James Risen’s Spy Scoop: Risible Or Right On?
 

     Intelligence reporter James Risen co-wrote the Times’ December 16 front-  page scoop about government spying on terror suspects in the U.S. without first obtaining search warrants. As was later revealed by Drudge (but not by the Times), the story seemed rather conveniently timed to coincide with his upcoming book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration”).

     Risen’s book is out now (on an expedited schedule) and Katie Couric interviewed him on the Today show Tuesday morning, where he said of his many anonymous sources: “…many of these people had grown up in the environment of knowing that in order to get to listen in on Americans you had to get a court order and they saw something was happening in which that was not being done. That there were, that the courts were being skirted, the Congress, that the laws had not been changed. And they believed that for whatever reason the Bush administration was skirting the law. Now that'll be something that we can all debate about whether or not they did skirt the law? But that was the reason the people came forward. They believed that something was going wrong."

     Risen told Time magazine this week that his paper "has performed a great public service by printing [the story], because this policy is something the nation should debate." Risen also told Time: "The frustration over the way things have been going in the Bush Administration had built up within the government. There were a lot of people who were increasingly uncomfortable with what was going on."

     Last Friday, the Justice Department opened an investigation into who leaked the details of the National Security Agency to the Times, meaning that Risen and co-writer Eric Lichtblau may be forced to name their sources.

     The paper responded with a front-page story Saturday by Scott Shane, “Criminal Inquiry Opens Into leak In Eavesdropping -- Domestic Spying Report.” The initial online version of the headline was even blunter, stating: “Justice Dept. Opens Inquiry Into Leak of Domestic Spying.”

     But as the Powerline blog reminded the paper, “Contrary to the language used by the Times, the program is one of foreign intelligence surveillance; it is not a domestic spying program.”

     Barney Calame, the Times’ notoriously pro-paper ombudsman, actually gets tough on what he sees as stonewalling by top editors at the paper over the Risen story.

     While praising the piece itself, he accuses the paper’s top editors of “stonewalling” over explaining the decision to report the story. From Calame’s Public Editor column on Sunday:

     “The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency.

     “For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making. My queries concerned the timing of the exclusive Dec. 16 article about President Bush's secret decision in the months after 9/11 to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States.

     “I e-mailed a list of 28 questions to Bill Keller, the executive editor, on Dec. 19, three days after the article appeared. He promptly declined to respond to them. I then sent the same questions to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, who also declined to respond. They held out no hope for a fuller explanation in the future.”

     Lichtblau and Risen have another unexciting scoop on Sunday’s front page, “Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program -- Bush Aides Then Asked Ashcroft’s Approval.”

     “A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight, according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program.

     “The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides -- Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general -- to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.

     “The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it.”

     Much ado about not much, Michelle Malkin concludes: “Nice try at nefarious spin. Two words: Big deal. So, an underling filling in for his boss doesn't want to sign off on a major, national security decision. Where's the controversy? You want to talk about controversy? Where are these continued leaks coming from? Looks like there are blabbermouths inside the Justice Department who seem quite comfy with Risen and Lichtblau.”

To comment on this story, visit the Media Research Center’s blog, NewsBusters

Sanger Spins Bush’s “Extraordinary” Spying on Terror Suspects
 

     On the first day of 2006, reporter David Sanger filed a thinkpiece in the Sunday Week in Review, “The Bush Legacy -- 2006 Is So Yesterday,” and found some liberal-sounding experts to make some criticisms of Bush.

     “To some historians, spinning the meaning of victory seems an exercise in futility. ‘It's ridiculous talk,’ John Dower, the historian who has chronicled war propaganda and written the definitive history of the American occupation of Japan. ‘People know what victory looks like,’ he said, and are unlikely to adopt the president's definitions.

     “But what truly sets Mr. Dower off are Mr. Bush's comparisons between rebuilding Iraq and the postwar rebuilding of Japan. He and others note that Japan was religiously unified with some history of parliamentary government and a bureaucracy ready to work as soon as the conflict ended.

     “Mr. Bush's team is already acutely aware that even if Iraq ultimately proves a success -- far from a sure bet -- a major part of his legacy hinges on his performance on the home front. [Richard Norton] Smith, of the Lincoln Library, argues that the president got a good start his first year, when ‘he changed the Republican orthodoxy on education from dismantling the Education Department to actually paying attention to the issue.’”

     Sanger goes over the top describing the Times’ NSA’s warrantless surveillance of terror suspects:  “And then there is the big legacy question of how well Mr. Bush persuades the country that extraordinary times truly called for the assumption of extraordinary presidential powers. Mr. Bush argues that authorizing domestic wiretaps without warrants was part of his inherent power as commander in chief. His defenders cited Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War.”

Looking Hard for Backlash to NSA’s “Domestic Surveillance”
 

     John Schwartz’s “What Are You Lookin’ At?” on what he misleadingly calls the NSA’s “domestic surveillance on individuals” gets huge, over-the-fold play on the front of the Sunday Week in Review.

     “New light may be shed on how Americans think about privacy -- and the differences they see between commercial and government realms -- in the reaction to news that President Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to conduct domestic surveillance on individuals without the warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Does the public reaction suggest that complacency has its limits?”

     That’s what Schwartz seems to be looking for, and sure enough, he finds a poll that appears to bear out that concern.

      “But a poll conducted for [Lawrence] Ponemon last month may show that people hold different views on commercial and government privacy issues. Conducted after The New York Times revealed the N.S.A. surveillance, it suggested great concern. Of those polled, 88 percent expressed concern, and 54 percent said they were ‘very concerned,’ he said. ‘It was, “Wow,”’ Mr. Ponemon said. The 88 percent figure was more than twice the level of concern of past studies he had seen of public attitudes toward commercial privacy breaches.”

     But there are other polls, such as one from Rasmussen Reports, which show strong support in the opposite direction.

     Note the response to the question: “Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?” By percentages of 64%-23%, the people surveyed agreed.

     By contrast, here’s one of the Ponemon questions: “Is it more important to find suspected terrorists who reside in the U.S. than to protect American citizens’ privacy rights and civil liberties?” Even with that loaded question, 47% said yes, compared to 40% who said no.

     Schwartz really stretches for historical references, reaching into classical history: “The idea that the pendulum of liberties and restrictions might not swing back could be disquieting to many people, [privacy consultant Alan] Westin said, adding ‘the new surveillance revelations about what the Bush administration has been doing puts those questions to the front.’ Historians tend to say that modern concept of rights against government snooping are a relatively recent phenomenon, and trace its legal roots to a famous 1890 law review article by Louis D. Brandeis and his law partner, Samuel D. Warren.

     “But Mr. Westin disagrees and argues that respect for personal privacy has been a consistent thread in societies that emphasized liberty. ‘On the other hand,’ he said, autocratic governments have always ‘had active programs to suppress or deny privacy.’ Democratic Athens provided far more protection for privacy than authoritarian Sparta. ‘Pericles, in his famous funeral oration, said Athens does not attempt to control people in their private lives,’ Mr. Westin said.”

For more from Schwartz on the NSA’s spying on suspected terrorists without a warrant, click here