House of Eratosthenes

There is this scene in the classic movie Rashomon (1950) in which the criminal and the nobleman engage in a swordfight. It’s a re-enactment that’s been done two or three times earlier in the movie, according to different testimony, and this latest one is really lame. Not Revenge of the Sith (2005) type stuff, not in the least. Both combatants spend a great deal more time posturing, anticipating, stumbling, quivering, yelping, and once or twice in the whole melee their weapons actually make contact with a rather pathetic “pinging” noise. Naturally, this causes them both to retreat, topspeed, backward, like craven hyenas, and then the comical circling/trembling exercise is renewed again.

Kind of funny. Kind of eerie. Anyone who has not actually seen a swordfight in person, including your humble author, quickly gathers the impression that perhaps this version mirrors reality most closely.

As the critics and apologists of the New York Times circle each other over this whole SWIFT dealy-doo, the ensuing conflict reminds me of that scene. Rhetorical questions bumptiously posed, which in turn seem to have only a nodding acquaintance, if any acquaintance at all, with the point that is supposed to be made by posing them. Relatively simple matters, made more complicated, not to flesh out obscure points that would otherwise pass by forgotten, but instead to deceive and distract.

Brutally Honest, which is already listed in the sidebar, came up with a couple more of the anti-war posters photoshopped from the World War II days to more directly address the New York Times’ speaking-truth-to-power, or seditious-indiscretion, depending on your point of view. The post went up a week ago. For this, the blogger earned the enmity of one of his commentators, who said the blogger was “crazy-ass,” “freakazoid,” and “sinking into fascist territory real fast.”

Unlike the Rashomon duelists, the Brutally blogger preserved his dignity by refusing to engage. I, of course, am not that dignified.

Now, some will assert, I expect, that there’s nothing wrong with what the commentator said. Others with a slightly more healthy fixture to the plane of reality, will recognize the commentator is arriving at whatever haphazard conclusions he wants to in order to advance an agenda, neglecting completely to show how these conclusions can be logically supported by anything that was said, or anything that actually happened — but then go on to assert this is an isolated case.

Well, it isn’t an isolated case. People, just like the Brutally blogger, articulate the entirely sensible notion — the entirely sustainable notion, might I add — that the Times made a publishing decision running heavy on the peril to our national security, and much more lightly on the value of the revealed information to the public-at-large. For this, and/or for photoshopping some posters, the people who advance this simple observation are called “right-wing nutjobs,” “freakazoids,” and “neo-cons.” The notion that too much information might get some people killed, is summarily pronounced to be delusive, extravagant, half-assed, crazy, and to be nothing more than a reverberation of a cock-and-bull talk-radio talking-point.

Even though, in times past, our government prosecuted people for doing the same thing. This is just a simple fact. If it’s okay to do, now, what decades ago was unanimously recognized as treasonous, something must have changed. Has the nature of war changed? Can it be that information is less valuable to our enemies…now that we’ve jettisoned the moorings of the industrial age, and ventured headlong into the information age? If that’s the case, how can this be?

That’s the question. And all I hear back, in response, is a lot of swooshing, with some occasional pinging.

One of the favorite talking-points from the left-wing…oh, did you not know? The Left are pretty fond of talking points too. Anyway. One of the blustery rhetorical questions, which perhaps seeks to make a point, but shows little evidence of a continued fastening with that point, is this. The Wall Street Journal did it too!

Gee, when little kids say he did it first! at least they seek shelter behind the skirts of time. “First.” Of getting physical I am guilty, but I didn’t throw the first punch. By implication, I’m using the excuse of self-defense.

The “WSJ did it too!” defense is several levels weaker than this, because it is single-strand. It sees vindication through dilution, alone. What The Times did, is equal to what The Journal did, so if you utter even a syllable against The Times you are morally bound to mirror your invective in the direction of The Journal as well, or else you are a hypocrite. Attacking the critics; accusing the accusers.

One of the cards in the bottom row of this quivering house, is the notion that the two situations are identical. Hah! If only they were. Forget about the house collapsing; doubt must be cast on whether it can be built in the first place.

