Sunday, March 4, 2007 · Last updated 1:33 p.m. PT
Afghan media: U.S. troops deleted images
By AMIR SHAH
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan journalists covering the aftermath of a suicide bomb attack and shooting in eastern Afghanistan Sunday said U.S. troops deleted their photos and video and warned them not to publish or air any images of U.S. troops or a car where three Afghans were shot to death.
Afghan witnesses and gunshot victims said U.S. forces fired on civilians in cars and on foot along at least a six-mile stretch of road in Nangarhar province following a suicide attack against the Marine convoy. The U.S. military said militants also fired on American forces during the attack.
The U.S. military and Afghan officials said eight Afghans died and 34 were wounded in the violence. One Marine was also injured.
A freelance photographer working for The Associated Press and a cameraman working for AP Television News said a U.S. soldier deleted their photos and video showing a four-wheel drive vehicle in which three people were shot to death about 100 yards from the suicide bombing. The AP plans to lodge a protest with the American military.
The photographer, Rahmat Gul, said witnesses at the scene told him the three had been shot to death by U.S. forces fleeing the attack. The two AP freelancers arrived at the site about a half hour after the suicide bombing, Gul said.
"When I went near the four-wheel drive, I saw the Americans taking pictures of the same car, so I started taking pictures," Gul said. "Two soldiers with a translator came and said, 'Why are you taking pictures? You don't have permission.'"
It wasn't clear why the accredited journalists would need permission to take photos of a civilian car on a public highway.
Gul said the U.S. troops took his camera, deleted his photos and returned it to him. The journalists came across another American, showed their identification cards, and he agreed that they could take pictures.
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A Western military official who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to release the information said the troops were Marine Special Operations Forces, the Marine Corps component created in February 2006 of the U.S. Special Operations Command.
"The same soldier who took my camera came again and deleted my photos," Gul said. "The soldier was very angry ... I told him, 'They gave us permission,' but he didn't listen."
Gul's new photos were also deleted, and the American, speaking through a translator, warned him that he did not want to see any AP photos published anywhere. The American also raised his fist in anger as if he were going to hit him, but he did not strike, Gul said.
Lt. Col. David Accetta, a U.S. military spokesman, said he did not have any confirmed reports that coalition forces "have been involved in confiscating cameras or deleting images."
Khanwali Kamran, a reporter for the Afghan channel Ariana Television, was in a small group of journalists working alongside Gul. Kamran said the American soldiers also deleted his footage.
"They warned me that if it is aired ... then, 'You will face problems,'" Kamran said.
Taqiullah Taqi, a reporter for Afghanistan's largest television station, Tolo TV, said Americans were using abusive language.
"According to the translator, they said, 'Delete them, or we will delete you,'" Taqi said.
A freelance cameraman for AP Television News said that about 100 yards from the bomb site, a U.S. officer told him that he could not go any closer to the scene but that he could shoot footage. The cameraman asked not to be named for his own safety.
"Then I started filming the suicide attack site, where there was a body and U.S. soldiers, and farther away, there was a four-wheel drive vehicle in which three people were shot to death," he said.
As he was filming, he said, a U.S. soldier and translator "ordered us not to move." The cameraman said they were very angry and deleted any footage that included the Americans, as well as part of an interview from a demonstration. Hundreds of Afghans had gathered to protest the violence.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the actions of the U.S. forces, saying they dealt with the press poorly.
"Why did the soldiers do it if they don't have anything to hide? The situation is very tense in Afghanistan, and the media should be able to report about it freely and safely," said Jean-Francois Julliard, a spokesman for the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.
Showing posts with label journalists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journalists. Show all posts
Monday, March 5, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
Interview: James Bamford on War with Iran
Award winning investigative reporter James Bamford discusses Bush and the NSA’s felonious warrantless wiretapping and the neoconservative agenda to drive this country to war with Iran.
James Bamford was raised in Natick, Massachusetts, and spent three years in the Navy before attending law school in Boston on the G.I Bill. After graduation, intrigued by the machinations of the Watergate scandal, he gravitated toward journalism. However, rather than pursue a newspaper career he decided instead to write a book. That book was The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America’s Most Secret Agency. Published in 1982, it was the first book ever written about the National Security Agency and it became an immediate bestseller. It is now considered a classic. Bamford was first attracted to the subject of international espionage after reading The U-2 Affair by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross and The Secret War: The Story of International Espionage Since World War II by Sanche de Gramont.
While researching The Puzzle Palace, Bamford used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to recently declassified NSA documents. Nevertheless, the NSA–notoriously obsessed with secrecy – threatened to prosecute Bamford for a breach of national security. Bamford’s research, however, was totally legal and the government eventually backed off. In fact, the government ended up using The Puzzle Palace as a textbook in its Defense Intelligence College. Bamford continues to champion congressional oversight and public scrutiny of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Bamford spend nearly a decade as the Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings where he won a number of journalism awards for his coverage national security issues. In 1997, as the media profession began turning away from international news coverage and focusing almost exclusively on Monica Lewinsky and other domestic political scandals, Bamford left ABC to work on a new full-length book about the NSA. This became Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency. Initially published in April 2001 to rave reviews, it also became a national bestseller.
Unlike before with The Puzzle Palace, this time the NSA cooperated with Bamford. Alarmed by Hollywood films like Enemy of the State that portrayed his agency as a ruthless cadre of assassins, the director of the NSA, Lt. Gen Michael V. Hayden, wanted the American public to have a more accurate picture of how the NSA functioned. In order to encourage better communication between the NSA and the press, Hayden granted Bamford unprecedented access to Crypto City (the NSA campus in Ft. Meade, MD), senior NSA officials, and thousands of NSA documents while he researched Body of Secrets. The NSA even hosted a book signing for Bamford on the grounds of Crypto City. It lasted more than four hours as hundreds of NSA employees lined up to have their copies of Body of Secrets autographed.
Bamford’s articles have appeared in dozens of publications, including cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. He is based in Washington, D.C. His next project deals with the intelligence aspects of the events of September 11.
in News, Civil liberties, War party, Iran, Antiwar Radio, Israel Lobby by Scott Horton|
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Journalists testfy other Administration sources told them about Plame, not Libby
Journalists Testify That Libby Never Mentioned CIA Officer
Some Say They Learned of Plame's Identity From Other Sources
By Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 13, 2007; A03
Six journalists testified yesterday that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, never mentioned an undercover CIA officer to them -- and some said they learned about her identity from other administration sources.
As Libby's attorneys opened their defense in his perjury trial, they argued for a second time that Libby need not take the stand for them to present elements of a defense that his misstatements to investigators were the product of a faulty memory. An irritated U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said he felt misled and believed Libby would testify.
Testifying as the first defense witness, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus revealed that then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was the first person to tell him, on July 12, 2003, that war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV was married to undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. His remarks contradicted Fleischer's testimony as a prosecution witness last month.
Pincus was the first of six reporters to say they spoke to Libby, or were called by him, during a crucial period in June 2003 and early July 2003 but did not learn Plame's identity from him.
It is during this time that the prosecution says Libby was engaged in a fervent effort to discredit Wilson, who had publicly accused the White House of twisting intelligence he had gathered as it justified the invasion of Iraq. Prosecutors contend that Plame's identity and CIA post were leaked to leave the impression that Wilson was chosen for a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger because of nepotism. Plame's name was revealed in a syndicated column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003.
Libby, 56, is not charged with the leak itself but with lying to investigators about conversations he had with reporters about Plame in the summer of 2003. The defense contends that Libby, who has pleaded not guilty, inaccurately remembered conversations with journalists because they were insignificant amid his pressing work on national security matters.
The journalists' testimony was designed to help Libby's defense by showing that the defendant did not mention Plame to every reporter with whom he spoke around the time of the leak and that other officials were discussing Plame at about the same time.
Bob Woodward, a best-selling author and an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, told jurors that he learned about Plame during a mid-June 2003 interview with then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage for a book Woodward was researching on the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. He said he interviewed Libby later that month, and his notes indicate that Libby said nothing to him about Plame but that Woodward might have mentioned her to Libby.
Novak testified that he also learned of Plame's position at the CIA from Armitage on July 8, 2003, and confirmed the information with senior White House adviser Karl Rove, probably the next day.
In brief testimony that lasted less than 20 minutes each, reporters Glenn Kessler of the Post, David Sanger of the New York Times and Evan Thomas of Newsweek also told jurors that they spoke with Libby or were called by him during the key week before Novak disclosed Plame's identity. But none heard of Plame from Libby.
Pincus, who covers national security and intelligence issues for The Post, told jurors that he was in the office, talking to a source one Saturday in July about a story he was preparing about Wilson's mission to Niger.
"The person I was calling suddenly swerved off and said . . . 'Don't you know, in effect, his wife works at the CIA, is an analyst on weapons of mass destruction?' " Pincus testified. He told the court that the source said "that's why people aren't paying attention" to Wilson's conclusions that reports of Iraq trying to obtain nuclear material in Niger were unfounded -- because he had been sent on the mission by his wife.
Pincus's account conflicted with Fleischer's testimony last month. As a prosecution witness, Fleischer said he mentioned Plame only to two reporters -- John Dickerson, then of Time magazine, and David Gregory of NBC News -- during a July 2003 trip that President Bush took to Africa. Dickerson has said Fleischer never mentioned Plame to him.
A spokesman for Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald declined to comment on the conflicting testimony.
When Pincus gave a deposition to investigators during the federal probe of the CIA leak, he did not identify his source. He told jurors that he was naming Fleischer now because the former press secretary gave him permission to do so last week.
Woodward's testimony would make him the first journalist known to have been told about Plame by a Bush administration official. At the time of his interview with Armitage, Woodward said, he had learned through reporting that Wilson was the former ambassador who was sent to Africa by the CIA, and he was surprised Wilson's name had not yet surfaced publicly.
