Hit Piece Journalism

The NY Times' James Risen has written an article that isn't worthy of being called reporting. It's questionable if this hit piece, designed to keep the good news from Iraq off the front page, should've even been published.


Here's the opening paragraph:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

Notice how prominently the word secretly appears in this article. Let's read on:

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight. According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said.

What a breathtakingly irresponsible piece of showmanship this article is. Risen should be permanently run out of journalism for this. How can President Bush have "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity" when Sen. Jay Rockefeller AND A JUDGE PRESIDING OVER THE SECRET COURT knew about it? Further, how can President Bush order this "without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying" when the FISA court judge approved this activity?

It gets worse:

The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues.

This is Washington's idea of a secret? What a bunch of BS. If the "administration had briefed Congressional leaders about this", then this isn't a secret. Will that stop the pompous airbags from demanding an investigation or acting indignant or outraged? Nope. In fact, they've already started calling for a Senate investigation. Here's how the AP's Jennifer Loven words it:

A key Republican committee chairman put the Bush administration on notice Friday that his panel would hold hearings into a report that the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States. Sen. Arlen Specter, (R-PA), said he would make oversight hearings by his panel next year "a very, very high priority. There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

And:

Other Democrats were more harsh. "This is Big Brother run amok," declared Sen. Edward Kennedy, (D-MA). "We cannot protect our borders if we cannot protect our ideals." Sen. Russell Feingold, (D-WI), called it a "shocking revelation" that he said "ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American."

Sen. Feingold, why should these wiretaps send a shiver down our spine if they were approved by a FISA judge just months after 9/11? Shouldn't the presence of sleeper cells in the U.S. scare the daylights out of us? I remember back then that every American believed that we'd be attacked again by al-Qaida and sooner rather than later.

The same pompous jackasses that are braying that President Bush initiated and the FISA judge approved the wiretaps are the same pompous jackasses that whined about the fact that we "didn't connect the dots" prior to 9/11. Kennedy, Feingold and any other of the idiots calling for a full Senate investigation should be run out of the Senate at the next election because they care more about civil liberties, which to date haven't killed anyone, than they care about stopping and catching terrorists, which have killed 3,000 people just a few short years ago.

These idiots deserve to be ridiculed but, of course, they'll be applauded wherever they go as being great heros to protect our civil rights. Everywhere in the Agenda Media, that is. On the blogosphere, however, and on Rush's and Sean's and Hugh's shows, they'll get ridiculed as they should be.

At the same time that these senators are whining about the Bush administration's 'secretive' spying on Americans, they're totally willing to let the Patriot Act expire.

If you're getting the impression that I'm pissed about this, you damn right I am. I trust the courts, especially the FISA court, to protect me against unjustified wiretaps, which I can't say about these senators. They'd rather grandstand about civil liberties than worry about protecting us from terrorist sleeper cells presently in the U.S.

The FISA court is there to safeguard against civil rights being violated and to not allow wiretaps without a good purpose and some proof that the wiretap will yield information that protects us from future terrorist attacks. In a time of war, we need to balance our civil rights with our ability to thwart our enemies. That's why the FISA court was created.

I'll gladly give up a theoretical portion of my civil rights if it thwarts bad guys. I suspect that most level-headed Americans will, too.

Finally, I hope Karl Rove and other Republican strategists keep this in mind for next fall's campaigns. I hope they use all this information daily against those windbags up for re-election. We can't afford to have some reactionary idiots who won't protect us from terrorists in the House or Senate.

It should also be noted that Mr. Risen has a book scheduled to come out this winter.

Still think that this article is newsworthy? I can't take it as serious journalism. It's hit piece journalism intended to destroy the President in a time of war, just like CBS's Rathergate story was supposed to do, just like the NY Times' al Qaqaa munitions dump story was intended to do. It's one thing to go after the President if he's done something illegal. It's another thing if he stayed within the system that Congress established.

UPDATE: Drudge has posted the cover for Rosen's book on his website. It's the picture I just posted earlier in the article. Here's what Drudge says:

• Risen claims the White House asked the paper not to publish the article, saying that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny.
• Risen claims the TIMES delayed publication of the article for a year to conduct additional reporting.
• But now comes word James Risen's article is only one of many "explosive newsbreaking" stories that can be found in his upcoming book which he turned in 3 months ago! The paper failed to reveal the urgent story was tied to a book release and sale.
• "STATE OF WAR: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" is to be published by FREE PRESS in the coming weeks, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
• Carisa Hays, VP, Director of Publicity FREE PRESS, confirms the book is being published. The book editor of Bush critic Richard Clarke [AGAINST ALL ENEMIES] signed Risen to FREE PRESS.

NY Times, National Security, Feingold, Ted Kennedy