Josh Marshall points to an
http://www.thehill.com/... article in The Hill that reports that House GOP members plan to introduce a resolution today condemning the New York Times for their story on the SWIFT program.
President Bush has already said that by disclosing the SWIFT program, the Times has caused the "great harm" to US security and characterized the decision to print the article as disgraceful.
The whole argument for condemnation of the Times rests on the contention that 1) it was not publicly known that the US was actively examining bank records that might be linked to terrorist organizations post-9/11 and 2) the existence of the SWIFT program was a state secret prior to the Times article.
Both 1) and 2) are demonstrably false.
In my opinion, the best run down of these facts is given by Glenn Greenwald here http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/...
The highlights:
* Bush gloated about US efforts to track terrorists' financing while campaigning in 2004.
* SWIFT is mentioned in a UN report in 2002
* my favorite bit of refutation is the super-secret website operated by SWIFT, www.swift.com
There are many ways the Dems might counter the GOP resolution to condemn the Times. My idea is to call them on their bluff and go a step further - introduce an amendment to the resolution condemning Google as well. All of the above links can be found using Google and could have been found using Google prior to the Times story. If the Times compromised national security when it ran a single story in June 2006, then surely Google has been compromising national security for years on end as the same information has been available for any and all who wished to seek it.