In a tape recording of the interview played for the jury, Armitage explains that the CIA took the Niger claim out of a presidential speech in October 2002 but it somehow found its way into Bush's State of the Union address months later. Woodward is heard asking about Wilson and how he happened to make the Niger trip. Some expletives in the conversation were redacted for the jury.
Armitage explains that "his wife works at the agency" on "WMD" issues.
"High enough that wife can say, 'Oh, yeah, hubby will go?' " Woodward asks.
Armitage responds that Wilson "knows Africa," and he ends the conversation with "How about that [expletive]?"
Novak said part of the reason he wrote about Wilson and his wife was that he found Wilson unpleasant and a "questionable choice" to look into the Niger claims after he met him while both were waiting to go onto a television interview program.
"He was saying that things had been done in a superior way in the National Security Council before in the Clinton administration," Novak recalled. "I thought it was sort of an obnoxious performance."
Defense attorney Theodore Wells Jr. pressed Novak to say that hundreds of reporters and others could have known what was going to appear in his July 14 column in the days preceding its publication, because the material was sent over the Associated Press wire on July 11 or July 12. Novak said he discussed the information about Wilson's wife with a close friend, conservative lobbyist Richard Hohlt, on July 11.
Some Say They Learned of Plame's Identity From Other Sources
By Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 13, 2007; A03
Six journalists testified yesterday that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, never mentioned an undercover CIA officer to them -- and some said they learned about her identity from other administration sources.
As Libby's attorneys opened their defense in his perjury trial, they argued for a second time that Libby need not take the stand for them to present elements of a defense that his misstatements to investigators were the product of a faulty memory. An irritated U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said he felt misled and believed Libby would testify.
Testifying as the first defense witness, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus revealed that then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was the first person to tell him, on July 12, 2003, that war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV was married to undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. His remarks contradicted Fleischer's testimony as a prosecution witness last month.
Pincus was the first of six reporters to say they spoke to Libby, or were called by him, during a crucial period in June 2003 and early July 2003 but did not learn Plame's identity from him.
It is during this time that the prosecution says Libby was engaged in a fervent effort to discredit Wilson, who had publicly accused the White House of twisting intelligence he had gathered as it justified the invasion of Iraq. Prosecutors contend that Plame's identity and CIA post were leaked to leave the impression that Wilson was chosen for a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger because of nepotism. Plame's name was revealed in a syndicated column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003.
Libby, 56, is not charged with the leak itself but with lying to investigators about conversations he had with reporters about Plame in the summer of 2003. The defense contends that Libby, who has pleaded not guilty, inaccurately remembered conversations with journalists because they were insignificant amid his pressing work on national security matters.
The journalists' testimony was designed to help Libby's defense by showing that the defendant did not mention Plame to every reporter with whom he spoke around the time of the leak and that other officials were discussing Plame at about the same time.
Bob Woodward, a best-selling author and an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, told jurors that he learned about Plame during a mid-June 2003 interview with then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage for a book Woodward was researching on the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. He said he interviewed Libby later that month, and his notes indicate that Libby said nothing to him about Plame but that Woodward might have mentioned her to Libby.
Novak testified that he also learned of Plame's position at the CIA from Armitage on July 8, 2003, and confirmed the information with senior White House adviser Karl Rove, probably the next day.
In brief testimony that lasted less than 20 minutes each, reporters Glenn Kessler of the Post, David Sanger of the New York Times and Evan Thomas of Newsweek also told jurors that they spoke with Libby or were called by him during the key week before Novak disclosed Plame's identity. But none heard of Plame from Libby.
Pincus, who covers national security and intelligence issues for The Post, told jurors that he was in the office, talking to a source one Saturday in July about a story he was preparing about Wilson's mission to Niger.
"The person I was calling suddenly swerved off and said . . . 'Don't you know, in effect, his wife works at the CIA, is an analyst on weapons of mass destruction?' " Pincus testified. He told the court that the source said "that's why people aren't paying attention" to Wilson's conclusions that reports of Iraq trying to obtain nuclear material in Niger were unfounded -- because he had been sent on the mission by his wife.
Pincus's account conflicted with Fleischer's testimony last month. As a prosecution witness, Fleischer said he mentioned Plame only to two reporters -- John Dickerson, then of Time magazine, and David Gregory of NBC News -- during a July 2003 trip that President Bush took to Africa. Dickerson has said Fleischer never mentioned Plame to him.
A spokesman for Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald declined to comment on the conflicting testimony.
When Pincus gave a deposition to investigators during the federal probe of the CIA leak, he did not identify his source. He told jurors that he was naming Fleischer now because the former press secretary gave him permission to do so last week.
Woodward's testimony would make him the first journalist known to have been told about Plame by a Bush administration official. At the time of his interview with Armitage, Woodward said, he had learned through reporting that Wilson was the former ambassador who was sent to Africa by the CIA, and he was surprised Wilson's name had not yet surfaced publicly.
In a tape recording of the interview played for the jury, Armitage explains that the CIA took the Niger claim out of a presidential speech in October 2002 but it somehow found its way into Bush's State of the Union address months later. Woodward is heard asking about Wilson and how he happened to make the Niger trip. Some expletives in the conversation were redacted for the jury.
Armitage explains that "his wife works at the agency" on "WMD" issues.
"High enough that wife can say, 'Oh, yeah, hubby will go?' " Woodward asks.
Armitage responds that Wilson "knows Africa," and he ends the conversation with "How about that [expletive]?"
Novak said part of the reason he wrote about Wilson and his wife was that he found Wilson unpleasant and a "questionable choice" to look into the Niger claims after he met him while both were waiting to go onto a television interview program.
"He was saying that things had been done in a superior way in the National Security Council before in the Clinton administration," Novak recalled. "I thought it was sort of an obnoxious performance."
Defense attorney Theodore Wells Jr. pressed Novak to say that hundreds of reporters and others could have known what was going to appear in his July 14 column in the days preceding its publication, because the material was sent over the Associated Press wire on July 11 or July 12. Novak said he discussed the information about Wilson's wife with a close friend, conservative lobbyist Richard Hohlt, on July 11.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Case Against Iran Made Anonymously
Bush's masked men make case for attacking Iran
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Why are US officials hiding behind the cloak of anonymity when presenting the most detailed evidence yet that Iran is supplying weaponry to anti-US forces in Iraq?
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Commentary
Stop This Now: Nameless Accusers, Sourcing
Identify US Officials Presenting Disputed Evidence Against Iran
Dept. of Defense
Page from the US's Iran dossier
After weeks, if not months, of US official planning to present a damning "dossier" of incriminating evidence against Iran, and after this same US administration presented us with lopsided, erroneous information about the capability and evil intentions of the Saddam Hussein regime, the best the US government can give us today is incendiary evidence presented at a Baghdad news conference by three US officials who refuse to be quoted by name?
That's disgraceful and unacceptable.
The American people deserve straight talk from identified US officials.
Here are some of the reports today:
-- Washington Post
-- AP
-- Reuters
-- AFP
If US officials are so sure of themselves -- their evidence appears credible but is disputed by Iranian officials and others -- then they should agree to be identified publicly and appear on-camera.
Also, the voluminous photographic evidence shared with journalists at the Baghdad news conference should be posted in full on a US government Web site.
But, wait, one of the three supposedly unnamed US officials apparently has been outed by an Iraqi news service, Voices of Iraq, whose report on the Baghdad news conference identified one of the three speakers as Major General William Caldwell, whose portfolio includes public affairs and who holds frequent news conferences and grants one-on-one interviews. So, if the VOI report identifying Caldwell is correct, why did every other news organization apparently agree to grant anonymity to the general who's the official spokesman of the US-led Multi-National Force in Iraq? Why would Caldwell insist on not having his name associated with these allegations today?
After the bogus Iraq evidence debacle in 2002 and 2003 -- allegations that led to war, tens of thousands of lives lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent -- only a fool would accept as the gospel supposed evidence against another country that's presented by officials who insist on making their allegations anonymously.
We deserve better from the US government. We deserve better from the western news media.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
'NYT' Reporter Who Got Iraqi WMDs Wrong Now Highlights Iran Claims
By Greg Mitchell
Published: February 10, 2007 10:30 PM ET updated Saturday
Published: February 10, 2007 10:30 PM ET updated Saturday
NEW YORK Saturday’s New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the “deadliest weapon aimed at American troops” in Iraq. The author notes, “Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile.”
What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than “civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies.”
Sound pretty convincing? It may be worth noting that the author is Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.
Gordon wrote with Miller the paper's most widely criticized -- even by the Times itself -- WMD story of all, the Sept. 8, 2002, “aluminum tubes” story that proved so influential, especially since the administration trumpeted it on TV talk shows.
When the Times eventually carried an editors’ note that admitted some of its Iraq coverage was wrong and/or overblown, it criticized two Miller-Gordon stories, and
noted that the Sept. 8, 2002, article on page one of the newspaper "gave the first detailed account of the aluminum tubes. The article cited unidentified senior administration officials who insisted that the dimensions, specifications and numbers of tubes sought showed that they were intended for a nuclear weapons program."
This, of course, proved bogus.
The Times “mea-culpa” story dryly observed: "The article gave no hint of a debate over the tubes," adding, "The White House did much to increase the impact of The Times article." This was the famous "mushroom cloud" over America article.
Now, more than four years later, Gordon reveals: “The Bush administration is expected to make public this weekend some of what intelligence agencies regard as an increasing body of evidence pointing to an Iranian link, including information gleaned from Iranians and Iraqis captured in recent American raids on an Iranian office in Erbil and another site in Baghdad.”
Gordon also wrote, following Secretary of State Colin Powell's crucial, and appallingly wrong, speech to the United Nations in 2003 that helped sell the war, that "it will be difficult for skeptics to argue that Washington's case against Iraq is based on groundless suspicions and not intelligence information."
Today, in contrast to the Times' report, Dafna Linzer in The Washington Post simply notes, "Yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said serial numbers and markings on some explosives used in Iraq indicate that the material came from Iran, but he offered no evidence."
