I just posted this in comments, but on reflection I think it’s important enough to repost here. Yesterday, Sebastian wrote about the leak of an al Qaeda double agent’s identity. At the time, it was unclear who had leaked the name. However, if Juan Cole is to be believed (and I have never seen any evidence to suggest that he shouldn’t), Condioleeza Rice has answered this question:
“On Sunday at around 12:30 pm, Wolf Blitzer’s show referred to it. New York Senator Charles Schumer criticized the Bush administration for revealing Khan’s name. He noted the annoyance of British Home Minister Blunkett (see below) and Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat with the Americans for blowing Khan’s cover. He said Hayat complained that if Khan’s name had not been reveaeled to the New York Times by the Bush administration, he might well have provided information that would have led to the capture of Usamah Bin Laden himself!”
Blitzer then revealed that he had discussed the Khan case with US National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice on background. He reported that she had admitted that the Bush administration had in fact revealed Khan’s name to the press. She said she did not know if Khan was a double agent working for the Pakistani government. (!!!)”
Now, there is still room for doubt. The transcripts for Wolf Blitzer’s show today are not up yet, so perhaps he didn’t say this, though nothing in my experience suggests that Juan Cole misstates facts. If Wolf Blitzer did say this, he might be intentionally or unintentionally wrong (though it is hard for me to credit this possibility. Blitzer has often struck me as lazy; he sometimes fails to ask obviously relevant questions, or focusses on all the wrong things, but I have not known him to just make stuff up on matters of this importance.) Possibly Dr. Rice got things wrong, though again, it seems unlikely that she would say something damaging to the administration if she didn’t know it to be true. But if she said this, and if it’s true, then Sebastian’s questions about who leaked this information have just been answered.
And this is serious business. Everything I have ever read suggests that infiltrating al Qaeda, or turning people who are already on the inside, is extremely difficult. In Khan, we seem to have managed to do this: to get a double agent inside al Qaeda, and to use him to identify other al Qaeda agents and to develop information about their plans. Yet if this story is accurate, our government blew his cover. And why? Obviously, I don’t know, but it’s hard to think of a convincing reason other than countering criticism of the latest terror alert. This, like the outing of Valerie Plame, is the sort of thing that should lead any self-respecting government official who did it to resign in shame, and any good chief executive to move heaven and earth to find out who did it, and relieve that person of his or her job. And this is so even if, like (apparently) Dr. Rice, that official did not know that Khan was acting as a double agent: in a case like this, I would think, you do not disclose classified information (a) at all, and (b) (if you decide to disregard (a)) without making very, very sure that in so doing you are not compromising any ongoing operation.
As I said, there is still room for doubt. But if this is true, then someone in this administration is willing to compromise the security of this country for political gain. I await both further details and the reaction, if any, President Bush.
good luck this time around. i posted Juan Cole’s link early on in Sebastian’s post and it was apparently invisible.
Rice said it directly on Wolf’s show this morning. She indicated that the Administration had provided the name to the media on background. This is not a situation in which Wolf is quoting what she allegedly said to him.
The most likely scenario is that the morons did not realize Khan was undercover, and released the name because it was politically expedient.
P.S. Rice also seemed to be clueless about the seriousness of this admission. I am sure she was a great academic, but she is incompetent in her current post.
dmbeaster: thanks; that takes out two of my three conceivable yet unlikely possibilities for error. That Rice said this at all suggests that she doesn’t understand its importance, which (if true) is amazing.
“Yet if this story is accurate, our government blew his cover. And why? Obviously, I don’t know, but it’s hard to think of a convincing reason other than countering criticism of the latest terror alert.”
If this story is accurate it appears that our government blew his cover because they didn’t know he was undercover. If this is true, we aren’t working as closely as we need to with Pakistan.
I am sure she was a great academic
Heh. The quotes I’ve seen from the review of her book The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army would tend to contradict that…
Don’t understand why this isn’t a hair-on-fire issue (yet?). Also, guess it’s the weekend, but I just looked on tacitus and redstate and Volokh for a current conservative take but no luck (and Andrew Sullivan’s on his yearly post-fundraiser month-long vacation) – if there’s one out there, could someone link to it?
There’s hair-turns-to-grey news too – US soldiers rescue torture victims then are ordered to return them to their torturers.
