Decision ‘08

SWIFT Program Revelations: Keller Responds (Again)

This time with co-author Dean Baquet, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, who most have written the majority of this piece, because it’s not as insufferably arrogant as a typical Keller statement:

How do we, as editors, reconcile the obligation to inform with the instinct to protect?

Sometimes the judgments are easy. Our reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, take great care not to divulge operational intelligence in their news reports, knowing that in this wired age it could be seen and used by insurgents.

Often the judgments are painfully hard. In those cases, we cool our competitive jets and begin an intensive deliberative process.

The process begins with reporting. Sensitive stories do not fall into our hands. They may begin with a tip from a source who has a grievance or a guilty conscience, but those tips are just the beginning of long, painstaking work. Reporters operate without security clearances, without subpoena powers, without spy technology. They work, rather, with sources who may be scared, who may know only part of the story, who may have their own agendas that need to be discovered and taken into account. We double-check and triple-check. We seek out sources with different points of view. We challenge our sources when contradictory information emerges.

Then we listen. No article on a classified program gets published until the responsible officials have been given a fair opportunity to comment. And if they want to argue that publication represents a danger to national security, we put things on hold and give them a respectful hearing. Often, we agree to participate in off-the-record conversations with officials, so they can make their case without fear of spilling more secrets onto our front pages.

Finally, we weigh the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing. There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public’s interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information. We make our best judgment.

When we come down in favor of publishing, of course, everyone hears about it. Few people are aware when we decide to hold an article. But each of us, in the past few years, has had the experience of withholding or delaying articles when the administration convinced us that the risk of publication outweighed the benefits. Probably the most discussed instance was The New York Times’s decision to hold its article on telephone eavesdropping for more than a year, until editors felt that further reporting had whittled away the administration’s case for secrecy.

But there are other examples. The New York Times has held articles that, if published, might have jeopardized efforts to protect vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear material, and articles about highly sensitive counterterrorism initiatives that are still in operation. In April, The Los Angeles Times withheld information about American espionage and surveillance activities in Afghanistan discovered on computer drives purchased by reporters in an Afghan bazaar.

It is not always a matter of publishing an article or killing it. Sometimes we deal with the security concerns by editing out gratuitous detail that lends little to public understanding but might be useful to the targets of surveillance. The Washington Post, at the administration’s request, agreed not to name the specific countries that had secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons, deeming that information not essential for American readers. The New York Times, in its article on National Security Agency eavesdropping, left out some technical details.

Even the banking articles, which the president and vice president have condemned, did not dwell on the operational or technical aspects of the program, but on its sweep, the questions about its legal basis and the issues of oversight.

We understand that honorable people may disagree with any of these choices — to publish or not to publish. But making those decisions is the responsibility that falls to editors, a corollary to the great gift of our independence. It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the government.

Yes, that’s all well and good, but let’s face it; those are platitudes. The fact remains that the only reason the Times story would be newsworthy at all would be as a tool to paint an administration that tramples on privacy and throws away the Constitution. Certainly, that’s the only circumstance that would have warranted a front-page placement.

I still say we’re seeing an instance of the age-old attempt at both having and eating cake…

6 Responses to “SWIFT Program Revelations: Keller Responds (Again)”

1 peter Says:
July 1st, 2006 at 8:12 am
Se we have a situation where the government is engaged in a program of unprecedented scope, where there are “questions about its legal basis and the issues of oversight.”

If the Times doesn’t run the story, they are not reporting the news. If they do run it, it is because they want to “paint an administration that tramples on privacy and throws away the Constitution.”

What are they supposed to do in this situation?
2 Mark Says:
July 1st, 2006 at 8:16 am
Well, peter, with all due respect, we only have Keller’s assertion that there are ‘questions about its legal basis and the issue of oversight’. The vast, vast majority of commenters have admitted that the program is perfectly legal, and successful. Give me an example of a law that the program may have broken…
3 Mark Says:
July 1st, 2006 at 8:17 am
Put another way: the U.S. Government has millions of employees; it’s not going to be hard to find one to back up these assertions - but I want a fact, not an assertion…
4 peter Says:
July 1st, 2006 at 9:19 am
Well, you can’t determine whether the program violates the law until a) the facts are known and b) a court reaches a judgment. Until then, all you have are assertions, and there are many people besides Keller who are making assertions that the program could be beyond the law.

The Times article refers to a “leading expert on banking privacy,” “Treasury and Justice Department lawyers,” and “SWIFT executives ” who expressed concerns about the program. It also referred to others who support the program. It is certainly an open question whether the program is within the scope of current law. If it is: fine. If not, then let’s discuss changing the law. I don’t see the justification for assuming that it must be OK and hence hidden from public view.
5 Blue Crab Boulevard Says:
July 1st, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Althouse Versus The Times Two

Ann Althouse's smoke detectors are going off over the op-ed appearing in today's New York Times describing how the Times Two editors decide to publish secrets. Baquet and Keller's explanation rings hollow.
The two editors — …
6 mtl Says:
July 1st, 2006 at 1:51 pm
“Our reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, take great care not to divulge operational intelligence in their news reports, knowing that in this wired age it could be seen and used by insurgents.”

Peter-this one was for you and Geraldo. By taking ‘great care’, I infer it to mean-we didn’t send Geraldo-fox did. I’d swap Tucker Carlson and Geraldo for Cynthia McKinney and HRC in a heartbeat.

“They may begin with a tip from a source who has a grievance or a guilty conscience, but those tips are just the beginning of long, painstaking work.”

I think it was a ‘greivance’ in this matter. Not against the program, but the WH itself. 00 and 04 have been maddening to Dems, far more so than 9/11.

“There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public’s interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information.”

We don’t know what we are doing, but if something we report on gets damaged, there is always an intangible gain. (I thought that was the problem with Iraq, metric of deaths versus intangible good).

The rest of the article basicly says-

‘We have policed ourselves and are still good cops. That we have to write this in our defense, unlike 90% of the other times we divulge does not mean that we have crossed any new boundary, despite the public outcry and the imminent demonstration that the program was effective- somewhere there is a silver lining.’