For some perspective, here is how that "mushroom cloud" Gordon-Miller story of Sept. 8, 2002, opened:
“More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.
“In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped.
“The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program, officials said, and that the latest attempt to ship the material had taken place in recent months.
“The attempted purchases are not the only signs of a renewed Iraqi interest in acquiring nuclear arms. President Hussein has met repeatedly in recent months with Iraq's top nuclear scientists and, according to American intelligence, praised their efforts as part of his campaign against the West.
“Iraq's nuclear program is not Washington's only concern. An Iraqi defector said Mr. Hussein had also heightened his efforts to develop new types of chemical weapons. An Iraqi opposition leader also gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Mr. Hussein has authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur if the United States attacks….
"'The jewel in the crown is nuclear,'' a senior administration official said. ‘The closer he gets to a nuclear capability, the more credible is his threat to use chemical or biological weapons. Nuclear weapons are his hole card. The question is not, why now?' the official added, referring to a potential military campaign to oust Mr. Hussein. 'The question is why waiting is better. The closer Saddam Hussein gets to a nuclear weapon, the harder he will be to deal with.'
”Hard-liners are alarmed that American intelligence underestimated the pace and scale of Iraq's nuclear program before Baghdad's defeat in the gulf war. Conscious of this lapse in the past, they argue that Washington dare not wait until analysts have found hard evidence that Mr. Hussein has acquired a nuclear weapon. The first sign of a 'smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud.”
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com)
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Former Time reporter said Libby, Rove told him of Plame
WASHINGTON -- Former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper testified today that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told him he had "heard" that the wife of a Bush administration war critic had been involved in sending the critic on a CIA-backed trip to Africa.
Cooper said at Libby's perjury and obstruction trial that the conversation with the former vice presidential aide occurred on Saturday, July 12, 2003, two days before the identity of operative Valerie Plame was disclosed in a column by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
Cooper also testified that the day before he spoke to Libby he talked to White House political strategist Karl Rove, asking questions about a column that war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband, had written a few days earlier in the New York Times.
Cooper testified that Rove cautioned to "don't get too far out on Wilson," and that among other things, told him that his wife worked at the CIA.
"He said she worked on [weapons of mass destruction] for the agency," Cooper said. "By that, I took it to mean the Central Intelligence Agency, not the Environmental Protection Agency. We talked about it a bit more. He said words to the effect, 'I've already said too much, I've got to go.'"
Cooper also described a phone conversation with Libby the next day. He said Libby was concerned about an implication in the Wilson article that his then-boss — Vice President Dick Cheney — was involved in dispatching Wilson to Africa to assess claims that Iraq was seeking nuclear material there. Wilson found the claims baseless, and attacked the Bush administration in the New York Times on July 6, 2003.
Cooper said Libby returned a call he had placed, on his cell phone.
"He called me, and said he had a statement to read that was on the record. The gist of it was that the vice president did not know about the Wilson trip, that he had made an inquiry as he had often did about things, and that this trip had gone on without his knowledge.
"Toward the very end of the conversation, I asked what he had heard about Wilson's wife being involved in sending him to Niger," Cooper continued.
"He said, words to the effect, 'Yeah, I've heard that, too.'"
Libby is charged with lying to investigators about conversations he had with Cooper and two other reporters about how he came to know about the identity of Plame. Libby has said that he heard about Plame through other journalists rather than dispensing the information to them. The government claims the alleged lies obstructed an investigation into whether Plame was illegally outed.
Libby was the only person charged in that investigation; Rove testified repeatedly before a federal grand jury but was not charged with a crime.
Cooper is expected to resume testifying after lunch.
Another journalist with whom Libby spoke, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, concluded her testimony this morning.
rick.schmitt@latimes.com
Cooper said at Libby's perjury and obstruction trial that the conversation with the former vice presidential aide occurred on Saturday, July 12, 2003, two days before the identity of operative Valerie Plame was disclosed in a column by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
Cooper also testified that the day before he spoke to Libby he talked to White House political strategist Karl Rove, asking questions about a column that war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband, had written a few days earlier in the New York Times.
Cooper testified that Rove cautioned to "don't get too far out on Wilson," and that among other things, told him that his wife worked at the CIA.
"He said she worked on [weapons of mass destruction] for the agency," Cooper said. "By that, I took it to mean the Central Intelligence Agency, not the Environmental Protection Agency. We talked about it a bit more. He said words to the effect, 'I've already said too much, I've got to go.'"
Cooper also described a phone conversation with Libby the next day. He said Libby was concerned about an implication in the Wilson article that his then-boss — Vice President Dick Cheney — was involved in dispatching Wilson to Africa to assess claims that Iraq was seeking nuclear material there. Wilson found the claims baseless, and attacked the Bush administration in the New York Times on July 6, 2003.
Cooper said Libby returned a call he had placed, on his cell phone.
"He called me, and said he had a statement to read that was on the record. The gist of it was that the vice president did not know about the Wilson trip, that he had made an inquiry as he had often did about things, and that this trip had gone on without his knowledge.
"Toward the very end of the conversation, I asked what he had heard about Wilson's wife being involved in sending him to Niger," Cooper continued.
"He said, words to the effect, 'Yeah, I've heard that, too.'"
Libby is charged with lying to investigators about conversations he had with Cooper and two other reporters about how he came to know about the identity of Plame. Libby has said that he heard about Plame through other journalists rather than dispensing the information to them. The government claims the alleged lies obstructed an investigation into whether Plame was illegally outed.
Libby was the only person charged in that investigation; Rove testified repeatedly before a federal grand jury but was not charged with a crime.
Cooper is expected to resume testifying after lunch.
Another journalist with whom Libby spoke, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, concluded her testimony this morning.
rick.schmitt@latimes.com
A big win for the LA 8
Tue Jan 30, 2007
Judge Einhorn of immigration court rendered his decision on Tuesday January 30, 2007 in (LA 8) case. The court “finds that the government has failed to carry its burden of proving respondents deportable based on clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence. Therefore, the proceedings against Hamide and Shehadeh are TERMINATED.) The decision said.
Please visit our web site for more information. Please click on the word decision in the body of the article to read the decision. [Editor's note: See article below]
Thanks to all who helped in this case,
Michel Shehadeh
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The Los Angeles Eight Case
Judge Einhorn of immigration court rendered his decision on Tuesday January 30, 2007 in (LA 8) case. The court “finds that the government has failed to carry its burden of proving respondents deportable based on clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence. Therefore, the proceedings against Hamide and Shehadeh are TERMINATED.) The decision said.
Please visit our web site for more information. Please click on the word decision in the body of the article to read the decision. [Editor's note: See article below]
Thanks to all who helped in this case,
Michel Shehadeh
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The Los Angeles Eight Case
Government Seeks Deportation for Magazine Distribution in 1980s
When Administration defenders claim that "there have been no abuses" of the Patriot Act, ask them about the case of Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh. The government seeks to deport these two long-time permanent resident aliens under the Patriot Act for having distributed magazines and raised humanitarian aid in the 1980s in Los Angeles. It seeks to punish these men, neither of whom has ever even been charged, let alone convicted, of a crime, under a law enacted in 2001 for conduct engaged in fifteen years earlier, at a time when the conduct was perfectly legal. And it seeks to deport them for classic First Amendment activity ? the distribution of a magazine.
The case of Hamide and Shehadeh will prove a critical test of the limits of the expansive amendments to immigration law made by the Patriot Act. And because the activities for which the government seeks to deport Hamide and Shehadeh are protected by the First Amendment, it also will prove a test of the scope of immigrants' First Amendment rights. This is the first case in which the government has sought to deport anyone under that Act for distributing literature, and one of the first in which the government has invoked the Patriot Act's "material support to terrorist organization" grounds. It is also one of the longest-running immigration cases in the United States, having begun 18 years ago, in 1987, under an anti-communist immigration law dating back to the 1950s. The case, a kind of modern-day Bleak House, has generated several landmark judicial opinions, and been up to the Supreme Court. It is now back in immigration court, where trial is set to begin July 13, 2005, before Immigration Judge Bruce J. Einhorn.
Born in the West Bank, Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh came to the United States in their college years and have now lived here thirty four and thirty years, respectively. They are lawful permanent residents and hard-working fathers--Hamide, father of three U.S. citizen children, supplies luxury coffee shops; Shehadeh, father of two U.S. citizen children and married to a U.S. citizen, works as a freelance writer and lives in Oregon.
They are now charged with being deportable for having provided "material support" to a "terrorist organization." The organization is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a faction of the PLO headed by George Habash. The government claims that Hamide and Shehadeh provided the PFLP with "material support" in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by distributing its magazine, and by holding two community dinners at which they helped raise money for political activities and humanitarian aid. The money went to support political work in the United States in support of Palestinian self-determination, and humanitarian aid to various social service groups in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. But the government claims that the recipients were tied to the PFLP, and that therefore Hamide and Shehadeh are deportable.
The case began in 1987, when immigration authorities arrested seven young Palestinians and a Kenyan woman--dubbed the "LA 8" by the media--on charges of being affiliated with the PFLP. At that time, the oovernment claimed that they were deportable for being affiliated with a group that "advocated the doctrines of world communism," a deportable offense under the McCarran-Walter Act, a law enacted in 1952, at the height of the McCarthy era. At the time, FBI Director William Webster testified before Congress that the eight "had not been found to have engaged themselves in terrorist activity." Hearings Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Nomination of William H. Webster to be Director of Central Intelligence, 100th Cong. 1st Sess. 94-95 (April 8, 9, 10, May 1, 1987). Mr. Webster further admitted that they "were arrested because they are alleged to be members of a world-wide Communist organization which under the McCarran Act makes them eligible for deportation ... if these individuals had been United States citizens, there would not have been a basis for their arrest." Id.