Rilkefan – I checked the RW sites, too, and haven’t found anything about most of the latest horrors. In most cases, they’re probably waiting for NRO or FR to post talking points. The marginally more intellectually honest may just be staying quiet until some other story crowds these out.
Sheesh, don’t I count as a right-wing writer? I’m so hurt.
Sebastian, the posts of yours I’ve read recently have been so reasonable that I now think of you as a libertarian. – Actually, I didn’t mention you above because your post is really about the reporting. If you want to say, “If this reporting holds up, Condi should be fired and etc.”, I’ll consider myself answered.
CaseyL, I did find one comment from Tacitus on Redstate (incidentally they need to get a working search engine), a rather disappointing “not good if true, let’s wait and see before making any comment on the story.” (Note that I wouldn’t have called this disappointing from Slart, who has an admirable [if perhaps exaggeratedly cautious] policy on such matters…)
Sebastian, that was hysterical.
Josh:
I hate to be too needlessly mean to people, and assume that Rice rose to prominence because of some element of competence. Nonetheless, for all I know, she was a complete ass as an academic.
I’ve always assumed that she is a living example of the Peter Principle, having been elevated to the level of her incompetence. One thing I am certain of is her incompetence in her current position.
Rice doesn’t have a very sterling rep in academia, either. Her writings about the USSR were roundly criticized as very badly researched and even more badly thought out. I can’t remember the exact quote, but one of her peers said she would skim source material and only pick out the parts that supported her thesis; another said she didn’t seem to comprehend her source material.
The review of seen of Rice’s work is a complete and utter beatdown; dates and facts are mixed together in a wondrous jumbalayah of wrongness.
As to this latest, why would (a) Rice give the name, and (b) the press release it, given that it was on background?
Oh, and what’s Laura “Human Shield” Bush up to these days?
“The review of seen” – slightly too much phonetics in school, or Ole-speak?
But “a wondrous jumbalayah of wrongness” is too cool to nitpick.
I have no strong feelings about Ms. Rice one way or another but one wonders what constitutes credentials for National Security Advisor. A quick check of wikipedia for a rundown on previous holders of the office shows a variety from stellar to barely existent. Loyalty to the president would appear to be a primary consideration.
“Loyalty to the president would appear to be a primary consideration.”
I think loyalty to the citizens of this country/the Constitution might be a better place to put it. After all, isn’t that the same place the President should deposit his?
Since I don’t mind looking stupid: what does “given that it was on background” mean in this context?
And about the reporting, this reminds me a bit of the Plame case in another respect. We have all these reporters pretending to be confused, when some of them know damn well where the NYT got the name (Plame and Kahn). Would it kill someone at the NYT on this story to tell us if they got the name from the US or Pakistan?
review I’ve seen, for the haters
“on background” would mean, I would think, that it was kind of an fyi that they couldn’t print.
what does “given that it was on background” mean in this context?
Check out this article, which is a guide for deciphering journalese when it comes to anonymous sourcing. Basically, “on background” means “you can print this, but don’t attribute it to me”. Opinions vary as to just how much the journalist is then supposed to obfuscate the source of the information.
i checked out the link which is great. but there must be a category ‘really deep background’ that wasn’t mentioned here because on Fox News they are constantly using the source “some say” but i can’t seem to find it in this particular article.
Sebastian: the transcript of Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Condoleeze Rice is up here. The relevant passage is:
While Blitzer says only that the name was disclosed “in Washington on background”, Rice’s response, with all that stuff about the balance “we” were trying to strike and so forth, is hard to understand except as a confirmation that it was the administration that leaked the name. At least for me; if you have a different interpretation, I’d be glad to hear it, since I would very much like for mine to be wrong.
This is weird because Rice is using ‘on background’ in a way that makes it sound like something other than “you can’t quote me”.
The quote I have from my original post is: “Last Sunday, U.S. officials told reporters that someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan’s name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning.”
Which sounds like the NYT obtained the name from a non-U.S.-official source. Did Rice or someone CONFIRM the name “on background” or did they originate the name? It isn’t clear to me from the Blitzer interview what time frame she is talking about. Was the name given along with the terror reports on Sunday, or is this some other time?
In any case it seems fairly clear that we didn’t know he was being used as a counter-agent. Or is that even clear? If so, that means that Pakistan isn’t sharing nearly as much information as I had thought–which is frightening because I already knew they were being weird.
