[Edited -- JG] Is this for real? My dad, a retired attorney, wrote a short letter to the New York Times with the rather reasonable suggestion that they shoulda broke that wiretap thing earlier. "I hate to think what might have happened had the Pentagon Papers of 1971 landed on Bill Keller's desk. My guess is that we would not read about them until 2000, if at all." That's it, that's the whole thing.
All well and good. But did it hit too close to home? What's that ding in the inbox? There he he is, minding his own business and playing computer baseball -- it's 1955 and Brookyln has come back in the 7th to pull out a game against the Phils -- and he suddenly receives a snotty e-mail with a nytimes.com return address.
It is apparently from Keller's personal secretary.
I wonder if any other Daily Kosians have received anything like this -- its tone varying from boilerplate to self-satisfaction to a sneering "I wonder if you've even read it [the story]" at the end.
Do they write you less condescending letters if you buy Times Select?
Could the NYT be so pained over their failure to inform the public that they've put Diane Ceribelli on slap-the-subscriber duty? It's the kind of defensive behavior I'd expect from the editors of a community shopper, not the Paper of Record.
Text from the bizarre exchange follows. It doesn't appear to be a form letter.
From: Executive Editor Desk <exec-ed@nytimes.com>
Date: January 12, 2006 12:56:48 PM PST
To: will gorenfeld <gorenfeld@[deleted]>
Subject: Re: Bush Spy Story
Mr. Gorenfeld, did you know that the Pentagon Papers were held for 8 months? Readers have written to ask about The Times' decision to disclose the President's secret order authorizing certain domestic
wiretaps without a warrant. Some readers are concerned that reporting
about this program might jeopardize government efforts to prevent
terrorist attacks. Others wonder why we did not publish the story when
we first learned of it.
It is impossible to fully answer those questions without
getting into specifics of when and how we learned what we learned.
That would entail violating pledges of confidentiality that are
important to our ability to continue reporting on sensitive subjects
of national interest. We can say the following:
We start with the premise that a newspaper's job is to publish
information that is a matter of public interest. Clearly a secret
policy reversal that gives an American intelligence agency discretion
to monitor communications within the country is a matter of public
interest. From the outset, the question was not why we would publish
it, but why we would not.
A year ago, when this information first became known to Times
reporters, the Administration argued strongly that writing about this
eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the
vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government
of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security.
Officials also assured senior editors of The Times that a variety of
legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that
the program raised no legal questions. As we have done before in rare
instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we
agreed not to publish at that time.
We also continued reporting, and in the ensuing months two
things happened that changed our thinking.
First, we developed a fuller picture of the concerns and
misgivings that had been expressed during the life of the program. It
is not our place to pass judgement on the legal or civil liberties
questions involved in such a program, but it became clear those
questions loomed larger within the government than we had previously
understood.
Second, in the course of subsequent reporting we satisfied
ourselves that we could write about this program -- withholding a
number of technical details -- in a way that would not xpose any
intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on
the public record. The fact that the government eavesdrops on those
suspected of terrorist connections is well-known. The fact that the
N.S.A. can legally monitor communications within the United States
with a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is
also public information. What is new is that the N.S.A. has for the
past three years had the authority to eavesdrop on Americans and
> others inside the United States without a warrant. It is that
> expansion of authority -- not the need for a robust anti-terror
> intelligence operation -- that prompted debate within the government,
> and that is the subject of the article.
> Beyond that, we will let the story speak for itself. I wonder
> if you've even read it.
> Diane Ceribelli
My old man then set her straight:
> Dear Ms. Ceribelli
>
> Thanks for the reply. I'm a Times subscriber and have read the
> story as well as Mr. Keller's excuses. Actually, NYT house counsel
> counseled the editors to not published the Pentagon Papers. But the
> papers were not held for 8 months. They were delivered to the NYT in
> early 1971 by Ellsberg and publication commenced on June 13, 1971.
>
> The wire taps were as illegal a year ago as they are now. Nothing
> has changed. Indeed, Mr. Risen's December 16th article states:
> "Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted
> anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed
> it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns
> about the operation's legality and oversight." In short, the
> administration's bold and illegal disregard of the law and the privacy
> rights of Americans should have given the Times ample justification to
> promptly print the story.
>
I haven't seen anything as whiny as this NYT response since the time I got flamed by the San Jose Mercury News for complaining about the haughty recruiter they sent to my J-school. (This was during a raft of Jayson Blair-ish intern scandals at the Merc, and I'd suggested the outreach lady could have avoided such things.)
Replies the elder Gorenfeld, quoting Will Rogers: "All I know is what I read in the papers."