The New York Times, its rhymes and reasons

The New York Times Newsroom

In its latest turn around the mulberry bush, the weasely New York Times has yet again brandished its First Amendment rights (even as it has long since lost its First Amendment bona fides) with another story of negligible newsworthiness but of egregious deleteriousness to something about which it apparently could not care less, national security.

With its decision to ignore the myriad requests of George W. Bush Administration officials, House and Senate Intelligence Committee members (Republicans and Democrats both), as well as members of the 9-11 Commission (which the Times until very recently had held in such sacrosanct regard, right up until the moment they at the once agreed with President Bush) and make public the effort to track terrorist coin as it spanned the globe, the Times has completed for us the conversionary intellectual process, whereby one goes from pondering whether or not the Grey Lady wishes us ill in the pushback against global Caliphatic oblivion to being morally certain that they do.

The roots of said pathology, whether it is pronounced disdain for this nation or merely the man currently at its helm, are as irrelevant as were those that led Jeffrey Dahmer to dine out on his friends and neighbors. (One only need read any Times edition prior to January 20th, 2001, to know that this neurosis predates this man; perhaps the two in combination have raised the bar for the Times' lower motives.)

It matters not a whit why the Times is doing this; it is only of paramount import that they are. To abuse their (rapidly diminishing) status as the Journal of Record as a vorpal weapon against the hand that stays their Undoers is quite simply staggeringly stupid and suicidal. It appears that they too are joyless members of the sub-societal Death Cult they routinely hold up for such high praise on their benighted pages.

As well, of course, as either willfully ignorant or hypocritical on stilts when it comes to the facts on the ground, or (in the grand Rocky and Bullwinkle tradition of the dual title), Some Governmental Seepage Is Better Than Others. It appears that the Times is adhering to their newly minted credo, "Live By the Leak, Die By the Leak", in full applicative mode against the Bush Administration for having at least been accused of outing the glorified Langley secretary, and long since inoperative, Valerie Plame. Then, of course, de-duffelling the feline was a moral outrage, and (ostensibly) egregiously damaging to both our safety and hers.

Eric Lichtblau and James Risen Working On Their Latest al Qaeda Briefing

In abounding "I'm Rubber, You're Glue" playground mind set mode, the Times apparently then made the decision to set into the White House with a whole host of published leaks of its own, in some sort of perverse payback for the Crime That Wasn't (as absolutely no charges have been, nor will be, filed against anyone directly related to the Plame "revelation"). In the Times' composite, aggregate tiny mind, Bush, or the even more dastardly Dick Cheney or (cue the music) Karl Rove, were surely guilty, no matter what Reality proffered to the contrary, and they would give them their comeuppance but good.

Imagine an intellectual eight year old, bullied (if only in his mind) by the bigger kids and bolstered by a Nicolo Machiavelli mind set, and you have the serial treason on display on board the Arthur Sulzberger Express.

One must also wonder how many tools the Times is allowed to remove from the anti-terror Presidential kit and continue, with a straight face, to chastise him for not yet capturing Osama bin Laden.

Fox News' Washington, D.C., Managing Editor Brit Hume (he of some of the finest analysis around, excelling especially at routinely and vociferously pummeling NPR's Juan Williams about the head and shoulders; if only he were unencumbered of his newsman day job) made the astute observation that were one of us, the Great Unquilled, to hand al Qaeda this exact information on this exact anti-terror program, we would undoubtedly and rightly be arrested and charged with sedition.

For the New York Times' Newsmen, Prete a Porter

Do people in rumpled, dirty shirts, bad ties and worse shoes get a pass simply because they have one?

Not to mention, lest we forget, that these very same shabbily dressed men with pens who are today excoriating Bush for the good of their own perverse moral order were the very same scribes who on September 24th, 2001, editorialized that we should do precisely that for which they are now pounding the President.

To wit:

"Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists.

"The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies.

"Osama bin Laden originally rose to prominence because his inherited fortune allowed him to bankroll Arab volunteers fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Since then, he has acquired funds from a panoply of Islamic charities and illegal and legal businesses, including export-import and commodity trading firms, and is estimated to have as much as $300 million at his disposal.

"Some of these businesses move funds through major commercial banks that lack the procedures to monitor such transactions properly. Locally, terrorists can utilize tiny unregulated storefront financial centers, including what are known as hawala banks, which people in South Asian immigrant communities in the United States and other Western countries use to transfer money abroad. Though some smaller financial transactions are likely to slip through undetected even after new rules are in place, much of the financing needed for major attacks could dry up.

"Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be accompanied by strong sanctions against doing business with financial institutions based in these nations. The Bush administration initially opposed such measures. But after the events of Sept. 11, it appears ready to embrace them.

"The Treasury Department also needs new domestic legal weapons to crack down on money laundering by terrorists. The new laws should mandate the identification of all account owners, prohibit transactions with "shell banks" that have no physical premises and require closer monitoring of accounts coming from countries with lax banking laws. Prosecutors, meanwhile, should be able to freeze more easily the assets of suspected terrorists. The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold hearings this week on a bill providing for such measures. It should be approved and signed into law by President Bush.

"New regulations requiring money service businesses like the hawala banks to register and imposing criminal penalties on those that do not are scheduled to come into force late next year. The effective date should be moved up to this fall, and rules should be strictly enforced the moment they take effect. If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one."

I Am Ready For My Close-Up, Mister Sulzberger

How dare the Bush Administration now do explicitly what the New York Times then suggested? Were it not for the aforementioned contumacious callowness or first order dissimulation, one would think that Bill Keller and the Boys would be taking this as a victory lap right about now.

But to do that would be to concurrently assist the White House, and that is one thing for which the New York Times can not stand.