I reiterate my annoyance with the reporting. The NYT clearly knows who gave them the name. They could easily clear things up by at least narrowing it down to “US source” or “Pakistani source”.
“Did Rice or someone CONFIRM the name “on background” or did they originate the name?”
An important point, although I don’t think that merely confirming should automatically absolve the leaker, or completely absolve him or her. Not that I expect that the practice of getting anonymous confirmation of gathered material to ever stop… or, for that matter, that the NYT will reveal the person who gave them the name.
This is weird because Rice is using ‘on background’ in a way that makes it sound like something other than “you can’t quote me”.
I don’t think she is…
The quote I have from my original post is: “Last Sunday, U.S. officials told reporters that someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan’s name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning.”
Which sounds like the NYT obtained the name from a non-U.S.-official source.
That’s one way to read it. The way I read it, it sounds like the NYT obtained the name from a source of information that wasn’t the “U.S. officials”. Which is entirely consistent with it being obtained on background: First you have the briefing by “U.S. officials”. Then you have a reporter talking to someone else on background, and reporting that information without divulging where it came from (which is one of the techniques in that article I linked to). Then the reporter goes back to the officials and says “Hey, I hear it’s such-and-so. Is that true?”
Did Rice or someone CONFIRM the name “on background” or did they originate the name? It isn’t clear to me from the Blitzer interview what time frame she is talking about. Was the name given along with the terror reports on Sunday, or is this some other time?
See above. The whole point of the awkward phrasing around “obtained Khan’s name independently” looks to me like the reporter trying to hide who Khan’s name came from.
But if this is true, then someone in this administration is willing to compromise the security of this country for political gain.
Well, we’ve known that since July 14 last year.
Sorry, I know I said in a comment to Sebastian’s post that the two cases weren’t linked – and we have no reason to believe they are. But they both show a similar attitude to important matters of national security.
Khan and Plame were almost certainly outed by two different people, for entirely different motives: Plame’s was political revenge on her husband, Khan’s was (I suspect, and I admit I’m guessing) that his identity was simply not seen as important. He was far away in another country and (forgive me) I do see this as sourced in racism, just as I suspect the reason why whoever outed Plame didn’t think it was a serious thing to do was thinking like a sexist – “he’s just a towelhead” – “she’s just a woman”. They were neither of them perceived as being people who were important in themselves, let alone important in terms of national security.
But in both incidents, it appears that people in the Bush administration regarded national security as less important than the “image” of the Bush administration.
And this does seem to me to strongly indicate that this attitude is endemic inside the Bush administration. Two separate incidents, a year apart, both of them with apparently the same kind of motivation, and (probably) committed by different people. How do people who claim that the Bush administration is better trusted over Kerry/Edwards on matters of national security justify it after this?
Kevin Drum said it best: can’t wait for the grown-ups to be back in the White House.
Rice saying it was “on background” does not make the error less serious on the part of the person that told the press. It just means the material can be used and not sourced. The person should have never given out the name with or without an attribution — even “off the record” would have been too much of a risk. The guy is compromised now and it is not easy to infiltrate those guys. What a waste. I would like to assume that the Bush Admin did not know at the time he was undercover, but given what they did to one of their very own undercover people (in a very important and crucial area for humint) for petty political reasons already, it’s not easy.
off topic, but very important:
No one seems to dispute the facts. Oregon’s Senator Ron Wyden has asked Rumsfeld for an investigation; a Pentagon spokesman said Rumsfeld hasn’t gotten the letter yet.
I don’t know exactly how the U.S. should handle human rights abuses by the Allawi government, but it shouldn’t be like this.
Juan Cole has more: the fact that Khan’s name was leaked apparently led the British to arrest al Qaeda members sooner than they would have otherwise, and before they had finished developing evidence against them. And CNN is on the story, writing (among other things) that “unnamed U.S. government officials” leaked the name.
It appears that some US official gave Kahn’s name, possibly not knowing that Pakistan was using his to run a sting–suggesting that the Pakistan-US communication is (still) awful. Or (or and if Pakistan told us about the sting) it suggests that information is not filtering well through the US system. It strikes me as odd that someone like Rice would apparently not know that Kahn was involved in a sting, but it is pretty obvious from her answer that she did not.
I would still like the NYT, as the first paper to reveal his name, to confirm where they got the name–but considering the awful reporting on this case thus far I’m not counting on it.
