Hewitt Blog

Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey oversees the coalition effort to train and equip the Iraqi army and police. I interviewed him yesterday. If you are interested in the specifics of the effort to produce a self-sufficient Iraqi army and security force, read the transcript.

Yes, it is also a big win for the GOP, and Tom DeLay's legacy is secure, as is the House majority in all probability if it continues to prosecute the war and defend its conduct.

But it is primarily a win for the control of political line-drawing by legislative boundries:

"We reject the statewide challenge to Texas redistricting as an unconstitutional political gerrymander," Kennedy wrote.

If representative government means anything, it means that elected officials make decisions on these matters, not judges beyond the recall of voters.

The opinions are here.

Other key portions of Kennedy's opinion:

That the federal courts sometimes are required to order legislative redistricting, however, doesnot shift the primary locus of responsibility....Quite apart from the risk of acting without a legislature’sexpertise, and quite apart from the difficulties a courtfaces in drawing a map that is fair and rational, see id., at 414–415, the obligation placed upon the Federal Judiciaryis unwelcome because drawing lines for congressional districts is one of the most significant acts a State can perform to ensure citizen participation in republican self-governance. That Congress is the federal body explicitly given constitutional power over elections is also a noteworthy statement of preference for the democratic process. As the Constitution vests redistricting responsibilities foremost in the legislatures of the States and in Congress, alawful, legislatively enacted plan should be preferable to one drawn by the courts.

and

In sum, we disagree with appellants’ view that a legislature’s decision to override a valid, court-drawn plan mid-decade is sufficiently suspect to give shape to a reliable standard for identifying unconstitutional political gerrymanders. We conclude that appellants have established no legally impermissible use of political classifications. For this reason, they state no claim on which relief may begranted for their statewide challenge.

The Court's direction on the non-constitutional claims means some minor redrawing of boundries:

The districts in south and west Texas will have to be redrawn to remedy the violation in District 23, and we have no cause to passon the legitimacy of a district that must be changed.

But this is not the key portion of the decision. The decision today protects the role of state legislatures and of the voters who elect them against interference by federal courts except when uncosntitutional standards such as race are employed in the drawing of district lines.

Howard Kurtz atetmpts to rally some sympathy for the Times Two, and unfortunately stumbles into the Bay of Pigs Club, from which exit is almost impossible. Once you buy into the use of a "might have been" (and a mightily mischaracterized one at that) to justify the publication of secrets that could help terrorists elude capture, there's no argument left because the "Bay of Pigs" mantra is an appeal to fiction, not to fact or history.

No major media outlet in the United States has ever knowingly, and over the objection of the United States government, ever published classified information that could assist the nation's enemies. Period. What the New York Times has done --and the Los Angeles Times copied-- is without precedent, which is why a Congressional response is so necessary, and hopefully forthcoming soon.

Kurtz notes that "[m]ost Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, lay low," adding that "Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid sidestepped a question yesterday about whether the Times should be prosecuted."

In fact, lawmakers of both parties are for the most part "laying low," and that is not distinguishing them in the eyes of the public interested in seriousness about the war.

If it is a war -and it is-- and if the disclosures helped our enemies --and they did-- Congress should draft, debate and vote on resolutions condemning the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times by name.

The First Amendment protects the press in most of its operations and from almost all prior restraints on publication.

But not from deserved criticism from the genuine representatives of the people.

Marc Danzinger has much more on the subject of what went wrong at the Times Two.

UPDATE: The Real Ugly American notes the House is getting its act together.

Now where's the Senate?

Tim Chapman is asking the right questions.

Look, the flag amendment presents an interesting debate, but the national security does not turn on its fate.

Last week's Senate resolution and the House resolution the week before mattered a great deal, but their effect is being reduced by inaction by the House and Senate on the real damage done by the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

So, where's the leadership, the draft resolutions, the debate and the vote? What's the plan? A letter from Chairman Roberts is great, but it isn't the First Branch speaking to the Fourth, which is what needs to happen. Soon.

