To be honest, Raj, I didn’t care to follow news & politics much during BJ’s White House & Massage Parlor, so I really can’t speak to your points above.

I did. I laughed reading Ken Starr’s soft-core porn novel when it was first released on the Internet in 1998.

In other words, to hell with what they’re asking. al-NYT is the final arbiter in what national security issues are leaked.

Apparently you are missing the point that the information on which the NYTimes report by and large was not secret. I suppose that you are one of the people who would have lambasted the NYTimes for publishing portions of the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s–which the Nixon malAdministration tried to suppress. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

To be honest, Raj, I didn’t care to follow news & politics much during BJ’s White House & Massage Parlor, so I really can’t speak to your points above.

I will say that this is all anyone needs to know about this

We spent weeks listening to the administration’s case. I personally spent a long time in Secretary Snow’s office and spoke on the phone to John Negroponte. Others at the paper spoke to other officials.

I believe they genuinely did not want us to publish this. But I think it’s not responsible of us to just take them at their word. -Bill Keller, Situation Room, 26 June 2006

In other words, to hell with what they’re asking. al-NYT is the final arbiter in what national security issues are leaked.

AGAIN, if this was “no big deal” and was “already reported”, why in the hell print it again?

Time for a medication adjustment perhaps?

One can only conclude that you have never read the Articles of Impeachment that the House approved against Bill Clinton. The text of the Articles is here. None of the Articles relate to the Whitewater non-scandal–they all relate to the Monica Lewinski and Paula Jones matters.

There were some people who were indicted as a result of the investigation into Whitewater, but the Clintons were not among them, irrespective of whether an impeachment is or is not an indictment.

Regarding

I can’t believe that YOU think the NYTimes would debate and fight multiple attempts to restrain publication of a story that was just old news or had been previously and widely known in the terrorist community.

I really don’t care what you believe. You have provided no evidence that the Bush malAdministration tried to keep its use of information from SWIFT secret, whereas I have provided evidence that they not only did not try to keep it secret, but widely touted the fact that they were using the information. Evidence, you know? When I was in law school, that was a 1L course. Maybe they don’t teach it where you’re going to school.

As I said, perhaps the only thing that was new in the NYTimes revelation was that the Bush malAdministration was basically using a “vacuum cleaner” to suck up SWIFT information concerning apparently all international transactions in their database, whether or not there was any indication that the transactions were related to terrorists or terrorist activities. But that isn’t particularly interesting, since the Bush malAdministration has already published the fact that they were using SWIFT information to supposedly fight terrorism. It seems to me that, if they wanted to keep that information secret, they could have eschewed releasing the information in the first place. That they didn’t more than suggests that they didn’t care that the information got to the terrorists.

I’ll ignore the rest of your petty jibes. I posted the link above relating to the Articles of Impeachment because I presume that you might want to educate yourself as to what actually happened instead of merely bloviating about what you believe happened. I tend to doubt it, though.

Oh, wait, I know… like Ian S and the other nut splitters… you’re going to offer that Whitewater wasn’t the issue when Clinton was impeached, impeachment of a president isn’t an indictment… etc etc. What utter spin and ineffective too… you need to wait a few years until history gets foggy before trotting out those spins and fabrications. You’re carrying the Democrats water pails and you don’t even realize it anymore.

How many times has the GayLeft’s Left flank carried the water for Democrats who neither want us, nor accept us? Start with yesterday and count back 25 years… it’s time for YOU to leave the Democrat Plantation, put down the BushHatred daily talking points and rejoin the human race. Frankly, I’d rather you join it in Germany since that seems to be where your patriotism and loyalty default.

I can’t believe that YOU think the NYTimes would debate and fight multiple attempts to restrain publication of a story that was just old news or had been previously and widely known in the terrorist community. Get a grip, raj baby.

God, there are times you are simply a transparent vessel for the anti-Bush, anti-American voice and it’s simply amazing to watch you put your brain on hold so often, for so little, for so long.

You aren’t going to seriously contend that the right wingnuts weren’t jumping for joy over the NYTimes’s “reportage” regarding the Clintons’ Whitewater non-scandal in the early to mid 1990s, are you? You remember, the non-scandal that led to no Clinton indictments.

And you aren’t going to seriously contend that the right wingnuts weren’t jumping for joy over Judith Millers “reportage” regarding Iraq in the early 2000s leading up to the Iraq War, are you? You know, the reportage in which she was little more than a stenographer for the Bush administration and the crook Chalabi and his gang. Her “reportage” has subsequently been called into question–and that’s putting it mildly. Reassessing Miller: U.S. intelligence on Iraq’s WMD deserves a second look. So does the reporting of the New York Times’ Judith Miller But her reportage provided cover for the Bush malAdministration to go to war on Iraq.

And those are only two rather egregious examples.

Regarding the subject at hand, the NYTimes article about the US gov’t's use of records from SWIFT, that was no secret.

News reports disclosing the Bush administration’s use of a special bank surveillance program to track terrorist financing spurred outrage in the White House and on Capitol Hill, but some specialists pointed out yesterday that the government itself has publicly discussed its stepped-up efforts to monitor terrorist finances since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

(snip)

The controversy continued to simmer yesterday when Senator Jim Bunning, a Republican of Kentucky, accused the Times of “treason,” telling reporters in a conference call that it “scares the devil out of me” that the media would reveal such sensitive information.

(snip)

But a search of public records — government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 — describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist-linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT.

“There have been public references to SWIFT before,” said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. “The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before.”

Victor D. Comras , a former US diplomat who oversaw efforts at the United Nations to improve international measures to combat terror financing, said it was common knowledge that worldwide financial transactions were being closely monitored for links to terrorists. “A lot of people were aware that this was going on,” said Comras, one of a half-dozen financial experts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recruited for the task.