In 1989, a federal court declared the McCarran-Walter Act charges unconstitutional. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm. v. Meese, 714 F. Supp. 1060 (C.D. Cal. 1989). The court ruled that the First Amendment protects all persons within the United States equally, whether citizens or foreign nationals, and that deporting foreign nationals for their political associations violated the First Amendment. The following year Congress repealed that McCarthy-era law. The government nonetheless pursued deportation under new charges.
In 1995, the same federal court blocked the deportations under the new charges from going forward on the grounds that the government, in violation of the First Amendment, had selectively targeted the group for constitutionally protected political activities. The court reviewed 10,000 pages of evidence submitted by the government, but found evidence only of constitutionally protected political activity. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm. v. Reno, No. CV 87-2107, at 32 n.14 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 29, 1996).
In 1996, however, Congress stripped federal courts of authority to hear such selective-enforcement challenges to deportation, and in 1999 the Supreme Court ruled that the cases could go forward. Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm., 525 U.S. 471 (1999).
The case is now back in immigration court, where trial is scheduled to being July 13, 2005. The government claims that Hamide and Shehadeh provided material support to the PFLP. Hamide and Shehadeh deny providing such support. They admit that they distributed magazines and sponsored two community dinners, but maintain that they raised money only for domestic political activities of the Committee for a Democratic Palestine, a U.S.-based political organization that engaged in political activity in support of Palestinian self-determination ? and for a handful of charitable social service organizations in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. The trial will focus on Hamide and Shehadeh's political activism in the 1980s, and whether it can be seen as "material support" to the PFLP.
Hamide and Shehadeh have challenged the retroactive application of the Patriot Act to their conduct, engaged in twenty years ago. They also argue that their activities were protected by the First Amendment, and that they did not support the PFLP.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Miller Testimony Contradicts Libby Story
Editor's note: I am moving over to the other blog.
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Tuesday January 30, 2007 8:16 PM
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Tuesday January 30, 2007 8:16 PM
By MATT APUZZO
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified Tuesday that former vice presidential aide I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby first discussed a CIA operative with her weeks before he told investigators he believed he first heard it from another reporter.
Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to cooperate with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the CIA operative's identity to reporters. She had refused to disclose conversations she had with Libby.
Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. Fitzgerald says Libby discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with reporters, then lied about those conversations.
Miller ultimately agreed to cooperate with authorities, saying Libby had given her permission to do so. She is a key witness in Fitzgerald's case because she describes two conversations with Libby regarding Plame before Libby told investigators he was surprised to learn about Plame from NBC reporter Tim Russert.
Miller testified Tuesday that Libby discussed the CIA officer on June 3, 2003. He said Wilson's wife worked for the ``bureau,'' Miller recalled. She was confused about that at first, she said.
``Through the context of the discussion, I quickly determined it to be the CIA,'' she testified.
The discussion occurred amid a growing controversy about intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said he debunked some of the intelligence that was used to justify the war and said Vice President Dick Cheney should have known it.
Miller also discussed a second meeting with Libby, this one on July 8, 2003. She said Libby mentioned that Wilson's wife worked for a CIA division specializing in weapons of mass destruction.
Libby says his discussion with Russert occurred on July 10, 2003.
Journalism groups have criticized Fitzgerald for calling reporters as witnesses and demanding they discuss conversations with sources. Miller's notes likely will be used as evidence, and Fitzgerald is expected to call two other reporters - Russert and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine - during the trial.
Earlier Tuesday, David Addington, who served as Cheney's legal counsel during the CIA leak scandal, described a September 2003 meeting with Libby around the time that an investigation into the leak began.
``I just want to tell you, I didn't do it,'' Addington recalled Libby saying. ``I didn't ask what the 'it' was,'' Addington added.
Fitzgerald hopes Addington's testimony will bolster his argument that Libby was worried about whether his conversations with reporters were improper and therefore lied to conceal them.
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Associated Press Writer Michael J. Sniffen contributed to this report.
Two Charges Two Charges Dropped Against Watada: No Jail Time For Reporter Sarah Olson
Published: January 29, 2007 11:00 PM ET
HONOLULU The U.S. government agreed to drop two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer from its case against the Army lieutenant who called the Iraq war illegal and refused to deploy.
1st Lt. Ehren Watada, whose court-martial is scheduled Feb. 5, still faces a maximum of four years imprisonment if he is convicted of missing movement for his refusal to deploy last June and two remaining counts of conduct unbecoming an officer for comments made at a Veterans for Peace Convention in Seattle.
The two counts dropped Monday carry a maximum of two years in prison. They stem from comments he made to reporters in June explaining why he refused to go to Iraq and why he was challenging the Bush administration's reasons for going to war.
In exchange, Watada's attorney Eric Seitz agreed that two subpoenaed reporters will not have to testify. They are Honolulu Star-Bulletin's Gregg Kakesako and freelance reporter Sarah Olson.
"We will stipulate and agree to the testimony that the reporters would have otherwise provided and the accuracy to the statements that are attributed to my client," said Seitz, of Honolulu.
Seitz said Watada's action shields the journalists from the "heavy handedness of the government."
"While we don't think any charges should have been filed at all for simply exercising free speech, we are pleased with the government's willingness to reduce Lieutenant Watada's potential sentence by two years," he said.
Seitz is scheduled to leave for Fort Lewis, Washington on Tuesday to attend Watada's trial next week.
"This is not a justice proceeding but a disciplinary proceeding," he said. "Really, the only thing the Army is interested in here is what kind of punishment to mete, not whether Lieutenant Watada is guilty or innocent of the charges.
"They've already determined, basically, his guilt."
Military judge Lt. Col. John Head ruled Jan. 16 that the 28-year-old Hawaii-born soldier cannot base his defense on the war's legality.
Head also rejected lawyers' claims that Watada's First Amendment rights shielded him from charges stemming from his criticism of the war. Head said there are limits to the free-speech rights of military personnel.
Watada planned to argue that the war was illegal because it violated Army regulations that wars must be waged in accordance with the United Nations Charter.
Fort Lewis spokesman Joseph Piek said he had "no indication whatsoever" that any full settlement could be reached before trial.
"This is still a serious case of an officer who refused orders to deploy," he said. "For an officer to violate military law and refuse orders such as these is something the military takes very seriously."
Seitz said the Army wanted Watada to plead guilty to at least two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer and missing movement in return for a sentence that would included a dishonorable discharge and 18 months in prison.
"We did not feel that was appropriate and there have been no further discussions since the government made that position known to us," he said.
Seitz said he has offered three months of confinement and dishonorable discharge, but the Army did not indicated any willingness to go along with that.
Watada refused to go to Iraq last June with his unit, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, after deciding the war was illegal. He has said he would be willing to serve in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
Monday, December 18, 2006
UPI media whore caught lying
Dec 18, 2006
If they gave an award for The Most Outrageous Right-Wing Column of 2006, a strong contender for the trophy would be E. Thomas McClanahan of the Kansas City Star.
If they gave an award for The Most Outrageous Right-Wing Column of 2006, a strong contender for the trophy would be E. Thomas McClanahan of the Kansas City Star.
On Dec. 10, he wrote a column that started out to be one of those mea culpa columns wherein he admits that his incessant cheerleading for the Iraq Civil War may have been just a tad, um, you know, like -- wrong.
Instead, he proceeds to defend the war and claim that American journalists want America to lose in Iraq and tries to prove it by slandering an entire group of his own colleagues -- claiming that when he worked at the Dallas bureau of UPI the office erupted in cheers when a bulletin came across reporting the fall of Saigon in April 1975.
So McClanahan turns a Mea Culpa column into a Maxima Culpa column -- and quite possibly becomes the first author of such a column to be corrected by his own paper.
Here is what McClanahan wrote on Dec. 10:
One sunny day in April, bells started ringing from the dozens of printers scattered around the room. We knew it was an item with "flash" priority, which carries 10 bells. I looked down. A printer tapped out: "Saigon falls." What happened next was astonishing. Many of my colleagues, young journalists who had come of age politically
during the heyday of the anti-war movement, stood up and
cheered. Oh, goodie. The United States has lost a war. Many were my
friends, but the scene left me cold.
Not surprisingly, McClanahan's memory of events was called into question by former UPI staffers not amused at having their professionalism and patriotism trashed.
One, Thomas Roty, pointed out that when the bulleting about the fall of Saigon moved on the UPI wire, it would have been night in Dallas -- hardly the sunny day McClanahan remembered.
The indicated morning signoff times (on April 30, 1975) were those in Saigon. Because of uncertainty about whether South Vietnam observed Daylight Saving Time or not, it is unclear whether the time difference with Dallas was ten hours or eleven. Regardless, that flash would have moved around 8:30 or 9:30 PM Central Saving Time. The sun would have had to set very late in Dallas that evening to conform to Mr. McClanahan's account.
Further, well-known "downhold" UPI staffing policies would have normally
precluded the presence of "many" people there at that hour.The flash was sent by the "LD" in the initials ... Leon Daniel, UPI's veteran foreign and war correspondent and a Marine veteran of the Korean War. Bureau Manager Dawson and reporter Paul Vogle (the "PDV" initials) were both Army veterans of Vietnam, who stayed on there as civilian journalists. They all risked life and limb to report that piece of world history .. and all three stayed behind after the North Vietnamese takeover to continue to do so until the Hanoi authorities ordered them to leave. Dawson was the last American war reporter in Saigon.
Their colleagues the world over were busily engaged in transmitting their
dispatches to UPI's thousands of newspaper and broadcast clients and
gathering related local information, not in acting like stadium demonstrators. Just as UPI's famed Dallas bureau did twelve years earlier in the agency's Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the John F. Kennedy assassination.For Mr. McClanahan to assert what he does is to impugn at least the
professionalism, if not the patriotism, of his 1975 Dallas colleagues and
by extension, others then at UPI and now at other media organizations.
Roty requested an apology from McClanahan. He didn't get it, but he did get a correction.
