Also, it began to become clear from sources that the administration had lied to the newspaper when persuading it not to run the story in 2004. (P. 203.) (One of the persons who lied flatly and horridly to Lichtblau (who does not mention it) was Jack Goldsmith, who in his own book wrote, amazingly, of baldly lying to Lichtblau in October 2004 (three months after he left government), a time when we know that Lichtblau was trying to pin down certain details that would affect possible publication, such as whether anyone in government had thought the program illegal. Goldsmith had thought it violently illegal, and had worked extensively to try to cure the illegality, but told Lichtblau “untruthfully, that I didn’t know what he was talking about,” i.e., knew nothing of any NSA program. The details regarding this self confessed liar who now teaches at Harvard Law School are set forth in a posting here dated October 5, 2007, and reproduced in my forthcoming book entitled An Enemy Of The People: The Unending Battle Against Conventional Wisdom (Doukathsan, 2008).) As well as discovering it had been lied to and misled, at a meeting at the White House attended by a host of the administration’s henchmen, almost all of them had to admit to Keller, Taubman and Lichtblau that they had had concerns. (Pp. 206-207.) Harriet Mier though -- who apparently is an ultra-Bush-protecting scumbag whom it seems to have been very wrong of me to defend somewhat with regard to her aborted Supreme Court nomination -- acted very badly at one point in the meeting, at a point that Lichtblau says was “an illuminating moment.” (P. 207.) After this meeting Bush requested a personal meeting with Arthur Sulzberger, Keller and Taubman, at which he told them that if there were another attack “‘there’ll be blood on your hands.’”) (P. 205.)
Then the White House strung along the newspaper for almost another two weeks -- during which it apparently persuaded the Times to order Lichtblau and Risen to “‘stand down’” from their inquiries one weekend (p. 209) -- but Lichtblau fortuitously found out a bit later that the administration was considering “seeking a Pentagon Papers-type injunction . . . to stop publication of the NSA story.” (P. 210.) This “was a bombshell” that “all but made the decision on the timing for us.” (P. 210.) The editors determined to publish and, to forestall an injunction that would stop the presses in mid run after the administration was notified the story would be run, the Times put the story on its website, where it was instantly available to the whole world the night before the printed paper hit the streets. (P. 211.)
* * * * *
As I hope you could tell, Lichtblau, as said, tries to support the editors’ decision not to publish for over a year. He defends the editors as acting in good faith and desiring to be careful journalists. He even says, in defending the initial decision not to publish, that reporters “have a built-in backstop, a check and balance, and its called the editor.” (P. 196.)
But Lichtblau’s effort fails for two reasons. The less important one concerns the criticism the paper received for allegedly engaging in a last minute ploy to affect the election by publishing a story about the failure to protect munitions in Baghdad. This was obviously on the editors’ minds. While Lichtblau claims it shows that a story that was solidly based wouldn’t be delayed by the editor to avoid hurting Bush in the election, the context of Lichtblau’s tale causes one to think the opposite is true. For the context necessarily causes one to suspect that the question of whether the story would be considered to be sufficiently solidly based was deeply affected by the fact that it could have an impact on the election and for that reason would give rise to infuriated criticism from conservatives.
The other, far more important reason relates to the fact that Keller’s “central question” was “whether, as the administration so urgently insisted, the story would harm national security.” (P. 197.)
Today, over 3½ years later, we know that they almost surely were right who argued early on that (as Lichtblau himself seems to have thought) the NSA story would cause no harm to the U.S. because Al Qaeda had to already have been concerned for other reasons entirely that its electronic communications were likely being intercepted and that it had to take steps to ensure that the interception would not injure or destroy it. But let me nonetheless put this to one side, and discuss instead only what Keller and the other editors should have recognized on the basis of knowledge of the Bush administration that the Times must have had by October 2004, and what the applicable lessons of journalism history were.
What the Times had to have known by October 2004 was that the Bush administration could not be trusted because fact after fact showed it would say and do anything to accomplish its ends, regardless of how dishonest or immoral its statements or
conduct were. Here are just a few of the matters showing this that were in the public domain by October 2004, most or all of them having been written about, and some even having been initially disclosed, by the Times itself. (I am confident of the timing here because I took the relevant matters from blogs I wrote in the spring and summer of 2004. Many of the blogs, most of them really, got the information from the Times itself.) By October 2004 it was known -- and often had been known for a pretty long time - - that:
· The administration had lied about WMDs.
· It had made a horrible misassessment of the manpower required for Iraq, had wrongly claimed it could succeed on the cheap, and had not recognized that Saddam could, as he did, prepare a guerrilla war.
· It had fired General Shinseki for telling the truth about the manpower that would be needed.
· It had fired Larry Lindsay for saying the war would cost far more than the administration claimed.
· Torture memos had been produced.
· Torture had been used.
· Prisoners had been killed.
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