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Friday, June 23, 2006
The Gentlemen Of The Press
"Gentlemen," said General Eisenhower to a roomful of reporters during World War II, "I know you've all been guessing where we're going to attack next. Well, I'm going to let you in on the secret. Our next operation will be in Italy, early in July. General Patton will attack the southern beaches, General Montgomery, the eastern." "General," said one newsman as the reporters gasped at the revelation, "if one of us leaked that plan, couldn't it be disastrous?" Ike nodded. "The slightest hint in your stories would tip it off to German intelligence," he said, "but I'm not going to censor you fellows. I'm just leaving it up to each man's sense of responsibility.." "Wow," exclaimed one reporter, "what a dirty trick!" But not a word of the operation leaked out. [From Jules Archer's Battlefield President: Dwight David Eisenhower.]
By now you've undoubtedly learned of the New York Times's deliberate revelation of a covert international tracking operation aimed at tracing al-Qaeda finances. That operation has succeeded in capturing at least one high-profile terrorist, but is unlikely to capture any others due to the Times's publicity. According to executive editor Bill Keller, even though he conceded that the program was entirely legal and was conducted under oversight designed to insure Americans' privacy, the disclosure of the classified program by the Times was "a matter of public interest." Not wanting to be left out of the action, the Los Angeles Times followed with its own coverage of this program a few hours later.
We approach a point at which one must assume that the Old Media, of which the New York Times is the grayest of the gray eminences, will use anything it learns to frustrate the Bush Administration's efforts in the War on Terror, if it's at all possible to do so. It is outrageous, and outraging, especially in light of the unusual deference that the press receive from American governments at all levels. But given the record of the past few years, it cannot be called unexpected. Not any longer.
Your Curmudgeon hasn't taken up his pen merely to vent about this newest Old Media slap in the face to America's true public interests. There are quite enough other members of the Internet Commentariat doing that. The questions he plans to address are:
- What this will mean for the War on Terror;
- What we may expect the Administration to do in response;
- What the Old Media will say or do in their turn.
The lives and properties of Americans might well turn on the answers.
The disclosure of the financial-tracking operation has alerted the international terror network to the efficacy of this technique. In all probability, al-Qaeda's planners knew that something of this sort was going on. Yet the Times's story has revealed enough details that al-Qaeda can, in theory, elude the mechanisms in place, which relied upon the massive SWIFT [Society for Worldwide International Financial Telecommunication] database and our access to it. Al-Qaeda will almost certainly adjust its behavior, if that's possible, in light of the disclosure of the program. So American interests in the War on Terror have taken a blow, possibly a very severe one.
The centrality of money to terrorist operations cannot be overstated. A Muslim terrorist far from home, equipped with an IQ of about 85 on average and seldom in excess of 100, is unlikely to be able to craft his own weapons or secure the targeting information he needs on his own. He has to buy nearly all of that. He can't save his salary for the purpose. For one thing, being steadily employed would cut into his preparation time; for another, Muslim terrorists are currently disfavored for corporate employment. So the availability of funds from afar is critical to remote terrorist activity.
That's what made this SWIFT operation as potent as it was. Unless stringent measures are taken to avoid the data-capture of an international financial transaction by SWIFT, it will see such a transaction and record all its pertinent details. Transfers into the American financial system from places such as Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan would be natural targets for more intense scrutiny. Left undisclosed, the SWIFT operation would undoubtedly have bagged further al-Qaeda operatives, both near and far, both grunt soldiers and highly placed financiers and strategic planners.
The Administration needed the SWIFT system to complement its other intelligence-gathering techniques. It's insufficient, tactically, legally, and morally, simply to watch the comings and goings of swarthy Muslim non-citizens between the ages of 18 and 40. Yesterday's FBI arrests in Florida should have proved that if nothing else. If the terror networks succeed in avoiding the SWIFT data-capture chokepoint, the War on Terror will have suffered a grievous blow.
The Administration cannot easily replace this tool. Here in the United States, money is the key to innumerable doors. With money, one can procure just about everything one might need except for intellect and character. If the Administration is frustrated in tracking terrorist financial transfers, no other form of intelligence, whether or not the New York Times might deign to allow it to remain secret, would fill the gap.
It follows that the Administration will seek a second window into al-Qaeda's books. But where could it find one?
