House vote slaps news organizations -so much for free press

[e-brake]

I cant believe that they are going to attack the press for reporting something that they told the press about in rpess confrences.


http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/....ap/index.html


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House on Thursday approved a Republican-crafted resolution condemning news organizations for revealing a covert government program to track terrorist financing, saying the disclosure had "placed the lives of Americans in danger."
The resolution, passed 227-183 on a largely party-line vote, did not specifically name the news organizations, but it was aimed at The New York Times and other news media that last week reported on a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorists.
Most Democrats opposed the measure, protesting language in it that asserts that the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was "rooted in sound legal authority" and that members of Congress had been appropriately briefed on the program.
While the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal also carried stories on the program, Republicans singled out The New York Times.
"The recent front-page story in the aforementioned New York Times cut the legs out from under this program," said the Financial Services Committee chairman, Rep. Michael Oxley, R-Ohio. "Now the terrorists are well-informed of the details of our methods and will find other ways to move money outside of the formal financial system."
The administration and the 9/11 Commission "went to The New York Times and asked them in the interest of national security not to release the details of this program," said Rep. Peter King, R-New York, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. "They went ahead and did it anyway."
The Times has defended its reporting, saying publication has served America's public interest. Its executive editor, Bill Keller, said in a statement after the House passed the resolution that the paper took seriously the risks of reporting on intelligence.
"We have on many occasions withheld information when lives were at stake," Keller said. "However, the administration simply did not make a convincing case that describing our efforts to monitor international banking presented such a danger. Indeed, the administration itself has talked publicly and repeatedly about its successes in the area of financial surveillance."
The resolution "condemns the unauthorized disclosure of classified information" and "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations in protecting the lives of Americans and the capability of the government to identify, disrupt and capture terrorists by not disclosing classified intelligence programs such as the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program."
Democrats reacted angrily to the GOP majority's refusal to allow them to offer an alternative that would also have expressed concerns about the unauthorized leak of classified information but would have left out language defending the legality of the program.
"What you have done is to hijack the virtually unanimous support for tracking terrorist financing into an endorsement of the way the Bush administration has conducted itself," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, author of the alternative.
"It is a campaign document," said Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
"There's never been any oversight of the program," she said. "You are asking us to vote on something that we absolutely cannot attest to."

[zerojunkie]

Originally Posted by e-brake

I cant believe that they are going to attack the press for reporting something that they told the press about in rpess confrences.

Oh come on, they didn't give out what financial networks they were targeting or any other technical details that the Times did. You think journalism like this would've passed in WW2?

[PETA]

No where was the press punished or was prior restraint imposed - freedom of the press was in no way restricted

What if the had published troop locations and numbers?

How about data about how to track missiles?

How about launch codes?

[Hey Bubu]

Originally Posted by xian

How about data about how to track missiles?

How about launch codes?

I think that if the press can get a hold of that info, they should be the last group to be investigated. But that's just me.

[e-brake]

Originally Posted by zerojunkie

Oh come on, they didn't give out what financial networks they were targeting or any other technical details that the Times did. You think journalism like this would've passed in WW2?

First off this isnt World war two its not even close and its desrespectfull to everyone who was involved in WWII to even compare them. Secondly nothing reported in the NYT article was outside of the scope of what had already been released to the public as early as 2001.

``There have been public references to SWIFT before," said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. ``The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before."

``A lot of people were aware that this was going on," said Comras, one of a half-dozen financial experts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recruited for the task.``Unless they were pretty dumb, they had to assume" their transactions were being monitored, Comras said of terrorist groups. ``We have spent the last four years bragging how effective we have been in tracking terrorist financing."

a report that Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of financial information that the United States had tapped into.

ccording to the 33-page report by the terrorist monitoring group established by the UN Security Council in late 2001. ``The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries."

Less than two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Bush signed an executive order calling for greater cooperation with foreign entities to monitor money that might be headed to terrorist groups. The executive order was posted on the White House website. The document called for ``cooperation with, and sharing information by, United States and foreign financial institutions as an additional tool to enable the United States to combat the financing of terrorism."

Richard Newcomb , the head of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control at the time, later publicly credited the president for enabling US law enforcement and intelligence agencies to nab suspected terrorists, including followers of ``Hambali, " Al Qaeda's leader in Southeast Asia. The New York Times report said Hambali's capture in 2003 came with the aid of information gleaned from SWIFT.

In testimony before Congress in early 2002, Juan C. Zarate , deputy assistant Treasury secretary in charge of terrorism and violent crime, discussed how the global exchange of information was a key element in choking off their source of funds.
He cited a special international meeting hosted a month after the attacks by the international Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, ``to eliminate existing impediments to exchanging information" between financial institutions and to find solutions to the challenges of tracking terrorist funds.

source: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa...me_say/?page=2

[e-brake]

Originally Posted by xian

What if the had published troop locations and numbers?

How about data about how to track missiles?

How about launch codes?

If the governemnt has been openly talking about this information for 5 years I would assume that the press would report it.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by e-brake

If the governemnt has been openly talking about this information for 5 years I would assume that the press would report it.

the government has openly acknowledged that launch codes exist - just not the details

the gov't noted that they were tracking financials - just not the details

distinguish why the details of one is ok to publish and the detaiols of the other not ok to publish

[e-brake]

Originally Posted by xian

the gov't noted that they were tracking financials - just not the details

distinguish why the details of one is ok to publish and the detaiols of the other not ok to publish

The government posted the details used in the NYT article on the White House Website for public view in 2002. THE EXACT SAME DETAILS, there was nothing in the NTY story that was not ON THE WHITE HOUSE WEBSITE 3 YEARS PRIOR

[PETA]

Originally Posted by e-brake

The government posted the details used in the NYT article on the White House Website for public view in 2002. THE EXACT SAME DETAILS, there was nothing in the NTY story that was not ON THE WHITE HOUSE WEBSITE 3 YEARS PRIOR

well - ok then

that was not my underastanding of the relevent facts - if the NYT merely republished previously published information - then yeah - the event it stupid - if however they published information that was not public knowledge and was in fact classified - my analogy would be in play

[PETA]

Originally Posted by Edwin Watson

yeah, the specific financial networks mentioned by the NYT and others were all talked about in a variety of speeches on said subject for the last 5 years.


I truly believe it is a concerted effort to discredit the media and turn public opinion against the one watchdog and check against the Bush administrations power at the moment.

lol - yeah - because GWs been cleverly luring everyone into a false state of insecurity by getting his approval ratings as low as possible

come on Edwin that's going tin foil hat - the adminstration is not that competant and you know it

[e-brake]

Originally Posted by xian

the adminstration is not that competant and you know it

you gotta be kidding me.....*scratches head