The NSA and the New York Times

[Ichingcarpenter]

One of the most striking aspects of a recent Frontline documentary, United States of Secrets, which aired last week on US public television, is what it reveals about the role of the New York Times covering up for the illegal and unconstitutional activities of the Bush administration. (See: Documentary reviews history of domestic spying under Bush and Obama)


The Times’ Bill Keller in particular tried to nix articles about the illegal program altogether and, when that failed, he warned the Bush administration that the story was going to break. In this manner, he and his collaborators served as accomplices to state crimes.


When the 2004 presidential election was in full swing, two reporters at the New York Times were contacted by federal government employees with evidence of an illegal, unprecedented and enormous program of domestic surveillance being carried out by the National Security Agency.
Times reporter Eric Lichtblau had been contacted by Department of Justice attorney Thomas Tamm regarding the latter’s knowledge of unwarranted spying through his work as a writer of warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence


Surveillance Act (FISA) court. Tamm related that the NSA program in question had caused such an uproar within the DOJ that there was talk of the attorney general being indicted.
Another Times reporter, James Risen, was contacted by National Security Agency employees about the same illegal domestic surveillance program at around the same time. When Risen put the question of unwarranted spying to Michael Hayden himself, Hayden hung up the phone, confirming Risen’s suspicions.



Hayden put the White House on notice of the impending story. Alberto Gonzalez tells Frontline interviewers that the administration was even considering trying to obtain an injunction against any Times article that would reveal the NSA program, an action which is known as prior restraint of freedom of the press.
The White House fortunately found a willing participant for its crimes in the New York Times’ executive editor Bill Keller, who agreed to a meeting about the matter with the head of the CIA and other officials. Risen was present at the meeting. He was forbidden from writing any notes. Risen and the Times’ DC bureau chief both relate a chilling request from the acting CIA director, posed in hypotheticals. To paraphrase,“if we were conducting this type of program, it would be very important and we would ask the Times not to write about it.”



much more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/05/20/nyti-m20.html

[grasswire]

1. yes yes yes

That impressed me when I watched Frontline, too.

[TBF]

2. Here is the media consolidation graphic -

which shows how we've gone from 50 major media outlets to 6 in just a few decades. They give us whatever story they want to and it's not just the NYT doing it -



http://www.policymic.com/articles/71255/10-corporations-control-almost-everything-you-buy-this-chart-shows-how

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. Media consolidation is one in a way this another thing more serious

which could have turned the election as were the lately revelations that the White House had at least eight more times that they were warned about 911 which was only revealed by a NY times reporter in 2012 but he knew of them before the 2004 election.

The Washington post and the NY times have both been exposed by Carl Bernstein in his article: How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28610.htm