Rolling out the unwelcome mat for Bill Kristol
New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt dons the mantle of the New York Times readers unhinged by the hiring of Bill Kristol as a weekly op-ed columnist. Of Kristol's repeated offenses against the Times's worldview, Hoyt singles out the one that puts Kristol beyond the pale:
On Fox News Sunday on June 25, 2006, Kristol said, “I think the attorney general has an absolute obligation to consider prosecution” of The New York Times for publishing an article that revealed a classified government program to sift the international banking transactions of thousands of Americans in a search for terrorists.Hoyt adds that Kristol exercised his right to remain silent when asked about his views on the subject, as well as his further description of the Times as "irredeemable." The Times is of course a serial offender against the espionage laws of the United States; its story blowing the Treasury/CIA financial monitoring program to track terrorists was its second time around the horn in destroying an invaluable counterterroism tool. The first time around the Times blew the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program.Publication of the article was controversial — my predecessor as public editor first supported it and then changed his mind — but Kristol’s leap to prosecution smacked of intimidation and disregard for both the First Amendment and the role of a free press in monitoring a government that has a long history of throwing the cloak of national security and classification over its activities. This is not a person I would have rewarded with a regular spot in front of arguably the most elite audience in the nation.
As a commenter wielding only the power of the pen, it's a bit hard to see how Kristol would be intimidating in this context. It may puncture the self-image of the Times and its readers to learn that the Times is not a law unto itself, exempt from the operation of the espionage laws that otherwise apply to American citizens. The people of the United States have the right to protect some information from disclosure to our enemies, as they have done in the espionage laws, and the managing editor of the New York Times is not the highest authority in the land on the subject.
Indeed, in a famous case involving, well, the New York Times, the Supreme Court indicated that the First Amendment does not immunize newspapers against the espionage laws. I tried to make this point (coincidentlaly under Kristol's auspices on the Standard site) in "Exposure." With one or two small exceptions, the Times has quite carefully protected its readers from information regarding the Times's legal jeopardy, and Hoyt himself does not blow this particular secret.
Today Kristol gives Times readers good reason to hate him. In "The Democrats' fairy tale," Bill takes the leading Democratic presidential candidates to task for denying the success of the surge on the one hand and for claiming credit for its success on the other hand. Like pointing out that the Times is not a law unto itself, and that its managing editor is not the highest authority in the land, this is the kind of thing that can drive Times readers off the deep end.
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