Soccer Dad

Do you wanna know a secret? Do you promise not to tell?

via Instapundit Michael Barone

"Here's a fascinating issue, and one of great importance for the news business: whether the government should prosecute newspapers for printing classified information and government employees for divulging it. Specifically, should the New York Times be prosecuted for its Dec. 16, 2005, story on the NSA surveillance of communications between suspected al Qaeda operatives abroad and people in the United States?"

Barone's post is a fascinating discussion of whether or not the NY Times violated the Espionage Act, and even if did, should it (or its reporters) be prosecuted. The linchpin for the discussion is Gabriel Schoenfeld's Has the New York Times Violated the Espionage Act? from the March 2006 issue of Commentary Magazine. Toward the end of his legal analysis Schoenfeld writes

What the New York Times has done is nothing less than to compromise the centerpiece of our defensive efforts in the war on terrorism. If information about the NSA program had been quietly conveyed to an al-Qaeda operative on a microdot, or on paper with invisible ink, there can be no doubt that the episode would have been treated by the government as a cut-and-dried case of espionage. Publishing it for the world to read, the Times has accomplished the same end while at the same time congratulating itself for bravely defending the First Amendment and thereby protecting us—from, presumably, ourselves. The fact that it chose to drop this revelation into print on the very day that renewal of the Patriot Act was being debated in the Senate—the bill’s reauthorization beyond a few weeks is still not assured—speaks for itself.

Well the Patriot Act was reauthorized this week, but that's still pretty damning.

Technorati tags: Patriot Act, Espionage Act, domestic spying.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 3, 2006 12:17 AM