At opinion-writers school, right after you learn "all money is fungible," "now comes the hard part" and "(insert name of latest war) has become another Vietnam—a quagmire," you're ready to tackle the lesson of Watergate: "It's not the crime; it's the cover-up."
It grows more tempting every day to say just that about The New York Times' decision to publicize the U.S. government's top-secret program to track suspected terrorists' financial transactions. Except for one thing: A disclosure like this in wartime is the crime. New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller's defense of the disclosure is only a sideshow.
Still, Keller's ongoing explanations are now adding insult to injury. It's one thing to publish a story that high government officials, the 9/11 commission chairmen, Republicans and Democrats and even antiwar-crowd-swell John Murtha tell you will injure U.S. national security. It's another thing to offer up a series of sorry justifications after the damage is done.
Keller's early pomposities on the media's special responsibilities under the Constitution did nothing to dampen the firestorm his paper sparked. Neither did his claim that The Times knew better than U.S. government officials and 9/11 commission chairmen who urged the paper not to publish. On the contrary, he made matters worse. Now, his latest rationale for outing the secret program is that it wasn't a secret program after all. Everyone knew we were trying to track their cash.
"Clearly the terrorists, or the people who finance terrorism, know quite well, because our Treasury Department and the White House have talked openly about it, that they monitor international banking transactions," Keller said on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "It's not news to the terrorists."
Question: If terrorists know all this stuff because the government has talked openly about monitoring international banking operations, why would the government urge The Times not to publish the story?
Better question: If everybody knew about this already, why was it front-page news?
Forget whether The Times and its unauthorized leakers should be taking it upon themselves to decide which wartime programs remain secret or what all terrorists may or may not already know. Keller's "terrorists knew" rationale doesn't pass the laugh test. Have his reporters canvassed all the world's terrorists, or is omniscience about terrorists a job requirement at The Times? In either case, Keller and the gang might offer to help the government locate the terrorists. It can use all the help it can get these days.
And how does Keller account for the fact that the terrorists his own paper says were caught through this program didn't seem to know about it? The government started talking about monitoring international banking right after 9/11. The man behind the 2002 Bali bombings was captured in 2003. A Brooklyn man was picked up in 2003 and convicted on terror charges last year.
Keller might argue they weren't the brightest, most well-informed terrorists. (Maybe their Times subscriptions lapsed, and they weren't up on best practices.) Still, it's a good idea to have secret programs that catch duller, less-informed terrorists, too.
A contradiction lies at the heart of the Keller explanation, and it goes beyond his declaration that his front-page news story was not really news and a secret program was not really a secret. It's this: A program like the financial surveillance program cannot be simultaneously successful and known to all terrorists. It can be effective because it's unknown to the terrorists it traps. Or it can be ineffective because terrorists know about it. It cannot be both.
So why did The Times declassify the terror funding surveillance program on its front page? Because The Times thought there needed to be an informed public debate on the secret program. "The scope of the program and its evident successes and questions about oversight were news to the voters and citizens," Keller said Sunday.
Got that? We'll disclose a secret program so Americans can decide if it's worthwhile. And if they like it, what do we do? Make it secret again? Unbelievable.
Remember the Vietnam War commander who talked about destroying the village in order to save it? In today's war on terror, Bill Keller is prepared to kill a legal and effective secret program to debate it.
David Reinhard
