New York Post - AID AND COMFORT

Tuesday June 27, 2006

From the New York Post:

AID AND COMFORT

June 27, 2006 -- 'The disclosure of this program is disgraceful," says President Bush.

That's one word.

Here's another: Dangerous.

The New York Times has again put its institutional arrogance and contempt for the duly elected current administration ahead of the security of the nation.

Last week, the Times - and, yes, a few other papers - revealed that federal counterterrorism agents have used a database of international banking transactions to identify possible terrorist activity.

The program started shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

The Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is an international clearinghouse for the transactions. It serves 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

As the president noted, "Congress was briefed, and what we did was fully authorized under the law."

Yet the Times once again revealed a key secret tool in the War on Terror.

To what good purpose?

Similarly, last December, the Times revealed the National Security Agency's monitoring of international phone calls.

As with the Interbank database, no laws were broken.

Neither program posed a threat to anyone other than the terrorists who would destroy America. Indeed, the Times has made no case for either initiative having hurt a single law-abiding American.

So let's be clear: Such stories give aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war.

There is a word for that.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.) has called for an investigation of the Times, saying the paper has given away legitimate secrets: "I'm calling on the attorney general to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of The New York Times, its reporters, the editors that worked on this and the publisher."

To which we would add the folks who took it upon themselves to leak the relevant information to the newspapers in the first place.

Extreme?

No more so than willfully destroying the utility of initiatives that might prevent another 9/11.

Or something even worse.

There are many ways to abuse the First Amendment. Using it as a machete to undercut secret presidential policies opposed by newspaper executives is bad enough.

To do so in time of war is despicable.