The Prez Shifts Focus and Blame

I don't know whether it's the heat and humidity of the holiday weekend or something else, but I've been very sluggish and listless today, not getting much of anything done. In fact, it's taken me until now to go dig up the latest column from our pal Frank Rich. As might be expected of a columnist for The New York Times, for the Independence Day weekend, he's giving us his take on the whole scapegoating of the press in general and his paper in particular for last week's report on the U.S. government's tracking of international financial transactions. (Of course, The Wall Street Journal and The LA Times each had the same story at the same time, but somehow they don't come up for the same ire as the figurehead of the liberal media.) Going straight for the jugular in the head, Rich titles his piece, "Can't Win the War? Bomb the Press!"

No sooner were the flag burners hustled offstage than a new traitor was unveiled for the Fourth: the press. Public enemy No. 1 is The New York Times, which was accused of a "disgraceful" compromise of national security (by President Bush) and treason (by Representative Peter King of New York and the Coulter amen chorus). The Times's offense was to publish a front-page article about a comprehensive American effort to track terrorists with the aid of a Belgian consortium, Swift, which serves as a clearinghouse for some 7,800 financial institutions in 200 countries.

It was a solid piece of journalism. But if you want to learn the truly dirty secrets of how our government prosecutes this war, the story of how it vilified The Times is more damning than anything in the article that caused the uproar.

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The real news conveyed by The Times and its competitors was not the huge program to track terrorist finances, but that per usual from the administration that gave us Gitmo, the program was conducted with little oversight from the other two branches of government. Even so, the reporting on the pros and cons of that approach was, as Mr. Snow said, balanced.

Or so he said Friday morning, June 23. By Monday, the president had entered the fray and Mr. Snow was accusing The Times of putting the "public's right to know" over "somebody's right to live." What had happened over the weekend to prompt this escalation of hysteria? The same stuff that always happens when the White House scapegoats the press (or anyone else): bad and embarrassing news that the White House wants to drown out.

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Such ravings make it hard not to think of the official assault on The Times and The Washington Post over the Pentagon Papers. In 1972, on the first anniversary of the publication of that classified Pentagon history of the Vietnam War, The Times's managing editor then, A. M. Rosenthal, reminisced in print about the hyperbolic predictions that had been made by the Nixon White House and its supporters: "Codes would be broken. Military security endangered. Foreign governments would be afraid to deal with us. There would be nothing secret left." None of that happened. What did happen was that Americans learned "how secrecy had become a way of life" for a government whose clandestine policy decisions had fomented a disaster.

The assault on a free press during our own wartime should be recognized for what it is: another desperate ploy by officials trying to hide their own lethal mistakes in the shadows. It's the antithesis of everything we celebrate with the blazing lights of Independence Day.

As we prepare to celebrate the nation's birthday, we could do far worse than to contemplate the many rights bestowed upon us by the Constitution (primary among them--though hardly alone--the First Amendment and freedom of the press).

Also, thanks to The Peking Duck for providing Mr. Rich's column in full for us to link to.