To the Editor In Chief of the New York Times:
The startling revelation that you and The New York Times had been in possession of information about the federal government conducting warrantless surveillance on Americans for a year, and had failed to report on it until a few days ago, requires a thoughtful consideration of the depth of your professional and personal failures, and an exploration of the enormous extend of your intellectual corruption. I will outline in detail the way that you failed as a professional journalist and as a citizen of this nation, but I will highlight the way you failed to apply the most rudimentary logical and critical analysis to the issues that you faced when you first came upon this material, now a year ago.
When you first learned of the program ordered by the President of the United States, to order extra-judicial surveillance of communications between persons in the United States and foreign destinations, you failed to apply even the most simple and rudimentary critical analysis to the issue. If you had, you would have quickly realized that surveillance of telephone communications is nothing new. In fact, you would have realized that an entire legal system, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with secret courts and an extremely flexible and responsive system of getting warrants, was in place. You would have known that of tens of thousands of FISA warrant requests, only a handful were ever turned down. You would have been aware that surveillance was happening all the time, and that it was needed to protect us from another attack. In addition to that, you would have known that internet traffic was thoroughly monitored. You would have been aware of the revelations of such programs as Carnivor and Echelon.
In short, you would have known or you should have known that the fact that surveillance was going on was not news. It was, indeed, old hat. Everyone knew it. In campaign speeches George Bush spelled out that surveillance was being conducted. I might also add that the American public was in strong support of surveillance.
But what was news, and big news, was the fact that the President had authorized a program of extra-judicial surveillance, of government activity outside of the FISA courts, in violation of FISA. One year ago, Mr. Keller, you failed to do the most rudimentary and simple critical analysis of the facts: in the name of national security you were being asked to suppress an important story to protect the criminal conduct of federal officials. Let me spell it out again. You did not protect the confidentiality of surveillance, because it was already widely known that surveillance was going on. You only protected the criminal nature of the activity. In case you are having a problem following me intellectually, Mr. Keller, let me point out that surveillance can be done legally and illegally. If illegal surveillance is stopped, then legal surveillance can take its place immediately and proceed.
The difference between legal and illegal surveillance is all the difference in the world for a democracy. And this is where you failed miserably as a citizen. Just like the bystander who watches a lynch-mob and rationalizes his failure to act by saying to himself that they are probably hanging a man who is guilty, you rationalized your failure to report criminal conduct by telling yourself that you are doing it in the interest of national security. If justice were really the issue, then a lynch mob should not be hanging a man but the man should be handed to a proper court of law and tried on the facts. If national security were really the issue then the illegal surveillance procedures should be terminated immediately, and warrants should be issued by FISA courts. The difference is that in FISA courts, the activities of the agents are under the scrutiny and the supervision of the courts. The difference is that the government acts in the context of the normal checks and balances of that wonderful thing that we call the American Democracy.
So now your profound failures on so many levels has brought us to the bottom line. In a democracy a free press is essential. A free press must exist so that the people be informed, and that they use that information when they vote. You, as a journalist, are a vital cog in this democracy. You failed. The people have now reaped the terrible cost of your failure. We will never know if the people would have voted to re-elect George Bush, had they known the full extent of his recklessness with the law and with the fabric of the American system of checks and balances. The true cost of your devastating failure will be borne by generations to come.