One last thing, I’m a little dismayed by attempts to have it both ways on the terror alert. There was massive outrage on the left (including some on this site) about the allegedly political nature of the terror alert and now we have, without skipping a beat and in less than seven days, skipped to how unusually and amazingly important this source is. I agree. Khan was an important source. If the US knew he was being used in a sting as opposed to just being captured, revealing his name was atrocious. But you might want to realize that this suggests the vicious attacks last Sunday through Thursday were completely wrong.
If the Bush administration responded to those attacks by compromising a sting I won’t try to excuse them, that would be horrible.
You might also want to think about what loyal opposition means in the context of the Sunday through Thursday-hate because it wasn’t pretty, and the outrage was pretty clearly wrong.
“Sunday through Thursday-hate” – I must have missed this. All I recall is one Dean quote saying the alert was half real half political.
Yup, I think you must have missed it because it was all over the place–so much so that two of my Democratic friends who don’t follow politics closely mentioned it.
The “hatefest” consisted of saying that:
–the administration used the war on terror as a political weapon
–which made it difficult to know how to take these alerts, given the timing
–though this one was more specific than previous ones which was helpful.
How does compromising an intelligence source to protect itself from criticism and bad press coverage disprove any of this?
(It showed that the threat was real, but no one ever said that there wasn’t a real threat.)
I went from thinking Dean was going too far and we should give them the benefit of the doubt to thinking–well, if they’ll compromise an intelligence source for political gain, an orange alert would be small potatoes.
“Sunday through Thursday-hate”:
Yes, that tends to describe the conservative reaction to Dean’s moderate comments voicing suspicion about the Bush administration’s motives on this one (except the hate predates Sunday and continues afterwards). Dean’s comments were well taken in view of Ridge mixing a terror alert with a Bush plug. Democrats have every right to call the administration for its habit of placing politics in front of proper policy for fighting the war on terror.
Sinc Bush and crew now hae a rather long record of dishonest use of intelligence for political gain, they simply reap what they sow.
As for outrage, I am outraged by their incompetent and political agenda in the war on terror, which is exemplified by the Khan episode. This is further proof that you can’t trust the Bush administration to competently fight the war on terror.
The Khan episode really brings this out. The Bush administration blows an extremely important operative because it is more worried about political spin than getting it right.
And it is supposedly the Des fault that this happened?
Perhaps we should get rid of free-speech because it obviously makes this administration do harm to our own intelligence gathering apparatus.
Gosh, if people would just stop questioning or critisizing the president, he could do such a good job.
If US officials knew that Khan was being used in a sting operation, we absolutely shouldn’t have released his name. But until we know that, this just isn’t correct: “The Khan episode really brings this out. The Bush administration blows an extremely important operative because it is more worried about political spin than getting it right.”
“Democrats have every right to call the administration for its habit of placing politics in front of proper policy for fighting the war on terror.”
Considering the Senator Jay Rockefeller memo on how to spin intelligence briefings to best political advantage, I would like to introduce you to this kettle which is black. There is of course a distinction, Bush tried to highlight the existance of a threat while Rockefeller wanted to dismiss it. Which direction is more appropriate is a matter of some debate.
Sebastian:
This doesn’t answer my question, esp. if “it” refers to the Dean quote (which certainly got play but by itself hardly constitutes a half-week hate) or to the subsequent commentary on the quote. I didn’t see anything from the Kerry camp, for example. Perhaps there was a skeptical NYTimes editorial? This isn’t a “cite, please” dig – I’m curious – if nothing else, it’s an important point in an attack by Corrente on two of my favorite bloggers, Philosoraptor and Kevin Drum.
So it’s incompetence or the critic’s fault or tit for a 2003 memo’s tat. Come on. You offer way too much teflon.
“This is after all, the same administration that suppressed a report from its own Department of Agriculture that found a link between potentially dangerous airborne bacteria and animal waste at large farms. The same one that edited a warning about global warming out of a report from the EPA. The same one that rewrote a Health Department study because it documented racial bias among healthcare providers. The same one that axed a CDC&P web page that said education about condom use does not lead to increased sexual activity. The same one that killed a National Cancer Institute statement that abortion does not increase a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer.
…
So the secretary will have to forgive me if I’m a tad skeptical of his claim that they don’t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security.
Why in the world would they not do it here? They do it everywhere else.”
Leonard Pitts jr.