“Unless they were pretty dumb, they had to assume” their transactions were being monitored, Comras said of terrorist groups. “We have spent the last four years bragging how effective we have been in tracking terrorist financing.”

Indeed, a report that Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of financial information that the United States had tapped into.

Much more at Terrorist funds-tracking no secret, some say

I, for one, find it difficult to believe that the NYTimes published secret information that the Bush malAdministration had been making public for years. As far as I can tell, the only thing that the NYTimes may have published that was not on the public record is the Treasury Department appears to have been sifting through all SWIFT records, not just those that were related to terrorism.

BTW, Ihr Deutsche Sprachkenntnis hat sich verbessert. Toll.

Apparently, the right-wingnuts are rarely if ever satisfied with the NYTimes unless its reportage conforms to their preconceived notions.

Not when they shit on the citizens of this country to protect their sources, Reinemachefrau.

Au contraire. I haven’t used libtard in a long time.

There is never any content but just a string of insults.

Maybe because that’s all you’re worth.

So now you’re pissing your diaper because you can’t take what you’ve been dishing out? Frankly, I don’t care about your feelings.

Quite frankly, it is difficult to take seriously the periodic calls for “civility” posted on this site,

BOO FUCKING HOO Like you lame brain bastards give a good royal damn about “civility”. We’ve been civil to you liberal cum catchers for years and we’re sick and tired of biting the pillow for you pieces of shit. IMHO, you can take “civil” and shove it sideways just before you drop down to the fifth level and cook.

Day 3 –that’s t-h-r-e-e- Ian S — and the NYTimes story is still leading, backlash building, liberal protectors like Tom Brokaw and others charging into the trenches to defend… and next to nothing on your BIG story that’s going to “blow” the NYTimes debacle off the “front pages”.

Poor Ian S. I feel sorry for YOU.

Let me remind you of the actual quote made:

“not a single official in the Clinton administration was even indicted over his or her White House duties”

So if Scooter Libby is acquitted, he will never have been indicted.

Note, again, how leftists apply the double standard.

I think the best thing to come of this episode is to underscore that the Press isn’t always the “best friend” of democracy nor most valuable asset in a free society… sometimes the Press works against the common interest(s) of us all. The Press has long played the “government” as some equivalent of corporate evil… I think it’s time for some restraint of the Press –beginning with breaking up the monolopies and conglomerates serving multiple markets.

Additionally, I think the episode of the NYTimes harming American’s ability to wage a war against the Islamo-fascists will help Americans remember that the press is biased, secrecy in govt isn’t such a bad thing for some policies and practices, and our elected officials are the ones who we vote on to decide matters of natl security –not a newspaper editor buddied-up with a publisher.

Like with DanRather, Jason Blair, the contrived “Rove Scandal” and other episodes, the Press is proving to most Americans that it can NOT be trusted to sort out the truth. Far from it: it has its own horses in the race.

I hope the heat on the NYTimes and MSM in general continues and that journalists are outed for what they are: self interested, amoral, PR grubbing, craven people interested in the spotlight. They are NOT “in the public’s service” as DanRather and others like to proclaim.

Aside from the fact that Espy was acquitted on all charges (as you admitted) and that Dale and his staff at the White House travel office were hold-overs from the Reagan/Bush I adminitration, I will merely remind you that Cisneros’s problems stemmed from a period in time before he was a member of the Clinton administration.

Cisneros Indicted: Former Housing secretary charged with 18 counts of lying, obstruction

The generalized, broad corruption that ran throughout the Clinton Administration, with its HUNDREDS of politically-appointed figures that were indicted by 6th year if you include Cabinet Secretary plus the first several levels below them? They don’t count. LOL

• In November 1996, Henry G. Cisneros resigned from his position as President Clinton’s housing secretary. In December 1997, he was indicted on 18 counts of conspiracy, obstruction and lying to the FBI. Cisneros pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 1999 and was fined $10,000.

• In May 1993, White House travel office chief Billy R. Dale and his entire staff were fired by the Clinton administration. Dale was indicted in December 1994 on two counts of embezzlement and conversion after a grand jury said he pocketed up to $68,000 from media organizations traveling with the president. Dale was acquitted of all charges in November 1995.

From http://tinyurl.com/n2f4m :

“not a single official in the Clinton administration was even indicted over his or her White House duties”

Ambassador de Sadesky “Our Doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The Deciding factor was when learned that your country was working along similiar line and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.

President Merkin Muffley: This is preposterous. I’ve never approved of anything like that.

Ambassador de Sadesky Our source was the New York Times

I wouldn’t call the WSJ’s editorial page right-wing, but libertarian-conservative.

If you wish. We cancelled our WSJ subscription almost a decade ago after it had become clear that the then-publisher Karen Elliot House was using its idiotorial page to go on an anti-gay jihad. The financial information that they published was little more than a rehash of what was available over the Internet, so why bother with them?

I haven’t paid any attention to the WSJ since we cancelled the subscription. Every once in a while, I’ll go to their OpinionJournal idiotorials if they involve gay-rights issues and read comments from the wingnuts that comment there. Sickening–it’s almost like reading comments from the wingnuts at the ridiculously-named FreeRepublic.com (Rush Lamebrain’s favorite web site)

And cut the crap about SWIFT being well known. You didn’t know it, until this week.

I have known about SWIFT for at least a decade, when I went into private practice and needed to provide my international clients with international bank routing numbers so that they could remit payments to our US bank. The most prominent of the international bank routing numbers was the SWIFT number. We also make use of SWIFT numbers when we send money from our US bank account to our account in Germany.

Anyone who is doing any international banking is aware of SWIFT. SWIFT isn’t a secret.