A Dec. 10 column by E. Thomas McClanahan based on personal recollections from 31 years ago misstated a newsroom scene at the Dallas UPI bureau. The 1975 news "flash" on the fall of Saigon read "Saigon government surrenders" and moved at night, not on a "sunny day in April." Although the column said "many" cheered in the bureau, at that time of the evening the staff would have dwindled to only a handful.
Another former UPI staffer, Jerry McGinn, wrote an open letter to McClanahan:
And you, I predict, will get busy, soon, I suspect, latching onto another topic, or notion, and getting it wrong, and then reconciling with a cheap shot at someone else you likely will continue to misunderstand.
But it's not too late for you. You could do something useful.
You could latch onto the real victims of this war and deal with their stories. They will be limping past your office, panhandling in the street, limping to and fro and their parents and spouses will be mourning their lives for generations to come.
Bring them back or don't let them pass, like your mea culpa piece. Write about them. Meet their widows and kids
Don't let US forget them, their sacrifices. If you do that as best you can,
and never let go of the real long term effects of this cause you so wrongly beat the drum for, maybe you can really atone for the wrong you have wrought on your readers and me. And the reporters and writers in UPI Dallas, too.
Something tells me that instead of learning a valuable lesson, Mr. McClanahan will just chalk all this up to the vast liberal media conspiracy to ensure America's defeat.
--By Quaoar
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
24 states back Chronicle reporters facing jail
24 states back Chronicle reporters facing jail over steroids story
- Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, December 11, 2006
(12-11) 21:47 PST -- Twenty four states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, legal scholars and a slew of news organizations have filed court briefs in support of two Chronicle reporters facing jail for refusing to divulge who leaked to them transcripts of grand jury testimony in the investigation of steroids supplied to Major League Baseball players.
New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer filed the "friend of the court" brief Thursday at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It was also signed by his counterparts from the other states, including California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
They argued that state laws protecting reporters in most instances from revealing their confidential sources could be rendered "meaningless" by a lesser federal standard. Before a federal court could require reporters to give up their sources, the states contend, it must show that "the public interest in disclosure outweighs the public interest in confidentiality.''
Reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada, Lance Williams and the Chronicle are appealing a decision by the U.S. District Court for Northern California, which held the pair in contempt of court for refusing to disclose how they obtained the grand jury transcripts. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White has sentenced them to up to 18 months in prison, but they remain free while the appeals court considers the case.
In a separate filing, 36 news organizations including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post; broadcasters NBC, CBS, ABC and NPR; and a variety of publishing companies, journalism organizations and industry trade groups also called on the appeals court to reverse the decision.
The signatories collectively argued that "the district court's decision will inhibit their ability to report upon matters of public concern.''
Citing a 1993 9th Circuit court case that cited the work of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, they wrote that "the investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle's reporters into steroid use by professional athletes involved many of the same methods used by Woodward and Bernstein to investigate the Watergate break-in. Both investigations revolved around federal grand jury probes into technically minor crimes that implicated misconduct with far broader significance to the public."
Journalism based on "so-called 'leaks' of information from confidential sources,'' they continued, "has produced some of the most important and celebrated news reporting in American history."
The news organizations said that the penalties imposed on Fainaru-Wada and Williams "vastly exceed any previously imposed on any American journalist for declining to identify a source, and represent a clear break from the historical consensus.''
A third brief was filed by six legal scholars with expertise in First Amendment law, who contended that it was the proper role for a federal court to assess independently the proper balance between freedom of the press and the obligation of all citizens to give relevant testimony. They argued that Judge White declined to strike such a balance, and in so doing, misread earlier court decisions that would have required him to do so. That mistake, the scholars said, is sufficient grounds to reverse the lower court ruling.
URL
- Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, December 11, 2006
(12-11) 21:47 PST -- Twenty four states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, legal scholars and a slew of news organizations have filed court briefs in support of two Chronicle reporters facing jail for refusing to divulge who leaked to them transcripts of grand jury testimony in the investigation of steroids supplied to Major League Baseball players.
New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer filed the "friend of the court" brief Thursday at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It was also signed by his counterparts from the other states, including California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
They argued that state laws protecting reporters in most instances from revealing their confidential sources could be rendered "meaningless" by a lesser federal standard. Before a federal court could require reporters to give up their sources, the states contend, it must show that "the public interest in disclosure outweighs the public interest in confidentiality.''
Reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada, Lance Williams and the Chronicle are appealing a decision by the U.S. District Court for Northern California, which held the pair in contempt of court for refusing to disclose how they obtained the grand jury transcripts. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White has sentenced them to up to 18 months in prison, but they remain free while the appeals court considers the case.
In a separate filing, 36 news organizations including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post; broadcasters NBC, CBS, ABC and NPR; and a variety of publishing companies, journalism organizations and industry trade groups also called on the appeals court to reverse the decision.
The signatories collectively argued that "the district court's decision will inhibit their ability to report upon matters of public concern.''
Citing a 1993 9th Circuit court case that cited the work of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, they wrote that "the investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle's reporters into steroid use by professional athletes involved many of the same methods used by Woodward and Bernstein to investigate the Watergate break-in. Both investigations revolved around federal grand jury probes into technically minor crimes that implicated misconduct with far broader significance to the public."
Journalism based on "so-called 'leaks' of information from confidential sources,'' they continued, "has produced some of the most important and celebrated news reporting in American history."
The news organizations said that the penalties imposed on Fainaru-Wada and Williams "vastly exceed any previously imposed on any American journalist for declining to identify a source, and represent a clear break from the historical consensus.''
A third brief was filed by six legal scholars with expertise in First Amendment law, who contended that it was the proper role for a federal court to assess independently the proper balance between freedom of the press and the obligation of all citizens to give relevant testimony. They argued that Judge White declined to strike such a balance, and in so doing, misread earlier court decisions that would have required him to do so. That mistake, the scholars said, is sufficient grounds to reverse the lower court ruling.
URL
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Iraq Massacre: AP Tells US Mil To Shove It
AP, U.S. military spar over atrocities report
The Associated Press is standing by its report that six Sunni men were burned to death in Baghdad Friday by Shiites, even though U.S. military officials have accused the wire service of relying on a source who "is not who he claimed he was," an Iraqi police captain.
Military officials also say they cannot confirm that the incident took place and have asked AP to retract or correct the story, which was repeated by media around the world and cited as a grim example of Shiites taking revenge for a deadly bombing that killed more than 200 people a day before.
"The attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question," AP International Editor John Daniszewski said in a statement e-mailed to On Deadline this afternoon.
He added that "we have conducted a thorough review of the sourcing and reporting involved and plan to move a more detailed report about the entire incident soon, with greater detail provided by multiple eye witnesses."
"The police captain cited in our story has long been known to the AP reporters," Daniszewski wrote.
"The AP stands by its story."
But a U.S. military spokesman has told the AP in a letter that "neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident ... and could find no one to corroborate the story."
"Unless you have a credible source to corroborate the story of the people being burned alive, we respectfully request that AP issue a retraction, or a correction at a minimum," Navy Lt. Michael Dean, the spokesman, wrote to the AP on Monday.
Full texts of both Daniszewski's statement and Dean's letter follow if you click read more.
The dispute stems from this story, which the AP distributed to its clients Friday.
Questions raised by the U.S. military spokesmen have sparked considerable discussion in the blogosphere, particularly among conservative commentators. Michelle Malkin is among those who have raised questions about whether AP was led astray by an Iraqi correspondent. Curt at Flopping Aces has been among the most active in chronicling the accusations.
Update at 4:50 p.m. ET. More reporting and detail from the AP:
The wire service has sent out a new story about the reports of the burnings. This new story, which acknowledges the challenges to AP's earlier reporting from U.S. military authorities, says that additional witnesses interviewed today told reporters that they had seen the atrocities.
"On Tuesday, two AP reporters also went back to the Hurriyah neighborhood around the Mustafa mosque and found three witnesses who independently gave accounts of the attack," the story says. "Others in the neighborhood said they were afraid to talk about what happened."
Lt. Dean's letter to the AP:
Dear Associated Press:
On Nov. 24, 2006, your organization published an article by Qais Al-Bashir about six Sunnis being burned alive in the presence of Iraqi Police officers. This news item, which is below, received an enormous amount of coverage internationally.
We at Multi-National Corps - Iraq made it known through MNC-I Press Release Number 20061125-09 and our conversations with your reporters that neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident after investigating it and could find no one to corroborate the story. A couple of hours ago, we learned something else very important.
We can tell you definitively that the primary source of this story, police Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee. We verified this fact with the MOI through the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team.
Also, we definitely know, as we told you several weeks ago through the MNC-I Media Relations cell, that another AP-popular IP spokesman, Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq, supposedly of the city's Yarmouk police station, does not work at that police station and is also not authorized to speak on behalf of the IP. The MOI has supposedly issued a warrant for his questioning.
I know we have informed you that there exists an MOI edict that no one below the level of chief is authorized to be an Iraqi Police spokesperson. An unauthorized IP spokesperson will get fired for talking to the media. While I understand the importance of a news agency to use anonymous and unauthorized sources, it is still incumbent upon them to make sure their facts are straight. Was this information verified by anyone else? If the source providing the information is lying about his name, then he ought not to be represented as an official IP spokesperson and should be listed as an anonymous source.
Unless you have a credible source to corroborate the story of the people being burned alive, we respectfully request that AP issue a retraction, or a correction at a minimum, acknowledging that the source named in the story is not who he claimed he was. MNC-I and MNF-I are always available and willing to verify events and provide as much information as possible when asked.
Very respectfully,
LT Dean
Michael B. Dean
Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
MNC-I Joint Operations Center
Public Affairs Officer
Daniszewski's statement today:
The Associated Press denounces unfounded attacks on its story about six Sunni worshipers burned to death outside their mosque on Friday, November 24. The attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question.
AP reporters who have been working in Iraq throughout the conflict learned of the mosque incident through witnesses and neighborhood residents and corroborated it with a named police spokesmen and also through hospital and morgue workers.