June 27, 2006 The Honorable John D. Negroponte Director of National Intelligence Washington, D.C. 20511

Dear Mr. Director:

Unauthorized disclosures of classified information continue to threaten our national security – exposing our sensitive intelligence sources and methods to our enemies. Numerous, recent unauthorized disclosures of sensitive intelligence programs have directly threatened important efforts in the war against terrorism. Whether the President’s Terrorist Surveillance Program or the Department of Treasury’s effort to track terrorist financing, we have been unable to persuade the media to act responsibly and protect the means by which we protect this nation.

To gain a better understanding of the damage caused by unauthorized disclosures of this type, I ask that you perform an assessment of the damage caused by the unauthorized disclosure of some of our most sensitive intelligence programs. While your assessment may range beyond the President’s Terrorist Surveillance Program and Treasury’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, I am particularly interested in the damage attributable to these two unauthorized disclosures.

Sincerely,

Pat Roberts
Chairman

Look. That's a fine letter and it poses excellent questions.

But to quote Bob Dole, "Where's the outrage."

If what the Times Two did was dangerous to the nation's security --and everyone from the president down is saying that-- then where's the Congressional debate over this irresponsibility?

Speaker Hastert and Majority Leader Frist need to get a sense of their body's resolution drafted, debated and voted on this week.

It is hard to take a Congress seriously that doesn't react to such actions in a time of war.

The national security cannot possibly come before the race for the next Pulitzer:

"I don't think we could reasonably be accused of moving too quickly," he said. "We waited so long that the competition caught up to us." This comment referred to the Los Angeles Times' posting a story about the bank records program on its Web site last night.

Patterico, John McIntyre, MediaBlog, and Flap have much more.

Once any MSMer makes the admission that disclosure of the program could possibly help terrorists elude capture, the argument is over. To run such a risk would require an enormous benefit, and while the disclosure of the NSA surveillance program did not meet that standard in the eyes of many, the benefit of ratting out this program is so slight as to be obviously not worth the damage done.

For every MSMer engaged on this story, the question sequence ought to be:

1. Could this disclosure have helped terrorists elude capture?

2. If the answer is no, explain and defend.

3. If the answer is yes, quantify the risk.

4. If the MSMer can't quantify, how could the papers proceed when the consequences could be so ghastly?

5. If the answer is "the public interest," how is that measured, and how was that measurement balanced against an unquantified risk. You can't balance when you can't quanitfy.

The analysis must always lead to the conclusion that the papers did not know what they were doing, did not understand the program or the risks, and were reckless in ways without any precedent in the history of American journalism. Both Keller and Baquet have cited the Bay of Pigs, but that is not a precedent for disclosing classified information, but rather an example of when it wasn't disclosed. Except in the context of this war, no major media has ever knowingly compromised intelligence gathering that could benefit the enemy.

Which is why this is such an enormous and consequential story.

I asked the Undersecretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey yesterday if there were additional classified programs the disclosure of which could injure the efforts to capture or kill terrorists, and his answer --thank goodness-- was yes, of course.

This debate is about whether these papers will deal another blow to the effort to capture or kill terrorists in the future. There is no reason to believe that they won't. The editors have no framework, and no appreciation for the consequences of their actions. There is no reason to believe that Keller/Baquet will not publish the next round of disclosures in the war against the war.

Doyle McManus dismissed Sgt. Boggs' arguments yesterday, and no MSMer has yet responded to those of Lt. Cotton. I hope other active duty military continue to make the case directly to the MSM that the MSM is endangering the lives of the troops.

UPDATE:

The Scratching Post has more. As did Soxblog yesterday.

Yesterday Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief appeared on my program to explain his paper's decision to assist terrorists in eluding capture. Today the paper's editor, Dean Baquet, publsihes this defense: "Why we ran the story."

MANY READERS have been sharply critical of our decision to publish an article Friday on the U.S. Treasury Department's program to secretly monitor worldwide money transfers in an effort to track terrorist financing.

They have sent me sincere and powerful expressions of their disappointment in our newspaper, and they deserve an equally thoughtful and honest response.

The deception begins here. How many readers? Why not post all of their letters so the readers can see? How many subscriptions have been lost?