One approach, a rather inviting one, would be to straiten the provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act. This act, whose name would draw a chuckle from George Orwell, compels federally chartered banks -- in effect, all banks and credit unions in the United States -- to provide the Treasury and the Justice Department with full details about a wide variety of transactions. The transaction limits are currently in the thousands of dollars. Congress could easily amend them to far lower figures. In theory, Congress could end all financial privacy for anyone who's paid by check. However, it would allow the Justice Department and the FBI to collect the information required to follow cash transfers into the country from suspicious origins.
Other possibilities exist, including "off the books" programs run entirely by black-operations agencies. Your Curmudgeon will not speculate any further on the subject. But of this we may be sure: the Administration, like al-Qaeda, will adjust its behavior. One of the adjustments it's guaranteed to make is to tighten security, deny journalists certain forms of access, and prosecute further revelations about classified anti-terror programs with much greater zeal.
We're guaranteed not to like the results -- the ones we can see plainly, that is. But the operatives of the Old Media will like them still less. There, too, a change of tactics is predictable.
To report on classified federal activities requires that the reporter persuade an insider to break his promises of secrecy. Up to now, prosecutions of such leakers under the National Security Act have been relatively few; more, the penalties meted out have not been terribly severe. But we may expect that to change. In consequence, the Old Media's techniques for suborning insiders to classified programs will change as well.
If the penalties for being caught disseminating classified information are enhanced, and if the probability of prosecution and conviction is increased in tandem, potential sources will become far less available to the press. Indeed, it might become impossible to buy a leak for any money. A likely response by the Old Media would be to begin digging dirt on federal employees known to be involved with classified programs, that they might be blackmailed into suitable breaches of their confidentiality oaths. The offer of a bribe plus the judicious suppression of unfavorable publicity about past peccadilloes would be a powerful weapon in the journalist's arsenal.
It's an ugly scenario. The only good thing about it is that, when it came to light -- when, not "if" -- it would completely destroy whatever trust the American public still reposed in the gentlemen of the press. However, we cannot know at what cost to the safety of ordinary Americans we might make such a discovery, or how long it would take to emerge.
The above chain of reasoning is within the mental scope of many persons, not merely Certified Galactic Intellects. Now that the Times has shown its traitorous colors, we may expect it to be followed out to its conclusions.
Your Curmudgeon doesn't expect the results to be pretty. They're all but guaranteed to involve some genuine invasions of Americans' privacy, and some machinations by our Fourth Estate in incontrovertible opposition to the Bush Administration and in support of international Islamic terrorism.
At times like this, your Curmudgeon prays that he's somehow gone wildly wrong. But he doesn't think he has.
Comments
As an aside Fran, I wish to point out to you there are other perfectly legal ways to attain an attitude adjustment from MSM. For those of us who understand the importance, I would hope more discussion of what I’m suggesting would ensue.
You frequently refer to the MSM as Old Media. Other names abound. Establishment media. Dinosaur Media. Don’t laugh too hard: Responsible media.
While my own favorite of corporate media isn’t quite a bell-ringer, I think it suggests what may be needed to regain that lamentable loss of confidentiality such as General Eisenhower expected.
Look, given their losses in readership and viewership, how is it that MSM still generates enough revenue to stay afloat?
Why do the corporate giants still pay out large sums of money to pay for exposure to a lessening audience?
Surely such inexplicable continuation of revenue keeps these rotten ships of “news” afloat.
Could it be because all of corporate America is of like mind as Pinch Sulzberger?
Somehow I doubt it.
It seems to me that the keystone media buyer, American corporate management, has the ability to deliver an attitude adjustment. They may clearly send the message that such exposures as yesterday’s are subject to penalty outside the courts. Perfectly legal yet potentially fatal.
What does it take to gain the attention of those corporate leaders who still retain a patriotic fervor? What might it take to get one or more of these to begin a major and widely publicized reallocation of advertising money?
I’d really like to know Fran, wouldn’t you?
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 06/23/2006 at 10:50 PMIf we’ve stopped doing intensive background checks before handing out top secret clearances, then it’s not only the media that’s to blame. If we haven’t, then I doubt anyone with an embarassing enough personal secret that they’d risk prison to protect it would be given such a clearance.
Despite their being natives instead of foreigners, I wonder if the timing of the Miami FBI bust had anything to do with this leak.
Posted by Matt on 06/24/2006 at 01:07 AMHonestly Fran, Pourquoi leaking Old Media not already sunk of its own weight? Connie Chung’s Karaoke linked at Reform Club: Sign-off things to come?
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 06/24/2006 at 08:39 PM
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