual capacity.
Porter Goss concludes his column this way:
Our enemies cannot match the creativity, expertise, technical genius and tradecraft that the C.I.A. brings to bear in this war. Criminal disclosures of national security information, however, can erase much of that advantage. The terrorists gain an edge when they keep their secrets and we don't keep ours.
Let's hope that criminal prosecution of classified information leaks will dry up the MSM's sources. If not, the Tarnished Age may well give way to the Obliterated Age.
4 comments:
Interesting how you decided to omit the espionage which the president "authorized". The secret court is there to stop the abuse of power, they were being bypassed in the majority of circumstances... why? It's a well documented fact that they almost always approve the request anyways, so it'd be very interesting to hear why it was determined to be "not operationally feasible" which is something the CIA would not answer. Furthermore, congress has stated that they did not authorize the president to set up unauthorized phone taps on Americans. So he didn't have the authority to authorize those taps. Who's being wiretapped? Naturally that can't be released, but there's been reports and documenation from the NSA of a group of Quakers which were infiltrated.
The freedom of information act was passed to protect Americans from government corruption. It's uncovered the abuse and murders of prisoners held by the military. Link to story The documentation comes from the military, obtained via the freedom of information act.
One thing we agree on is that the leak of the CIA name was indeed deplorable, and the journalist should be put on trial.
As for the media being out to get Bush, didn't they do the same to Clinton when he got caught with his pants down? If the president can't tell his side of the story it makes him seem pretty suspect. Just like when an officer asks a question and the suspect pleads the fifth. It's not conclusive evidence, but everyone gets the picture.
I'm sure you'll write some of those stories off as liberal propeganda and fail to provide an actual rebuttal. Just remember that there's more than one side to every story. Police are "out to get criminals" and nobody seems to think that's bad. If the media is out to get stories about people in power bypassing the protections set up to prevent abuse of the power given to them, who says that's a bad thing?
Anonymous,
Thank you for your comments. I'm glad there's something we agree on (leaking CIA information is deplorable).
You've mischaracterized the warrantless listening to phone conversations as "unauthorized phone taps on Americans," but this is not what is being done. Phone taps are not being placed on the phones of Americans. We monitor the phone calls placed from foreign locations by people known or believed to be part of al-Qaeda or related terror organizations. When they call anywhere, foreign or American locations, then we listen.
FDR did similar eavesdropping during WWII, and Clinton did this during his administration. Your outrage appears selective. And unwarranted, since Article II gives the President the ability to prosecute a war, and that ability includes listening to conversations of the enemy.
As for the media having been out to get President Clinton, Monicagate hardly qualifies. It was a distraction so the press could shut up about Clinton's real abuses of power. When it came to Clinton, the media reported the minimum necessary to satisfy itself that it was being objective.
It's still doing similar double-standard reporting today. Take the Abrahamoff scandal. I understand that many Democrats received money from Abrahamoff's clients the same as the Republicans, but the media is busy pushing the Republican connection and either ignoring or dismissing the Democrat connection.
Conspiracy? No. An organized effort by the media to bring down the President? No. But ideology clouds objectivity, and the only ones claiming objectivity these days seem to be the ones who really, really don't like Bush.
Warrentless tapping. The key questions that the administration refuses to answer: Why is the court being evaded? (espcially because we know it's practically a rubber stamp anyways)
How do they decided who's phone should be tapped? I can appriciate the need to keep some things from getting out to the public (and thus the enemy), but most (if not all) terrorists know they're on the hitlist, so giving out this information isn't going to make them change their course of action. If they're not already taking the proper precautions, it's not like they're going to turn on the news and all of the sudden realize that they're being watched. If someone in the NSA could even just answer these two simple questions it would quell the media uprising. The lack of information is as distrubing as the reported actions themselves.
It's like the unanswered questions of the attacks on 9/11. I don't believe any of the theories that I've heard thus far. The evidence doesn't fully support the official story, but on the other hand that doesn't mean that the alternative explanations are correct either. But I suppose the truth will be buried on the grassy knoll.
As for the debate on semantics of "warrantless listening to phone conversations" vs. "unauthorized phone taps on Americans"; I suppose listening to phone conversations and phone taps could be different but given the back end on the phone system I wouldn't see why they'd use any other method. In terms of warentless or unauthorized it's a matter of whether the president has the authority to approve such actions which is questionable either way.
WWII was a horse of a different color. We were giving it everything we had and the outcome was uncertain; while we are virtually at our maximum capacity in terms of how our military is extended we're certainly not in the same kind of danger as in the great war. We've only lost around 2300 of our troops (not counting Iraqis, and our allies). It has cost us $440,000,000,000 but that's not danger, that's just economics. I don't know the specifics of the either case (FDR, Clinton) so I can't formulate an opinion. All I can say is that I would go in with a bias against the eavesdropping; they'd have to prove what they're doing is justified, not the other way around.
Abrahamof scandal: The vast majority of the people suspected of taking bribes are Republican (which makes sense being that they're in power). I haven't seen or heard much about it, so apparently it's not selling as many papers as it was originally, but when it was being reported I heard vastly different numbers from one station to another. Some stations "forgot" to mention that there were two democrates suspected, and/or they inflated the numbers up to 30 people involved and possibly more. When the dust settles I'd be suprised if more than six people are even brought to trial with no more than two convictions. Like I said... with few exceptions, they want to sell papers, and some stations will go further than others. It's a catch 22, if they report news objectivly the stories aren't as exciting and they often can't afford to keep on track. And since the majority of Americans are too ignorant to figure this out, the cycle continues.
"ideology clouds objectivity" <- good point. Name three news stations that don't have an adgenda. We have radical stations like KPFK, and then the other side like Rush. The reporters who actually are fair get stompped out either for digging too deep (law suits threaten profits, so they're not welcome at large firms... and small operations can't afford the costs of a law suit), or for being unprofitable. It's sad.
This "war" on terrioism is as much of a joke as the war on drugs. They are both, by definition, unwinnable. At the end of a war a treaty is signed and everything is worked out. Who's going to sign the treaty? How can the war end? Or are we to be at war forever? I'm sure there's more than a few companies who fancy that notion. Perhaps they're just using the wrong language, but being that it's the military fighting the enemy, perhaps war is the correct term after all.
Thanks for responding to (most of) the points. It was a nice suprise.
Sincerely,
Anon
Anonymous,
I wish I had more time to answer your questions, but my day job is very demanding of my time.
From what I understand about the FISA court, it is not a rubber stamp. Several years ago (I'm working from memory, sorry), they established paperwork demands that made the warrants much more difficult to get and caused too many requests to be denied for lack of proper paperwork (which I believe runs to as much as 300 pages). It's hard to listen to bin Laden's phone conversations when you're busy filling out forms.
What's not to believe about 9/11? 19 mostly Saudi nationals crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and (sadly for them) a Pennsylvania field.
As for media objectivity, my complaint is not that the media is biased, it's that the liberal media folks pretend that they're not. Rush has no qualms in saying he's conservative, and that goes for most of the conservative media. But the liberal media has trouble choking out that admission. They pretend to be objective, convince themselves they're objective, and then write liberal-leaning, conservative-bashing articles. Pity.
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