Michelle Malkin has been following the story of the New York Times' leak of the "top-secret terrorist banking data surveillance program." Today she posted with some follow-up questions she'd like to ask NY Times public editor Bryan Calame, after he published an apology of sorts for having supported the NY Times' leakage of the program.
Michelle's post focuses on Calame's characterization of the Bush administration as "vicious" in their criticism of the NY Times. While that may get her dander up, what gets mine up is this statement by Calame:
My original support for the article rested heavily on the fact that so many people already knew about the program that serious terrorists also must have been aware of it.
Just for starters, is that "serious terrorists" as opposed to "casual terrorists"? C'mon.
My real objection is that "so many people already knew about the program," so that made it not a secret in Calame's mind.
I posted almost a year ago about a "secret" that wasn't a secret to me: when Rock Hudson died of AIDS in 1985.
I heard about Rock Hudson and Gomer Pyle being an item on the playground in fourth or fifth grade (in the late '60s) from another girl whose father told her. Everybody said, "Eeeewww!" and never came back to the subject. So I figured if I knew, then the whole world must already know. After all, I went to school in a mostly Navy-enlisted, lower-middle class neighborhood in a San Diego suburb--not the kind of place that would be in-the-know about Hollywood insider details.
But just because I knew the secret, and all the other little girls on the playground knew the secret, and that little girl's father (and probably "so many people") knew the secret, that didn't make it any less a secret to the world at large, which was shocked at the news that Rock Hudson was gay.
So for Calame to assume that just because "so many people" knew about the SWIFT program, then everyone (including the extra-special group of "serious" terrorists) knew about it is laughable. The people who knew about it were probably the ones doing the work: international bankers, FBI agents, Homeland Security personnel, and other agencies and businesses involved in trying to stop and catch terrorists. The secret people. The people who keep secrets. The people who are supposed to keep secrets out of the press.
On June 23, 2006, the NY Times published the original article blowing the lid off this program. On July 2, 2006, Bryan Calame wrote his first column on the topic, supporting the NY Times for publishing the story.
That's over a week. By then he should have heard reports that the Belgians were taken by surprise and declared the program illegal (see the end of the first section of this Wikipedia article). And if the Belgian government was surprised, then maybe--just maybe--the terrorists might have been surprised too. But that doesn't seem to have occurred to him.
The transcript on the PBS Online NewsHour from July 5, 2006, has an exchange (moderated by Jeffrey Brown) between NY Times executive editor Bill Keller and former National Security Agency Director Adm. Bobby Inman.
BILL KELLER: We weighed very heavily and looked in excruciating detail at claims that this was not something that terrorists knew, that this would somehow be useful to terrorists.
And the fact is, you know, you can find more useful detail about what the Treasury is doing in the Treasury's own public briefings.
JEFFREY BROWN: Admiral Inman?
ADMIRAL BOBBY INMAN: Of which -- to which the terrorists probably don't have access. But if it's the front page of The New York Times, they will.
And this presumption that people automatically know or probably know is at the heart of the problem.
Exactly. In my mind, this is a bigger issue than Calame's having called the President "vicious."
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