The Media's Twists and Turns on the NSA Spying

Tom Maguire has been doing a terrific job deconstructing the media coverage of the NSA leak story. His rather humorous review of whether Christiane Amanpour of CNN was getting her calls monitored by the NSA (to this point, nothing more than a rumor brought on by a to-date unsubstantiated question from Andrea Mitchell to New York Times reporter James Risen) includes this solid observation...

What does it even mean to be an American if Ms. Amanpour cannot take a call in the privacy of her Baghdad office from an Al Qaeda operative in Afghanistan who is being monitored by the NSA? Good question.

There are real issues with civil liberties at stake with the NSA spying, but I'm not worried if the government is monitoring overseas calls into CNN from al Qaeda. In fact, I'd be more worried if they weren't doing so. To the point, I'm barely worried about NSA surveillance overseas, and that worry is more about whether we're doing enough of it. As Maguire notes in a later post, CNN denies that this is true as well. Of course, CNN might not want viewers to know that their reporters get phone calls from people our government believes work with al Qaeda, as Tom notes.

But Tom's best work is in tearing the left-wing dishrag a new one, for their absurd editorial earlier this week trying to defend their policy of "Leaks that Hurt Bush Are Good and Should Not Be Investigated, but Leaks That Help Bush Are Bad and Should Be Investigated." Okay, that's not the title of the editorial, but that's essentially the content...

The longest-running of the leak cases involves Valerie Wilson, a covert C.I.A. operative whose identity was leaked to the columnist Robert Novak. The question there was whether the White House was using this information in an attempt to silence Mrs. Wilson's husband, a critic of the Iraq invasion, and in doing so violated a federal law against unmasking a covert operative. There is a world of difference between that case and a current one in which the administration is trying to find the sources of a New York Times report that President Bush secretly authorized spying on American citizens without warrants. The spying report was a classic attempt to give the public information it deserves to have.

Maguire's reaction is dead on...

Can I opt out of this? Please? I don't want the Times deciding, in wartime, just what information I "deserve to have", thank you very much - they are not elected, they are not accountable, and frankly, I do not trust their politics. But rather than abandon my fellow citizens to the mercies or depredations of the Bush Administration, let me offer a constructive suggestion - since we have a representative democracy, complete with institutional checks and balances and two parties, how about if the purveyors of classifed info, when troubled by their consciences, take their troubles to a Congressional oversight committee rather than the NY Times?

As an added bonus, that would actually comply with the legal requirements of the Federal whistleblower act as it relates to the intelligence community.

Actually, let me disagree with Tom on one minor point -- even when we're not in a war, I don't want the dishrag deciding the information I need to have. The Times can't hide behind blanket assertions that they know what's best for us. When the Plame revelation took place, they howled that an investigation was necessary, because federal law may have been broken. Based on Pat Fitzgerald's work so far, no law seems to have been broken with regard to the actual leak, but the investigation had to take place.

Here, the whistlebower(s) on the NSA spying may have pristine intentions, but they may have broken federal law. That's worthy of an investigation, no matter how many times the Times flip-flops. Considering the number of positions the Times has taken on this issue makes me wonder if John Kerry took over their editorial page. As Maguire notes, this cartoon does indeed say it all.