It’s important to voice support for the NY Times (and other major papers) for publishing the “Swift” story on the tracking of terrorism-related financial activity. The denunciations from Bush and Cheney and their congressional lackeys are politically motivated and baseless. The topic of terrorist financing has been in the news since almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Would-be terrorists cannot be unaware of Western attempts at detection and interdiction. The NYT report mainly concerns behind-the-scenes wrangling over the program’s authorization; it’s hard to see how this could compromise the program itself.
Executive Editor Bill Keller’s defense is here. LA Times editor Dean Baquet’s defense is here. The NYT’s editorial on the Swift program is here. Journalist Eric Lichtblau appeared on PBS’s NewsHour last night to make the case:
This was, you know, obviously a public policy issue that seemed, again, worth a public airing. And this was not a concern just shared by the New York Times. We didn’t create the nervousness here. [graf] There was nervousness by SWIFT itself, the consortium in Belgium, which, as we pointed out in the story, threatened to pull out of this program in 2003 and stayed on only after very high-level meetings with Alan Greenspan and with Bob Mueller at the FBI, because the company itself was asking how long what was seen as an emergency program would be allowed to continue. So I think it’s in that context.
Lichtblau was then interrupted by Pennsylvania Rep. Curt Weldon, who proceeded to browbeat the reporter in the most demagogic fashion. Weldon’s colleague from Long Island, Rep. Peter King, has called for the NY Times to be prosecuted. As far as I know King is silent on the vehemently pro-Bush Wall St. Journal, which also printed the story.
Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a. Instapundit) supports the Bush/Cheney campaign of intimidation with this argument:
The founders gave freedom of the press to the people, they didn’t give freedom to the press. Keller positions himself as some sort of Constitutional High Priest, when in fact the “freedom of the press” the Framers described was also called “freedom in the use of the press.” It’s the freedom to publish, a freedom that belongs to everyone in equal portions, not a special privilege for the media industry.
There was no media industry to speak of in the late 18th century, so it’s hard to know the founders’ exact intentions. But here’s what we have to go by:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note that the word “press” appears without any modification. Granted, I’m not a law professor and Reynolds is, but his comment reads more like spin than scholarship. (There’s an exhaustive analysis of the First Amendment here.)
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