We have conducted a thorough review of the sourcing and reporting involved and plan to move a more detailed report about the entire incident soon, with greater detail provided by multiple eye witnesses. Several of those witnesses spoke to AP on the condition that their names would not be used because they fear reprisals.
The police captain cited in our story has long been known to the AP reporters and has been interviewed in his office and by telephone on several occasions during the past two years.
He is an officer at the police station in Yarmouk, with a record of reliability and truthfulness. His full name is Jamil Gholaiem Hussein.
The AP stands by its story
Posted by Mark Memmott at 03:54 PM/ET, | Permalink
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/11/us_military_and.html
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/11/us_military_and.html
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
New York Times reporters are 'now allowed' to call Iraq 'civil war'
'Civil' Disobedience Spreads -- 'NYT' Adjusts Language on Iraq
Bill Keller
By E&P Staff
Published: November 28, 2006 10:05 AM ET
NEW YORK In the wake of the highly-publicized NBC and MSNBC decision to start referring to the conflict in Iraq as a "civil war," other media outlets, which have long used phrases such as "sectarian violence," are re-considering their language in this regard.
"After consulting with our reporters in the field and the editors who
directly oversee this coverage, we have agreed that Times correspondents may describe the conflict in Iraq as a civil war when they and their editors believe it is appropriate," Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, revealed in a statement sent to E&P. "It's hard to argue that this war does not fit the generally accepted definition of civil war. (See Ed Wong's story on the subject in Sunday's paper.)
"We expect to use the phrase sparingly and carefully, not to the exclusion of other formulations, not for dramatic effect. The main shortcoming of "civil war" is that, like other labels, it fails to capture the complexity of what is happening on the ground. The war in Iraq is, in addition to being a civil war, an occupation, a Baathist insurgency, a sectarian conflict, a front in a war against terrorists, a scene of criminal gangsterism and a cycle of vengeance. We believe 'civil war' should not become reductionist shorthand for a war that is colossally complicated."
The Washington Post, however, has made no such announcement. Leonard Downie, Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post, told E&P's Joe Strupp: "We just describe what goes on everyday. We don't have a policy about it. We are not making judgments one way or another. The language in the stories is very precise when dealing with it. At various times people say it is 'close to a civil war,' but we don't have a policy about it."
On his MSNBC "Hardball" show on Monday night, host Chris Matthews asked the Post's Pultizer Prize winning reporter Dana Priest about this issue. Priest replied: "Well, I think one of the reasons the President resists that label is because it equates almost with a failure of U.S. policy. I will say for the Washington Post, we have not labeled it a civil war. I have asked around to see why not or see what’s the thinking on that -- and really our reporters have not filed that. We try to avoid the labels, particularly when the elected government itself does not call its situation a civil war. I certainly — and I would agree with General McCaffrey on this — absolutely the level of violence equals a civil war."
The Los Angeles Times has used "civil war" for a few weeks but the Boston Globe, according to an article therer today, revealed, "Before deciding its policy on the term, the Globe is weighing the judgments of the news organizations that have reporters regularly in Iraq."
The Globe did note: "Observers said the media's willingness to reject the White House's depiction of events was reminiscent of 1968, when Cronkite filmed a Vietnam documentary and offered his belief that the United States was losing the war. 'There is a clear parallel,' Edward C. Pease , a journalism professor at the University of Utah, said of yesterday's NBC broadcast during a morning time-slot that is now far more popular than the evening news. 'The way the media frames things helps lead the public perception.'"
FoxNews has said it does not plan to change its terminology.
"Words have power, and naming it a civil war does begin to shape people's perception of what's happening there," Thomas Hollihan, a professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication who studies political rhetoric, told the Los Angeles Times. The midterm election results may have emboldened news outlets to adopt a characterization the White House has rejected, he added. "The media has, by and large, been very fearful of being perceived of being liberally biased," Hollihan said. "Now that the election has occurred, there may be more license on the part of the media to say what the public has been feeling."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003439273
Bill Keller
By E&P Staff
Published: November 28, 2006 10:05 AM ET
NEW YORK In the wake of the highly-publicized NBC and MSNBC decision to start referring to the conflict in Iraq as a "civil war," other media outlets, which have long used phrases such as "sectarian violence," are re-considering their language in this regard.
"After consulting with our reporters in the field and the editors who
directly oversee this coverage, we have agreed that Times correspondents may describe the conflict in Iraq as a civil war when they and their editors believe it is appropriate," Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, revealed in a statement sent to E&P. "It's hard to argue that this war does not fit the generally accepted definition of civil war. (See Ed Wong's story on the subject in Sunday's paper.)
"We expect to use the phrase sparingly and carefully, not to the exclusion of other formulations, not for dramatic effect. The main shortcoming of "civil war" is that, like other labels, it fails to capture the complexity of what is happening on the ground. The war in Iraq is, in addition to being a civil war, an occupation, a Baathist insurgency, a sectarian conflict, a front in a war against terrorists, a scene of criminal gangsterism and a cycle of vengeance. We believe 'civil war' should not become reductionist shorthand for a war that is colossally complicated."
The Washington Post, however, has made no such announcement. Leonard Downie, Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post, told E&P's Joe Strupp: "We just describe what goes on everyday. We don't have a policy about it. We are not making judgments one way or another. The language in the stories is very precise when dealing with it. At various times people say it is 'close to a civil war,' but we don't have a policy about it."
On his MSNBC "Hardball" show on Monday night, host Chris Matthews asked the Post's Pultizer Prize winning reporter Dana Priest about this issue. Priest replied: "Well, I think one of the reasons the President resists that label is because it equates almost with a failure of U.S. policy. I will say for the Washington Post, we have not labeled it a civil war. I have asked around to see why not or see what’s the thinking on that -- and really our reporters have not filed that. We try to avoid the labels, particularly when the elected government itself does not call its situation a civil war. I certainly — and I would agree with General McCaffrey on this — absolutely the level of violence equals a civil war."
The Los Angeles Times has used "civil war" for a few weeks but the Boston Globe, according to an article therer today, revealed, "Before deciding its policy on the term, the Globe is weighing the judgments of the news organizations that have reporters regularly in Iraq."
The Globe did note: "Observers said the media's willingness to reject the White House's depiction of events was reminiscent of 1968, when Cronkite filmed a Vietnam documentary and offered his belief that the United States was losing the war. 'There is a clear parallel,' Edward C. Pease , a journalism professor at the University of Utah, said of yesterday's NBC broadcast during a morning time-slot that is now far more popular than the evening news. 'The way the media frames things helps lead the public perception.'"
FoxNews has said it does not plan to change its terminology.
"Words have power, and naming it a civil war does begin to shape people's perception of what's happening there," Thomas Hollihan, a professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication who studies political rhetoric, told the Los Angeles Times. The midterm election results may have emboldened news outlets to adopt a characterization the White House has rejected, he added. "The media has, by and large, been very fearful of being perceived of being liberally biased," Hollihan said. "Now that the election has occurred, there may be more license on the part of the media to say what the public has been feeling."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003439273
Court Rules Against New York Times
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27, 2006
(CBS/AP) The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing telephone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation concerning a terrorism-funding probe.
The one-sentence order came in a First Amendment battle that involves stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon. The stories revealed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to track down the reporters' confidential sources for the stories. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment on the Supreme Court's order.
The case marks the second refusal by the court in as many years to sort out a clash between the federal government and the Times over press freedom.
In June 2005, the Supreme Court refused to take up the Times' request to hear an appeal in the CIA leak investigation involving the outing of Valerie Plame. In that case, Miller, who retired from the Times a year ago, spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify before a federal grand jury. Fitzgerald, in a role as a special counsel, conducted that leak investigation as well.
Monday's rejection "is just further indication that we're getting absolutely nowhere with the court when it comes to protecting confidential sources," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The case points out a growing problem of reporters trying to protect their sources in the information age, press advocates say. Rather than threatening reporters with jail if they don't testify, the government can go through the back door to hunt down confidential sources by amassing phone records and credit-card receipts.
"It's impossible to operate on cash only and face-to-face and do your job as journalists," said University of Minnesota media ethics and law professor Jane E. Kirtley.
Dalglish said protection of phone record confidentiality is among the issues that should be addressed in federal shield law legislation she and other media advocates are urging Congress to consider.
In other cases:
The Supreme Court pressed both sides in the opening arguments of a case that businesses of all stripes care deeply about: how hard should it be to get evidence that a company might be violating antitrust laws? The case, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, stems from the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the 1980s and 1990s, with some experts citing it as the most important antitrust case to reach the Supreme Court in 20 years. The case is being closely watched by numerous companies, including airlines, credit-card issuers and trade associations representing the wireless communications and pharmaceutical industries, all of whom have submitted or signed onto friend-of-the-court briefs.
The court decided not to plunge into the issue of school choice, passing up a dispute over a Maine law that bars the use of public funds to send students to private religious schools. A conservative group, the Institute for Justice, had asked the justices to take the case. The group is representing eight Maine families who would receive public tuition funds but for the fact that their children attend religious schools.
The court also let stand a ruling that dismissed a $10.1 billion verdict against Philip Morris USA, ending a case that became a windfall for the county where it originated but helped feed its reputation as a "judicial hellhole." In its order Monday, the high court upheld without comment last year's Illinois Supreme Court ruling throwing out the massive fraud judgment against Philip Morris USA, a unit of New York-based Altria Group Inc., in a class-action lawsuit involving "light" cigarettes.
The Supreme Court hears arguments this week in a case that could determine whether the Bush administration must change course in how it deals with the threat of global warming. A dozen states as well as environmental groups and large cities are trying to convince the court that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate, as a matter of public health, the amount of carbon dioxide that comes from vehicles.
Floyd Abrams, a lawyer for the Times, said the current case is part of a larger dispute over the public's right to information.
"We remain hopeful that in the end, whether in the courts or in Congress, that right will be vindicated," Abrams said.
