Somebody in the upper echelon of the Bush administration had to leak the details of both the NSA warrantless wiretapping and the monitoring of banking transaction to the New York Times. For all of his rage directed at liberal media institutions, Bush has yet to comment on his own failure to contain leaks of highly sensitive information by his own administration.
Perhaps some of those same liberal media institutions should be raising the question of why Mr. Bush hasn't been capable of locating the moles in his own administration that are so disloyal to America, they are passing state secrets to the press. Why is Bush so concerned about punishing the media that printed the story when he can't even locate the traitor(s) in his own administration that are the source of the leaks to the media? Alberto Gonzalez should be leaving no stone unturned in bringing highly placed traitors in the Bush administration to justice.
If Bush can't summons the same fury for the scoundrel in his administration that committed the crime then why should he even bother to harass the NY Times for printing it? There would be no story for the NY Times to print if there wasn't a source in the Bush administration to dangle state secrets before the NY Times to print.
In the past the Bush administration has intentionally leaked "classified" information to the media in an effort to discredit their opponents. Doesn't the Bush administration's current use of anonymous leaks to the media, strike you as being orchestrated by the White House for a political purpose?
We know that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's office have been the sources of previous leaks of classified information to the media. Could it be that the Bush administration is intentionally leaking the information to have justification to attack the liberal media?
The most effective way to silence and nuetralize a critical media is to accuse them of compromising national security to the end of the terrrorists.
I've noticed that the Bush has been silent on his criticism of the conservative Wall Street Journal, who also broke the story on the same day the NY Times did. Could it be that Bush is playing politics with our national security secrets?
The Bush administration has previously been eager to pubically trumpet their success in tracking the financial transactions of terrorists. Certainly the Bush administration has already tipped their hand to the terrorists as to what their own activities are. A Bush administration spokesman for the State Department, Anthony Wayne said in 2004:
As we've made it more difficult for them to use the banking system they've been shifting to other less reliable and more cumbersome methods, such as cash couriers.
Isn't Mr. Wayne disclosing the same information to the terrorists that Bush is pummeling the NY Times for disclosing? The is a persuasive counter-argument that publicaly announcing your dilligence in monitoring financial data of the terrorist banking activities is an effective deterrent on the legal flow of funds used to support terrorism. Bush seems to have taken that position when he's gained political capital from doing so. .
It was President Bush, himself, who set the tone on Sept. 24, 2001, declaring:
"We're putting banks and financial institutions around the world on notice -- we will work with their governments, ask them to freeze or block terrorists' ability to access funds in foreign accounts."
Surely that is enough information to tip off the terrorists that conventional banking transactions are being watched by the Bush administration.
It's public knowledge that the Bush administration has been monitoring the flow of terrorist financial transactions internationally. The only state secret that Bush hasn't trumpeted is that he is monitoring the banking transactions of American citizens he feels are involved with international terrorism.
There hasn't been probable cause established against a single American to support Bush's theory that the FBI, NSA and the CIA should hold Americans under extra-constitutional scrutiny as agents of international terrorism.
Give me a break!... It's nearly five years since the World Trade Center attack and Bush has yet to link a single American citizen with moving financial transactions on behalf of international terrorist organizations. Bush for all of his homeland security resources has yet to identify any American citizen that is in cahoots with al Qaeda.
The only American citizen that the Bush administration has even alleged to have links to al Qaeda, is Jose Padilla. Just last Tuesday, the judge in Padilla's trial ordered the Department of Justice to provide more persausive evidence to link Padilla with overseas terrorists and told U.S. attorneys that a handful of electronic intercepts of alleged overseas phone calls by Padilla to a man named Adham Amin Houssan isn't enough evidence to indict him indict him for conspiring with al Qaeda.
The Justice Department has yet to provide a transcript or recording of those phone calls and both Padilla and Houssan adamantly denied being members of al Qaeda or even knowing each other. The Justice Department added Padilla's name to the defendants list on the unrelated trial of Houssan in Miami, after the Supreme Court ruled that the government couldn't hold and deny legal counsel to Padilla indefinitely, without charging him with a crime.
Jeanne Baker, one of the attorneys in Houssan's camp said:
We are so shooting in the dark. The government has to tell us, what are these acts they conspired to commit?
It would seem that even in it's own "show trial" against an American citizen for consorting with foreign terrorists, the Justice Department is at a loss to present any persuasive evidence of their allegations.