NY Times, network media, Democrats in fight for their lives against Cheney-Bush admin. CENSORSHIP and thuggery...

The Cheney-Bush admin. well know that they are in a FIGHT FOR THEIR LIVES as election 2006 bears down on a somnolent and unawares America. The Bush 2000 presidential campaign's NUMBER ONE DONORS - Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling of ENRON corporation - have both already BEEN CONVICTED of massive stock-fraud leading to Enron's spectacular collapse. Due to terrific pressures from within the government (that is, the government controlled by the Cheney-Bush admistration) Enron's Chairman and CEO, respectively, dodged an idictment and trial of the massive fraud in the California rate-payers extortion of higher electricity rates due to coordinated and systematic grid shutdowns. But neither one (Lay or Skilling) will be in the least bit happy to spend time in prison, much less the YEARS that they have already been sentenced to. (Of course, neither Mr. Skilling nor Mr. Lay has yet stepped foot in a prison, as Martha Stewart did soon after HER conviction for - gasp! - "dumping" $50,000 lousy dollar's worth of shares in a company she had NO control over.)

No, it is absolutely IMPERATIVE that the Bush administration PARDON their number-one campaign donors throughout the 2000 presidential campaign, Florida vote recount debacle, and 2001 inaugueration. And, it is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE that the Bush-Cheney White House PARDON Lewis "Scooter" Libbby BEFORE HE GOES TO TRIAL for his role in "outing" an undercover CIA operation, so the White House vendetta to humiliate Ambassador Joe Wilson also stays buried from major-media front-page attention. (Ambassador Wilson was the target of the Cheney-Rove-Bush vendetta for having the temerity to go public in an July 2003 op-ed in the New York Times not only contesting the administration's rational for war, but publicly confirming that President Bush KNEW that his "Niger yellowcake uranium for Iraq" story was FALSE when the president included those comments in his Jan. 2003 State of the Union speech.)

The "outing" of Ambassador Wilson's CIA undercover wife had all the hallmarks of a Karl Rove smear operation. It was only because of terrific and intense pressure that Independent Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald did NOT indict Karl Rove, Rove's early testimony to FBI investigator's on the "outing" scandal being publicly at odds with his later testimony, based on a memory "refreshed" when Time magazine's Matt Cooper was forced to testify that he had indeed discussed the story with Mr. Rove.

At any rate, Lay and Skilling have been convicted, Libby has been indicted, Rove missed being indicted by the narrowest of margins, super-lobbyist, frequent White House visitor, and lobbyist extortion-arm of Tom DeLay's Congress Jack Abramoff HAS also already been convicted (along with several DeLay ex-staffers); while former Republican House Whip (and defacto Congressional dictator) Tom DeLay STILL faces indictments of his own.

In short, not only MUST the Bush-Cheney administration PARDON their friends and cronies, but they MUST be able to do so in an atmosphere that does not create massive political backlash.

Therefore, they #1. MUST COW THE PRESS FURTHER; and #2. must insure that the Democrats do not have A PRAYER of winning the House (the senate is even less likely for a Dem. majority).

What we are seeing this weekend/week, is the start in all seriousness of the Cheney-Bush-Rove efforts to sustain a Republican majority in the House in November of 2006. In both cases, the C-B-R team must resort to the same tactic: SMEAR those who would investigate, or even write about them, as UNPATRIOTIC - "AIDING and ABETTING THE ENEMY."

As we wrote in our previous post, CNN has found a way to use those exact words, "AIDING and ABETTING THE ENEMY!" in the headline to their textbook media-smear attack on Dan Rather, obliquely LIKING the demeaning Rather fired-at-CBS story to the "story" of how "the media" (in this case the NY Times, WSJ, and LA Times) "LEAKED - - - GOVERNMENT SECRETS!"

We won't recap our o'er long analysis - it is the post immediately precedes this posting!

We'll just point out that dependable White House attack dog Congressman PETER KING (R-NY) has called for CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST THE NY TIMES for reporting the story "Dick Cheney can read your financial transactions any time he wants to... with NO oversight or supervision by anyone, anywhere!"

(Note: Peter King is the Congressman in the video taken on the back lawn of the White House on election day 2004. Talking with President Bush, a female reporter, and one or two other off-camera persons, Rep. King says President Bush has already won the election. When the woman reporter asks him how he can know that - being daylight, Florida's westernmost polling stations are still open - Rep. King replies, "It's all over but the counting, and we_have_taken_care_of_the_counting.")

HOW wil the NYT, Wall St. Journal, LA Times, and other media players handle this story?

Well- WE ALREADY KNOW! CNN has ALREADY SMEARED those who would write the story of government spying on American financial accounts as "AIDING THE ENEMY".

And the NYT is once again back on the defensive. They have been put on the defensive alot lately, mostly for SHODDY REPORTING (the Wen Ho Lee and Jason Blair scandals), for fraudulent reporting (Judith Miller is SYNONYMOUS with "LIES for pushing WMDs as an excuse to attack Iraq), and for participating in the STONEWALL/COVER-UP of the administration's direct role in the "outing" of Ambassador Wilson's undercover CIA wife (and her ENTIE CIA front-group cover organisation.) (The NYT participation in the COVER-UP of the CIA outing was also on the party of Judith Miller, who had informed her editors that she had been told about Ms. Plame's undercover identity by VP Chief of Staff Scooter Libby.)

SO, it is ironic that this latest, and most savage, attack on the New York Times' credibility comes from it reporting a TRUTHFUL, HONEST story - the adminstration is spying on American banking records without warrants, orversight, or restraint!