The decision to publish this article was not one we took lightly. We considered very seriously the government's assertion that these disclosures could cause difficulties for counterterrorism programs. And we weighed that assertion against the fact that there is an intense and ongoing public debate about whether surveillance programs like these pose a serious threat to civil liberties.

This statement is bluntly contradicted by Doyle McManus' statement to me yesterday that no such balancing occured once word arrived that the New York Times was publishing the story. Here's the McManus quote:

HH: Now what I'm wondering, though, is, how did you balance? What probability did you assign to the terrorist tack that doesn't get stopped because of this story?

DM: Well, I can't give you a mathematical formula on that. And as a matter of fact, when we made our decision to publish our story, the New York Times had already published its. So as a matter of fact, we had not had the set of discussions that we had scheduled on precisely how to balance that. So in a sense, I can't tell you how we balanced it, because we ended up not coming to a final decision. Now I don't mean to be disingenuous. We were certainly leaning in the direction of publishing, but we hadn't finally decided to.

Back to Baquet:

We sometimes withhold information when we believe that reporting it would threaten a life. In this case, we believed, based on our talks with many people in the government and on our own reporting, that the information on the Treasury Department's program did not pose that threat.

Again, McManus repeatedly allowed to me as to how the release of the information could help terrorists and hurt counterterrorism. That's a threat to human life. One exchange with McManus:

HH: Is it possible, in your view, Doyle McManus, that the story will in fact help terrorists elude capture?

DM: It is conceivable, yeah....

More Baquet:

Nor did the government give us any strong evidence that the information would thwart true terrorism inquiries. In fact, a close read of the article shows that some in the government believe that the program is ineffective in fighting terrorism.

McManus:

HH: Did anyone who would go on the record tell you this would have no significant damage to the counter-terrorism effort?

DM: I don't believe anyone made that unqualified statement, no.

HH: Given that you couldn't find anyone to tell you that it wouldn't be damaging, wouldn't the necessary conclusion be that it would be?

DM: That's a reasonable inference. But we did...there were people who told us that they believed that the damage, if any, would be minimal.

The Baquet assertion that "close read of the article shows that some in the government believe that the program is ineffective in fighting terrorism" is only squared with the McManus account by inferring that (1) the people Baquet is referencing were "off the record" and (2) that McManus while discussing this very issue with me didn't bring those off-the-record people up. In short, to believe the Times we have to discount all the people McManus is referring to, and rely on the Harry the Rabbitt sources Baquet points to.

Baquet:

In the end, we felt that the legitimate public interest in this program outweighed the potential cost to counterterrorism efforts.

Again, the McManus account is that "in the end" the New York Times was going with the story so we were too. No balancing, just a fear of not keeping up with Bill Keller's ethical spin cycle.

Baquet:

Some readers have seen our decision to publish this story as an attack on the Bush administration and an attempt to undermine the war on terror.

We are not out to get the president.

Only a fool would believe this given the Los Angeles Times' endless and almost unbroken war on the war over the past three years. And if Baquet believes it, he's completely out of touch with his paper's staff and their agenda journalism. He's certainly out of touch with McManus, so anything is possible.

This newspaper has done much hard-hitting reporting on terrorism, from around the world, often at substantial risk to our reporters. We have exposed terrorist cells and led the way in exposing the work of terrorists. We devoted a reporter to covering Al Qaeda's role in world terrorism in the months before 9/11. I know, because I made the assignment.

So what? This is special pleading, and if if was a Los Angeles police officer accused of brutality or a corrupt public official arguing their long record of service, the Times would rightly dismiss such posturing as beside the point. We are talking specifically about a decision to publish classified material which --by the admission of the paper's D.C. bureau chief-- could have helped terrorists elude capture. Changing the subject doesn't change the seriousness of the paper's error or its potential consequences.

More Baquet:

But we also have an obligation to cover the government, with its tremendous power, and to offer information about its activities so citizens can make their own decisions. That's the role of the press in our democracy.

The founders of the nation actually gave us that role, and instructed us to follow it, no matter the cost or how much we are criticized. Thomas Jefferson said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." That's the edict we followed.

Again, I quote McManus to Baquet:

HH: Sure. Do you agree, Doyle McManus, that the press has no exemption from the national security statutes?