The Journal, after the umptyfratz-th time the argument was raised, decided the time had come to address it soundly on Friday:

President Bush, among others, has since assailed the press for revealing the [terrorist financing] program, and the Times has responded by wrapping itself in the First Amendment, the public’s right to know and even The Wall Street Journal. We published a story on the same subject on the same day, and the Times has since claimed us as its ideological wingman. So allow us to explain what actually happened, putting this episode within the larger context of a newspaper’s obligations during wartime.
:
According to Tony Fratto, Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, he first contacted the Times some two months ago. He had heard Times reporters were asking questions about the highly classified program involving Swift, an international banking consortium that has cooperated with the U.S. to follow the money making its way to the likes of al Qaeda or Hezbollah. Mr. Fratto went on to ask the Times not to publish such a story on grounds that it would damage this useful terror-tracking method.

Sometime later, Secretary John Snow invited Times Executive Editor Bill Keller to his Treasury office to deliver the same message. Later still, Mr. Fratto says, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the leaders of the 9/11 Commission, made the same request of Mr. Keller. Democratic Congressman John Murtha and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte also urged the newspaper not to publish the story.

The Times decided to publish anyway, letting Mr. Fratto know about its decision [on or about 6/21]. The Times agreed to delay publishing by a day to give Mr. Fratto a chance to bring the appropriate Treasury official home from overseas. Based on his own discussions with Times reporters and editors, Mr. Fratto says he believed “they had about 80% of the story, but they had about 30% of it wrong.” So the Administration decided that, in the interest of telling a more complete and accurate story, they would declassify a series of talking points about the program. They discussed those with the Times the next day, June 22.

Around the same time, Treasury contacted Journal reporter Glenn Simpson to offer him the same declassified information. Mr. Simpson has been working the terror finance beat for some time, including asking questions about the operations of Swift, and it is a common practice in Washington for government officials to disclose a story that is going to become public anyway to more than one reporter. Our guess is that Treasury also felt Mr. Simpson would write a straighter story than the Times, which was pushing a violation-of-privacy angle; on our reading of the two June 23 stories, he did.

We recount all this because more than a few commentators have tried to link the Journal and Times at the hip. On the left, the motive is to help shield the Times from political criticism. On the right, the goal is to tar everyone in the “mainstream media.” But anyone who understands how publishing decisions are made knows that different newspapers make up their minds differently.

Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn’t mind seeing in print. If this was a “leak,” it was entirely authorized.

Would the Journal have published the story had we discovered it as the Times did, and had the Administration asked us not to? Speaking for the editorial columns, our answer is probably not. Mr. Keller’s argument that the terrorists surely knew about the Swift monitoring is his own leap of faith. The terror financiers might have known the U.S. could track money from the U.S., but they might not have known the U.S. could follow the money from, say, Saudi Arabia. The first thing an al Qaeda financier would have done when the story broke is check if his bank was part of Swift.

Did you catch that?

Tony Fratto, through his boss, through the President, has the job of declaring things classified in the interest of national security. That means, to those unacquainted, there are some things that can’t be publicly known — if they are so known, people might be put in danger. This job, ultimately, rests with Fratto’s boss’ boss. The President. Yeah, the guy who didn’t really win Florida and Ohio. Whatever. Get over it already.

So here comes Fratto, to say hey wait a minute, don’t run that. It will compromise our national security. And Keller, who has First Amendment protection, but has no obligation for figuring out what’s classified and what isn’t…zip, zero, nada…says screw you.

This is supposed to be a “publishing decision.”

Sure it is…in the sense that New York Times stock value could tick up a notch or two, if & when the story is run. That is one side of the decision.

The other side of the decision, is the national security, to say nothing of human life, placed at risk.

How is Keller responsible for this? You know what, forget about responsibility…how is he even in a position to make an assessment of the risk? Nobody, at least no one brought to my attention, seeks to demonstrate such a thing.

So in order to re-assert this as a “publishing decision,” you need to demonstrate no lives were placed at risk. And The Left seeks to do that with the silly rhetorical question…how?

Ah, but the answer is so simple, that the question, by being asked, betrays a voyage into fantasy-land, the length of such sojourn, day-trip, lifetime-voyage, somewhere in between, being anybody’s guess. Um, well…terrorism kills people? Terrorism…can sometimes be expensive, and needs financing? The root of terrorism is terrorist money? Kill a weed it’s back tomorrow, kill the root it’s gone for good?

Like, duh?

I wish this dialog resembled some of the other more genuinely confrontational swordplay in Rashomon. But it doesn’t. I’m being asked to believe we are getting a better government when the government is transparent, because that way it is accountable to the public-at-large. I wish, when I saw the behavior of the public-at-large, once the guts of the transparent government have been exposed for inspection…that the ensuing forensic deliberations gave me a little more confidence.

Posture, quiver, swoosh…ping! Swoosh.

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Monday, July 3rd, 2006