Given this balance of journalistic power to report on a rogue government, and given the Times' record of previous atrocious reporting, it is DOUBLY, TRIPLY ESSENTIAL that DEMOCRATS STAND UP FOR A FREE PRESS and the RIGHT of Americans to KNOW if their government IS SPYING ON THEM.

But as the pages and pages and pages of posting in C-dems.blgspt.com demonstrate, their is hardly a chance that the cowed, impotent, and practically faceless Dems will rise to this challenge... much less UNITE, FORCEFULLY AND DETERMINDLY, to CONFRONT the abuses and bullying of the Cheney-Bush administration.

But there's always hope! That the Democrats will actually DO THEIR JOBS - REPRESENT those MILLIONS of us Americans who DO NOT want to give a blank check to Dick Cheney and George Bush to spy on us and bully our free press and negelect our war veterans, torture our prisoners, and turn us all into wage slaves as they sell of America to foreign investors who treat their own workers as chattel slaves.







GOP Congressman Calls for Criminal Charges Against 'NYT'

By The Associated Press and E&P Staff
June 25, 2006
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002727811

WASHINGTON The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration Sunday to seek criminal charges against The New York Times for reporting on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.

Rep. Peter King blasted the newspaper's decision last week to report that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.

"I am asking the Attorney General to begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times -- the reporters, the editors and the publisher," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous."

The conservative lawmaker called the paper "pompous, arrogant, and more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people."

Conservatives have expressed outrage against the media ever since the Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times first reported on the money-monitoring program, but King's call for a criminal prosecution is the strongest denunciation to date.

King said he thought investigators should also examine the reports by the Journal and Los Angeles Times, but said the greater focus should be on The New York Times, because of their previous reporting on a secret domestic wiretapping program.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment Sunday. But when the Times chose to publish the story, it quoted executive editor Bill Keller as saying editors had listened closely to the government's arguments for withholding the information, but "remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Following Sept. 11, Treasury officials obtained access to a vast database called Swift -- the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The Belgium-based database handles financial message traffic from thousands of financial institutions in more than 200 countries. After the revelations of Swift monitoring, Democrats and civil liberties questioned whether the program violated privacy rights.

The service, which routes more than 11 million messages each day, mostly captures information on wire transfers and other methods of moving money in and out of the United States, but it does not execute those transfers. The service generally doesn't detect private, individual transactions in the United States, such as withdrawals from an ATM or bank deposits. It is aimed mostly at international transfers.

King said he would send a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez formally requesting a criminal investigation into the report.

But the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday it was too early to talk about investigating the newspaper. "On the basis of the newspaper article, I think it's premature to call for a prosecution of the New York Times, just like I think it's premature to said that the administration is entirely correct," Sen. Arlen Specter said on "Fox News Sunday."

Also appearing on Fox News, King said, "The time has come for the American people to realize, and the New York Times to realize, we’re at war and they can’t be on their own deciding what to declassify, what to release. If Congress wants to work on this privately, that’s one thing. But for them to, on their own, for the editor of the New York Times to say that he decides it’s in the national interest -- no one elected them to anything.

"Remember, this is the newspaper that brought us Jason Blair." This is true enough, but then King added: "Going back a few years ago, they’re the ones who gave Fidel Castro his job in Cuba. They have no right to do this at all."

The New York Times posted on its Web site today, with a link on its home page, a statement by Executive Editor Bill Keller, responding to many e-mails on the subject of the banking records revelations.

Below is the main section of his reply. [Reply in full at the NY Times editors comments, link below]
***
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/business/media/25keller-letter.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Letter From Bill Keller on The Times's Banking Records Report
Published: June 25, 2006


The following is a letter Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, has sent to readers who have written to him about The Times's publication of information about the government's examination of international banking records:

Related
Court Review of Wiretaps May Be Near, Senator Says (June 26, 2006)
Cheney Assails Press on Report on Bank Data (June 24, 2006)
Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror (June 23, 2006)
[All three of these above headlines are MISLEADING: what they are talking about is MASSIVE DATA MINING of ALL American's financial records, in addition to previous concerns of massive data-banking of telecommunications conversations.]

[Bill Keller:]

I don't always have time to answer my mail as fully as etiquette demands, but our story about the government's surveillance of international banking records has generated some questions and concerns that I take very seriously. As the editor responsible for the difficult decision to publish that story, I'd like to offer a personal response.

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting the threat of terror.

It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.

The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly. The responsibility of it weighs most heavily on us when an issue involves national security, and especially national security in times of war. I've only participated in a few such cases, but they are among the most agonizing decisions I've faced as an editor.

The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy. Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration's claims about the Iraqi threat. The question we start with as journalists is not "why publish?" but "why would we withhold information of significance?" We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so.

Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff — but it's the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements.

Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress. Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight. We believe The Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them.

Our decision to publish the story of the Administration's penetration of the international banking system followed weeks of discussion between Administration officials and The Times, not only the reporters who wrote the story but senior editors, including me. We listened patiently and attentively. We discussed the matter extensively within the paper. We spoke to others — national security experts not serving in the Administration — for their counsel. It's worth mentioning that the reporters and editors responsible for this story live in two places — New York and the Washington area — that are tragically established targets for terrorist violence. The question of preventing terror is not abstract to us.

The Administration case for holding the story had two parts, roughly speaking: first that the program is good — that it is legal, that there are safeguards against abuse of privacy, and that it has been valuable in deterring and prosecuting terrorists. And, second, that exposing this program would put its usefulness at risk.

It's not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don't know about it.