Does America Need an Official Secrets Act?

Senator Accuses Times of Endangering U.S.

Sat Dec 17,10:15 PM ET
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A Republican senator on Saturday accused The New York Times of endangering American security to sell a book by waiting until the day of the terror-fighting Patriot Act reauthorization to report that the government has eavesdropped on people without court-approved warrants.

"At least two senators that I heard with my own ears cited this as a reason why they decided to vote to not allow a bipartisan majority to reauthorize the Patriot Act," said Republican Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record) of Texas. "Well, as it turns out the author of this article turned in a book three months ago and the paper, The New York Times, failed to reveal that the urgent story was tied to a book release and its sale by its author."

Cornyn did not name the senators in his remarks on the Senate floor.

A call to The New York Times' Washington bureau was referred to spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, who could not be reached immediately.

Times reporter James Risen, who wrote the story, has a book "State of WAR: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," coming out in the next few weeks, Cornyn said.

"I think it's a crying shame ... that we find that America's safety is endangered by the potential expiration of the Patriot Act in part because a newspaper has seen fit to release on the night before the vote on the floor on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act as part of a marketing campaign for selling a book," Cornyn said.

Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency has, without court-approved warrants, eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States. President Bush said Saturday that the White House had kept the congressional leadership informed, which a Republican lawmaker confirmed.

But several senators cited the NSA revelation as a reason to uphold a filibuster on the renewal of the expiring portions of the USA Patriot Act — the domestic anti-terrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — without getting additional safeguards into the law. Supporters of renewing the law failed to get 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.

I have long been proud of our tradition of freedom above all else, but in a time of warfare, we are seeing an unprecedented level of top secret information being leaked to and by the MSM. This kind of activity not only endangers our troops overseas, but it also endangers our citizens here at home. President Bush rightly cited the inexcusable release of information which told Osama Bin Laden how we were tracking his movement. Not only do those who leak this information need to be found and tried for treason, but those in the media who knowingly repeat or make public, this information need to be tried as traitors or as enemy agents. The MSM can squawk and scream all they want to, their right to free press has limitations just as our right to free speech does. I would love to see some of these arrogant, self-righteous media prigs doing time in Leavenworth or stood up before a firing squad for betraying state secrets to the enemy.

Full Story: Treason in the Times

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