DM: I do agree with that.

For an extended treatment of this basic truth which Baquet ignores, read Professor Eastman's testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. Apparently a proclamation of press freedom is the last refuge of an editor caught in the anger of a public that generally believes his paper to have compromised the national security, and to have done so contrary to law.

This was a tough call for me, as I'm sure it was for the editors of other papers that chose to publish articles on the subject.

So tough that you didn't get on a plane and go to D.C. for the talks? From McManus:

HH: Did Dean Baquet get involved in this, the editor of the Los Angeles Times?

DM: He did. A decision of this magnitude would naturally go all the way up to the editor.

HH: Did he come to the Washington meetings that you were holding with the Treasury Department officials?

DM: No, he didn't.

Yeah, he lost a lot of sleep I am sure.

But history tells us over and over that the nation's founders were right in pushing the press into this role. President Kennedy persuaded the press not to report the Bay of Pigs planning. He later said he regretted this, that he might have called it off had someone exposed it.

Ah, the Bay of Pigs. This must be what they teach editors at the first meeting when they are inducted into the secret society of the guardians of America: When in trouble, bring up the Bay of Pigs.

History has taught us that the government is not always being honest when it cites secrecy as a reason not to publish. No one believes, in retrospect, that there was any true reason to withhold the Pentagon Papers, although the government fought vigorously to keep them from being published by the New York Times and the Washington Post. As Justice Hugo Black put it in that case: "The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic."

Here Baquet reveals his ignorance of the Pentagon Papers decision. Begin with the fact that the case's four dissenters are on record as not merely agreeing with the government's right to withhold the papers, but even in the more radical proposition that a prior restraint was authorized. And serious students of the case understand that the objection made during the war --compromising methods and sources-- would certainly not have survived long after the war's end, but Baquet's cavalier treatment of the facts of that case again raises the issue of whether newspapermen who lead busy but not particularly broad or learned lives are in a position to have the factual or experiential backgrounds to make judgments such as these. The triumph of cliches doesn't matter when it is just newsroom posturing and idiot editorials. It has grave consequences when national security secrets are being paraded in an age of terror.

Baquet's closing aside on the Pentagon Papers case --an "everbody knows" wave of the hand-- demonstrates he really doesn't get out much or read much.

I don't expect all of our readers to agree with my call. But understand that it was one taken with serious reflection and supported by much history.

It is Mr. Baquet's misfortune to have published this defense within hours of an interview with his senior man in D.C. in which that man provides ample evidence that this assertion about "serios reflection" is false.

Also false --and unsupported by a single example-- is the appeal to history. There is no parallel in the history of the major American press to this intentional injury to our national security intrests, no previous examples outside of this war where the press published stories it was warned could assist our enemies in eluding capture, no previous instance of indifference to the safety of Americans.

Here's how I closed the interview with McManus:

HH: Sgt. T.F. Boggs, who's serving in Iraq on his second tour, sent a letter to Mr. Keller after the story published at the New York Times, in which he included the line, "Thank you for continually contributing to the deaths of my fellow soldiers." He, and many other mil-bloggers, are as angry as they can be, and they believe that these stories, yours among them, have contributed to the death of Americans and the empowerment of terrorists. I want you to have a chance to respond before you've got to leave, Mr. McManus.

DM: Well, I respect Sgt. Boggs, and I respect what he's doing for our country. I think accusing newspapers of causing the deaths of soldiers over the last several years because of a story that was printed last week probably adds more heat than light to this discussion.

Mr. McManus chose to hear Sgt. Boggs' objection in a narrow way, allowing him to dodge the responsibility Boggs is assigning him. So does Baquet in his piece. So has Bill Keller and various apologists.

But the reactions of Americans across the country is one of disgust. The media elite crossed a line, and its indifference to the threat of terrorism defined it in a way that a thousand columns will not undo.

Alexandra von Maltzan is not an optimist.

The New York Times, editorializing a long time ago, when the Trade Center ruins were still burning:

The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies....If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one.

(HT: LegalXXX who posted this in June, 2004, and to e-mailer Mary Beth S. who pinged me as to the existence of the editorial, which she found on this FreeRepublic thread.)