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SITE, a private intelligence company, is claiming that intelligence officials within the Bush administration jeopardized national security by leaking a classified bin Laden tape to the Fox News Channel. “Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past.”
Ironically, during the summer of 2006, “numerous conservative commentators joined the Bush administration in arguing that, in detailing a secret Treasury Department program designed to monitor terrorists’ international financial transactions, a June 23 New York Times article tipped off terrorists to the U.S. government’s ability to track their financial activities — some going so far as to accuse the newspaper of treason.” Media Matters has the run down:
- Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that the article “made it more difficult for us to prevent attacks in the future” and “will enable the terrorists to look for ways to defeat our efforts.”
- President Bush commented, “If you want to figure out what the terrorists are doing, you try to follow their money. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. And the fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror.”
- White House press secretary Tony Snow said the newspaper “ought to think long and hard about whether a public’s right to know in some cases might override somebody’s right to live” and suggested that the article “could place in jeopardy the safety of fellow Americans.”
- Michelle Malkin, syndicated columnist: “The New York Times (proudly publishing all the secrets unfit to spill since 9/11) and their reckless anonymous sources (come out, come out, you cowards) tipped off terrorists to America’s efforts to track their financial activities.” [”The terrorist-tipping Times,” 6/28/06]
- Brit Hume, Fox News Washington managing editor: “[N]ow they [the terrorists] know it. That’s the problem. Now they know it. … The objective is to find out what channels they are using, who’s got the money and where it’s coming from. … You don’t want to drive this stuff further underground because it undermines your ability to track it and to stop it.” [Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday, 6/25/06]
But as Media Matters noted at the time, these charges were unfounded. “The Times report was hardly the first indication of U.S. efforts to monitor terrorists’ financial transactions: President Bush himself repeatedly touted the government’s capability to track and shut down terrorists’ international financial networks.”
Yet conservatives still exploited the story for political purposes. Since the “selective moral outrage crowd” denounced the allegedly “liberal New York Times” for undermining American interests and aiding the terrorists, shouldn’t one expect even harsher condemnation for the Bush administration?
since when has the Bush Administration EVER given up the supposed moral high ground they think they claim? they never have, and they never will, especially with this case. and this won’t be reported by Faux News.