The current dispute stems from Shenon and Miller calling the two charities for comment after learning of the planned freeze on their assets from confidential sources.
The Justice Department says the reporters' calls tipped off the charities of upcoming government raids. A federal judge who ruled in the Times' favor said there is no evidence in the case even suggesting that the reporters tipped off the charities about the raids or that the reporters even knew the government would raid either charity.
In August, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that federal prosecutors could see the two reporters' phone records.
The government says the fact that the reporters relayed disclosures from a government source to "targets of an imminent law enforcement action substantially weakens any claim of freedom of the press."
At issue are 11 days of phone records the government plans to review from 2001 — for the dates Sept. 27-30, Dec. 1-3 and Dec. 10-13. In a declaration this month, Fitzgerald said the statute of limitations "on certain substantive offenses that the grand jury is investigating" will expire on Dec. 3 and Dec. 13 of this year.
The current leak probe is in Fitzgerald's capacity as U.S. Attorney in Chicago. The Libby prosecution is in Fitzgerald's role as a special counsel who was selected by a Justice Department superior to conduct that investigation.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/26/supremecourt/main2209121.shtml
(CBS/AP) The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing telephone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation concerning a terrorism-funding probe.
The one-sentence order came in a First Amendment battle that involves stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon. The stories revealed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to track down the reporters' confidential sources for the stories. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment on the Supreme Court's order.
The case marks the second refusal by the court in as many years to sort out a clash between the federal government and the Times over press freedom.
In June 2005, the Supreme Court refused to take up the Times' request to hear an appeal in the CIA leak investigation involving the outing of Valerie Plame. In that case, Miller, who retired from the Times a year ago, spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify before a federal grand jury. Fitzgerald, in a role as a special counsel, conducted that leak investigation as well.
Monday's rejection "is just further indication that we're getting absolutely nowhere with the court when it comes to protecting confidential sources," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The case points out a growing problem of reporters trying to protect their sources in the information age, press advocates say. Rather than threatening reporters with jail if they don't testify, the government can go through the back door to hunt down confidential sources by amassing phone records and credit-card receipts.
"It's impossible to operate on cash only and face-to-face and do your job as journalists," said University of Minnesota media ethics and law professor Jane E. Kirtley.
Dalglish said protection of phone record confidentiality is among the issues that should be addressed in federal shield law legislation she and other media advocates are urging Congress to consider.
In other cases:
The Supreme Court pressed both sides in the opening arguments of a case that businesses of all stripes care deeply about: how hard should it be to get evidence that a company might be violating antitrust laws? The case, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, stems from the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the 1980s and 1990s, with some experts citing it as the most important antitrust case to reach the Supreme Court in 20 years. The case is being closely watched by numerous companies, including airlines, credit-card issuers and trade associations representing the wireless communications and pharmaceutical industries, all of whom have submitted or signed onto friend-of-the-court briefs.
The court decided not to plunge into the issue of school choice, passing up a dispute over a Maine law that bars the use of public funds to send students to private religious schools. A conservative group, the Institute for Justice, had asked the justices to take the case. The group is representing eight Maine families who would receive public tuition funds but for the fact that their children attend religious schools.
The court also let stand a ruling that dismissed a $10.1 billion verdict against Philip Morris USA, ending a case that became a windfall for the county where it originated but helped feed its reputation as a "judicial hellhole." In its order Monday, the high court upheld without comment last year's Illinois Supreme Court ruling throwing out the massive fraud judgment against Philip Morris USA, a unit of New York-based Altria Group Inc., in a class-action lawsuit involving "light" cigarettes.
The Supreme Court hears arguments this week in a case that could determine whether the Bush administration must change course in how it deals with the threat of global warming. A dozen states as well as environmental groups and large cities are trying to convince the court that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate, as a matter of public health, the amount of carbon dioxide that comes from vehicles.
Floyd Abrams, a lawyer for the Times, said the current case is part of a larger dispute over the public's right to information.
"We remain hopeful that in the end, whether in the courts or in Congress, that right will be vindicated," Abrams said.
The current dispute stems from Shenon and Miller calling the two charities for comment after learning of the planned freeze on their assets from confidential sources.
The Justice Department says the reporters' calls tipped off the charities of upcoming government raids. A federal judge who ruled in the Times' favor said there is no evidence in the case even suggesting that the reporters tipped off the charities about the raids or that the reporters even knew the government would raid either charity.
In August, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that federal prosecutors could see the two reporters' phone records.
The government says the fact that the reporters relayed disclosures from a government source to "targets of an imminent law enforcement action substantially weakens any claim of freedom of the press."
At issue are 11 days of phone records the government plans to review from 2001 — for the dates Sept. 27-30, Dec. 1-3 and Dec. 10-13. In a declaration this month, Fitzgerald said the statute of limitations "on certain substantive offenses that the grand jury is investigating" will expire on Dec. 3 and Dec. 13 of this year.
The current leak probe is in Fitzgerald's capacity as U.S. Attorney in Chicago. The Libby prosecution is in Fitzgerald's role as a special counsel who was selected by a Justice Department superior to conduct that investigation.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/26/supremecourt/main2209121.shtml
Sunday, November 26, 2006
ASSAULT ON PRESS FREEDOM
In a nation that preaches the virtues of democracy, the United States government has consistently eroded the media's ability to report and, by extension, undermines the ideals it professes to uphold
- William Bennett Turner
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Vladimir Posner, the former Soviet journalist, used to claim the press was freer in the Soviet Union than it was in the United States. This was during Glasnost, as the Soviet empire was disintegrating. Posner explained that the government was dysfunctional, so journalists did not have to worry about the official censors, and the media had not been privatized, so journalists were not accountable to commercial sponsors and advertisers. The result was a kind of anarchic freedom. The press was free, but only for a brief window in time.
The window in America once was open wide and, I thought, permanently so. I used to tell my students on the first day of class that we had the freest speech and press in the world. I can't do that anymore.
In recent years American press freedom has eroded. Many other countries are now ranked freer than the United States -- all of the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand and many others. In the most recent survey by Freedom House, an independent American-based organization that assesses liberties around the world, the United States tied for 17th place, with the Bahamas, Estonia, Germany and others.
The international free-press advocates Reporters Without Borders ranked us 53rd, tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga. These rankings may not be scientifically valid, for a lot of subjective judgment is involved. But it is sobering to see the consensus that the United States is no longer anywhere near the top.
By virtue of Supreme Court decisions, the U.S. press remains freer than the press elsewhere in a few respects.
First, our law provides significantly greater protection for the press against libel suits, especially by government officials. In many countries, libel is a bullying tool for officials and the powerful to silence dissent. Under the 1964 decision in New York Times vs. Sullivan, insults, parodies and vicious criticism of officials are protected by the First Amendment.
Second, our law protects the press against almost any attempt by government to impose a "prior restraint" on what can be published. That is, the government is not allowed to censor, in advance, information the press may wish to publish. The famous "Pentagon Papers" case in 1971 allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish information about a classified Defense Department study on American involvement in Vietnam, despite the government's contention that publication would impair national security.
Third, perhaps unique in the world, our law protects the advocacy of dangerous, potentially divisive ideas. One can preach overthrow of the government -- domestic "regime change" -- religious hatred, racial discrimination and even criminal activity. Under the Supreme Court's 1969 decision in Brandenburg vs. Ohio, government may not suppress ideas, however repugnant to most, unless their expression amounts to incitement to imminent unlawful acts.
It also is true that American journalists have not been physically attacked based on what they report, at least at home (although overseas, some have been, and one was beheaded). In some other countries, journalists risk harassment or worse for reporting that offends government officials or powerful figures. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 47 journalists were murdered last year.
But U.S. press freedom has been slipping away since Sept. 11, 2001. Now that we are in a seemingly permanent "war" on terrorism, the government claims wartime powers that result in restricting press freedom.
The Bush administration has multiplied exponentially the number of documents it classifies as secret, shielding them from public view. It has classified literally millions of documents "top secret," according to reports filed with the National Archives; and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney claims to be exempt from reporting even the numbers of records it brands with the "classified" stamp. (The administration has also tried to retrieve antique classified documents from columnist Jack Anderson's estate, contending that only the government may possess such documents, however old.) Within weeks after 9/11, President Bush issued Executive Order 13233, allowing him to veto public release not only of his own presidential papers but those of former President Ronald Reagan, Bush's father and former President Bill Clinton.
The administration also is aggressively pursuing leaks, not with a Nixonian Plumbers unit but by threatening criminal prosecution. Some Republicans in Congress have called for Espionage Act prosecution of the New York Times for publishing revelations about the National Security Agency's monitoring of communications by U.S. citizens and tracking international financial transactions. Bush himself said it was "disgraceful" for the Times to reveal these government activities and publishing the security agency's leak was "helping the enemy."
Pursuing leaks inevitably means pursuing the reporters who received and published the leaks, forcing them to give up confidential sources or telephone records or go to jail. Whatever Judith Miller's motivation and however questionable her arrangement with "Scooter" Libby, she went to jail solely because she refused to reveal communications with her source to the federal grand jury.
Although all states (except Wyoming) legally recognize some sort of privilege for reporters to protect the confidentiality of sources, there is no federal shield law, and the Supreme Court held in 1972 that the First Amendment does not itself serve as one, at least where the information is sought by a federal grand jury investigating a crime.
So reporters who dare to report leaked information that may be classified, or information about testimony before a grand jury -- as Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada did in the BALCO proceeding about steroids in sports -- face subpoenas requiring them to reveal their confidential sources to grand juries or go to jail. And now, Williams and Fainaru-Wada have been ordered to serve as much as 18 months in federal prison, a ruling they have appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
So far, the courts have refused to protect subpoenaed reporters no matter how important the information they unearthed or how insignificant the alleged crime. It is true that reporters have never had strong protection against federal subpoenas, but they have hardly ever needed it. Until now.
