Why I Hate The New York Times …A Continuing Series

The New York Times reporters who provided terrorists with valuable information on US espionage programs have written a book about their exploits. Apparently, they are proud of what they did, go figure.

To promote the book one of the authors, Eric Lichtblau, has written a piece for Slate magazine which reeks of self importance and self congratulations. The Jawa Report reads Slate so we don't have too and has a take down here.

My favorite part is where Lichtblau describes a White House meeting where officials tried to convince the Times not to publish highly classified national security information.

Finally, one afternoon in December 2005, as my editors and I waited anxiously in an elegantly appointed sitting room at the White House, we were again about to let President Bush's top aides plead their case: why our newspaper shouldn't let the public know that the president had authorized the National Security Agency, in apparent contravention of federal wiretapping law, to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants. As New York Times Editor Bill Keller, Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman, and I awaited our meeting, we still weren't sure who would make the pitch for the president. Dick Cheney had thought about coming to the meeting but figured his own tense relations with the newspaper might actually hinder the White House's efforts to stop publication. (He was probably right.)

They ‘let President Bush’s top aides plead their case’? Well, wasn’t that mighty generous of their Royal Highnesses at the Times? It’s a good thing they didn’t have anything better to do that day or perhaps the administration wouldn’t have been allowed to ‘plead their case’ for not providing vital information to terrorists who just 4 short years earlier had killed almost 3,000 Americans, most of them in the city the Times calls home.

And if the Vice President of the United States had participated in the meeting it might have given extra impetus to the Times to publish this information? Considering they did so anyway, what would they have done if Cheney had been there? Hand delivered that day’s paper to as many terrorists as possible and given them a discount on their subscriptions?

I do thank Mr. Lichtblau for his honesty if not his judgment or decency.

Below the fold, Slublog got his hands on Lichtblau's book jacket photo.

Well, it would be the book photo if there were any justice.

posted by DrewM. at 12:59 PM

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