One of former Attorney General John Ashcroft's first post-Sept. 11 acts was to issue a directive to federal agencies restricting access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act. Ashcroft's directive effectively reversed the presumption of openness and told agencies not to allow inspection of records if there was any arguable basis for withholding the records, assuring officials that Justice Department lawyers would defend them if sued.
Ashcroft's Justice Department also proceeded to round up mostly Muslim immigrants and conduct deportation hearings in secret, not allowing the press or public even to know that any hearing took place, which caused one federal judge to remark that "democracy dies behind closed doors." Ashcroft's moves toward greater secrecy were of a piece with Cheney's refusal when sued under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose even the identity of the corporate executives he met with to determine the administration's energy policy.
Unlike in Sweden, where the right of access to government documents is enshrined in the Constitution, our 1966 information act is solely a legislative creation. Unlike in South Korea, where the Supreme Court decided in 1989 that the right of access to government documents was an integral part of the constitutional freedom of the press, the U.S. Supreme Court held (in a case I lost, Houchins vs. KQED) that there is no such thing as a First Amendment right of access to government information or facilities. Consequently, Americans' right to know what their government is up to is not as well recognized as it is in some other countries.
Nor is government propaganda healthy for a free press or the citizenry. The Bush administration did not advance press freedom by producing and canning favorable "news" stories with fake reporters and peddling them to television stations, or by clandestinely paying friendly columnists for publishing opinions supporting administration policies.
Other recent U.S. government actions also cut into press freedom. The Federal Communications Commission's campaign to stamp out "indecency" and "profanity" in the broadcast media, with congressionally increased fines of $325,000 per violation for allowing a breast to be glimpsed or a dirty word uttered, has intimidated broadcasters.
The campaign may initially have been aimed at Howard Stern, but it puts at risk serious programming like a CBS documentary on 9/11 in which strong language escapes from the lips of firefighters and others in the inferno, "Saving Private Ryan" and even Masterpiece Theater's "Prime Suspect." Other countries like Sweden are bemused by American prissiness about sex and impose no comparable restrictions on their broadcasters.
The press is free in countries that trust the people to make wise decisions when they're fully informed, countries that remain willing to take the risks of dissent, rude discourse, instability and some insecurity, that tolerate eccentricity and unorthodox ideas. The erosion of press freedom in the United States, relative to other nations around the world, is disheartening. We have always had high expectations of freedom, which we now don't live up to.
It is hard to stomach the hypocrisy of claiming to spread democracy abroad while restricting at home the very freedoms that make democracy possible.
William Bennett Turner is a San Francisco lawyer who teaches a course on the First Amendment and the press at UC Berkeley. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
Page E - 1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/26/INGAKMHOCV1.DTL&feed=rss.opinion
- William Bennett Turner
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Vladimir Posner, the former Soviet journalist, used to claim the press was freer in the Soviet Union than it was in the United States. This was during Glasnost, as the Soviet empire was disintegrating. Posner explained that the government was dysfunctional, so journalists did not have to worry about the official censors, and the media had not been privatized, so journalists were not accountable to commercial sponsors and advertisers. The result was a kind of anarchic freedom. The press was free, but only for a brief window in time.
The window in America once was open wide and, I thought, permanently so. I used to tell my students on the first day of class that we had the freest speech and press in the world. I can't do that anymore.
In recent years American press freedom has eroded. Many other countries are now ranked freer than the United States -- all of the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand and many others. In the most recent survey by Freedom House, an independent American-based organization that assesses liberties around the world, the United States tied for 17th place, with the Bahamas, Estonia, Germany and others.
The international free-press advocates Reporters Without Borders ranked us 53rd, tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga. These rankings may not be scientifically valid, for a lot of subjective judgment is involved. But it is sobering to see the consensus that the United States is no longer anywhere near the top.
By virtue of Supreme Court decisions, the U.S. press remains freer than the press elsewhere in a few respects.
First, our law provides significantly greater protection for the press against libel suits, especially by government officials. In many countries, libel is a bullying tool for officials and the powerful to silence dissent. Under the 1964 decision in New York Times vs. Sullivan, insults, parodies and vicious criticism of officials are protected by the First Amendment.
Second, our law protects the press against almost any attempt by government to impose a "prior restraint" on what can be published. That is, the government is not allowed to censor, in advance, information the press may wish to publish. The famous "Pentagon Papers" case in 1971 allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish information about a classified Defense Department study on American involvement in Vietnam, despite the government's contention that publication would impair national security.
Third, perhaps unique in the world, our law protects the advocacy of dangerous, potentially divisive ideas. One can preach overthrow of the government -- domestic "regime change" -- religious hatred, racial discrimination and even criminal activity. Under the Supreme Court's 1969 decision in Brandenburg vs. Ohio, government may not suppress ideas, however repugnant to most, unless their expression amounts to incitement to imminent unlawful acts.
It also is true that American journalists have not been physically attacked based on what they report, at least at home (although overseas, some have been, and one was beheaded). In some other countries, journalists risk harassment or worse for reporting that offends government officials or powerful figures. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 47 journalists were murdered last year.
But U.S. press freedom has been slipping away since Sept. 11, 2001. Now that we are in a seemingly permanent "war" on terrorism, the government claims wartime powers that result in restricting press freedom.
The Bush administration has multiplied exponentially the number of documents it classifies as secret, shielding them from public view. It has classified literally millions of documents "top secret," according to reports filed with the National Archives; and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney claims to be exempt from reporting even the numbers of records it brands with the "classified" stamp. (The administration has also tried to retrieve antique classified documents from columnist Jack Anderson's estate, contending that only the government may possess such documents, however old.) Within weeks after 9/11, President Bush issued Executive Order 13233, allowing him to veto public release not only of his own presidential papers but those of former President Ronald Reagan, Bush's father and former President Bill Clinton.
The administration also is aggressively pursuing leaks, not with a Nixonian Plumbers unit but by threatening criminal prosecution. Some Republicans in Congress have called for Espionage Act prosecution of the New York Times for publishing revelations about the National Security Agency's monitoring of communications by U.S. citizens and tracking international financial transactions. Bush himself said it was "disgraceful" for the Times to reveal these government activities and publishing the security agency's leak was "helping the enemy."
Pursuing leaks inevitably means pursuing the reporters who received and published the leaks, forcing them to give up confidential sources or telephone records or go to jail. Whatever Judith Miller's motivation and however questionable her arrangement with "Scooter" Libby, she went to jail solely because she refused to reveal communications with her source to the federal grand jury.
Although all states (except Wyoming) legally recognize some sort of privilege for reporters to protect the confidentiality of sources, there is no federal shield law, and the Supreme Court held in 1972 that the First Amendment does not itself serve as one, at least where the information is sought by a federal grand jury investigating a crime.
So reporters who dare to report leaked information that may be classified, or information about testimony before a grand jury -- as Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada did in the BALCO proceeding about steroids in sports -- face subpoenas requiring them to reveal their confidential sources to grand juries or go to jail. And now, Williams and Fainaru-Wada have been ordered to serve as much as 18 months in federal prison, a ruling they have appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
So far, the courts have refused to protect subpoenaed reporters no matter how important the information they unearthed or how insignificant the alleged crime. It is true that reporters have never had strong protection against federal subpoenas, but they have hardly ever needed it. Until now.
One of former Attorney General John Ashcroft's first post-Sept. 11 acts was to issue a directive to federal agencies restricting access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act. Ashcroft's directive effectively reversed the presumption of openness and told agencies not to allow inspection of records if there was any arguable basis for withholding the records, assuring officials that Justice Department lawyers would defend them if sued.
Ashcroft's Justice Department also proceeded to round up mostly Muslim immigrants and conduct deportation hearings in secret, not allowing the press or public even to know that any hearing took place, which caused one federal judge to remark that "democracy dies behind closed doors." Ashcroft's moves toward greater secrecy were of a piece with Cheney's refusal when sued under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose even the identity of the corporate executives he met with to determine the administration's energy policy.
Unlike in Sweden, where the right of access to government documents is enshrined in the Constitution, our 1966 information act is solely a legislative creation. Unlike in South Korea, where the Supreme Court decided in 1989 that the right of access to government documents was an integral part of the constitutional freedom of the press, the U.S. Supreme Court held (in a case I lost, Houchins vs. KQED) that there is no such thing as a First Amendment right of access to government information or facilities. Consequently, Americans' right to know what their government is up to is not as well recognized as it is in some other countries.
Nor is government propaganda healthy for a free press or the citizenry. The Bush administration did not advance press freedom by producing and canning favorable "news" stories with fake reporters and peddling them to television stations, or by clandestinely paying friendly columnists for publishing opinions supporting administration policies.
Other recent U.S. government actions also cut into press freedom. The Federal Communications Commission's campaign to stamp out "indecency" and "profanity" in the broadcast media, with congressionally increased fines of $325,000 per violation for allowing a breast to be glimpsed or a dirty word uttered, has intimidated broadcasters.
The campaign may initially have been aimed at Howard Stern, but it puts at risk serious programming like a CBS documentary on 9/11 in which strong language escapes from the lips of firefighters and others in the inferno, "Saving Private Ryan" and even Masterpiece Theater's "Prime Suspect." Other countries like Sweden are bemused by American prissiness about sex and impose no comparable restrictions on their broadcasters.
The press is free in countries that trust the people to make wise decisions when they're fully informed, countries that remain willing to take the risks of dissent, rude discourse, instability and some insecurity, that tolerate eccentricity and unorthodox ideas. The erosion of press freedom in the United States, relative to other nations around the world, is disheartening. We have always had high expectations of freedom, which we now don't live up to.
It is hard to stomach the hypocrisy of claiming to spread democracy abroad while restricting at home the very freedoms that make democracy possible.
William Bennett Turner is a San Francisco lawyer who teaches a course on the First Amendment and the press at UC Berkeley. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
Page E - 1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/26/INGAKMHOCV1.DTL&feed=rss.opinion
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