I know the above isn’t specifically about outing of an intelligence asset and I guess you probably don’t respect Pitts but the quote does speak to credibility.
(Doesn’t even mention Iraq and WMDs!)
CNN.com noted Monday morning:
” The effort by U.S. officials to justify raising the terror alert level last week may have shut down an important source of information that has already led to a series of al Qaeda arrests, Pakistani intelligence sources have said.
Until U.S. officials leaked the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan to reporters, Pakistan had been using him in a sting operation to track down al Qaeda operatives around the world, the sources said.
In background briefings with journalists last week, unnamed U.S. government officials said it was the capture of Khan that provided the information that led Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to announce a higher terror alert level . . .
The unnamed U.S. officials leaked Khan’s name along with confirmation that most of the surveillance data was three or four years old, arguing that its age was irrelevant because al Qaeda planned attacks so far in advance . . .
Then on Friday, after Khan’s name was revealed, government sources told CNN that counterterrorism officials had seen a drop in intercepted communications among suspected terrorists.”
Carsick, I honestly can’t follow your statement. But insofar as the idea that Administration departments don’t do politics–I certainly wouldn’t claim that they don’t. But I wasn’t arguing anything close to that claim. If anything my comments suggest the opposite.
Riklefan, I know this is argument by anecdote, but I don’t watch TV often so I can’t tell you why my friends thought it was such an outrage. But they did, and they don’t follow politics closely, so I have to assume this was well publicized somewhere. These just aren’t the kind of people who would have dug it out of the back of “The Nation”. And furthermore the fact that Kevin Drum and Philosorapter (both leftish) detected the same thing suggests that there was more going on than you saw.
But what I saw was attacks on Sunday regarding Ridge overly ‘politicizing’ the alert (see for example obsidianwings). This was followed by three days of hand-wringing about the fact that some of the material the report was based on was THREE YEARS OLD. See for example this , and articles like this one by reuters entitled “Material Behind New U.S. Alert Is Years Old”, of this ‘news’ story which has as its first sentence: “The Bush administration was forced into the embarrassing admission yesterday that “new” intelligence about al-Qa’ida’s plans to attack US financial institutions – information that led to an official alert and a slew of fresh security measures – was up to four years old and predated the 11 September attacks.” or this post on the popular LeftCoaster blog, or this NYT piece which states: “The Times reports today that much of the information that led to the heightened alert is actually three or four years old and that authorities had found no concrete evidence that a terror plot was actually under way. This news does nothing to bolster the confidence Americans need that the administration is not using intelligence for political gain.”
Now, in my opinion none of this would justify revealing Khan’s name if the US knew he was being used as a spy by Pakistan. But there was a kerfuffle going on about the warnings, and the left really shouldn’t be allowed to have it both ways about the importance and legtimacy of the information.
Sebastian
I find it amazing that you can take a circumstance where the administration – AT BEST – is showing their incompetence in an extremely vital area (our security) and make it into an occassion to pick on the president’s critics.
I’m rather amazed, too, carsick.
On August 7, Sebastian writes: “This story shows a very dangerous mishandling of intelligence information, but the reporting is so awful that I can’t tell at whom I should direct my anger.”
But by August 9, Sebastian appears to have decided at whom he should direct his anger: at the critics of the Bush administration who were outraged at the politicization of a terror alert.
Surely you can see, Sebastian, that the outing of Khan proves the critics of the Bush administration were right – they were politicizing a terror alert: outing Khan was an extension of it. They didn’t see the issue as primarily warning the citizens of the US that they were at risk: they saw the issue as primarily making the Bush administration look good.
No I had that anger before the Khan part of the incident. And as for the Khan part, I’m waiting to find out if Pakistan had informed us about the ‘sting’ he was involved with.
“They didn’t see the issue as primarily warning the citizens of the US that they were at risk: they saw the issue as primarily making the Bush administration look good.”
Or alternatively they see the issue as primarily warning the citizens of the US and were dismayed by how quickly that was turned into a callous game to make the administration look bad.
Double agents and stings no longer have place in modern day investigations. We have to connect the dots, share information between agencies and report information with the world immediately or timing is suspect. No secrecy, no ulterior motives, no excuses. Immediate access, complete disclosure, no spin. The bar has been raised, and if that puts us at a disadvantage, so be it. That’s the world we’ve chosen. No going back.
Or alternatively they see the issue as primarily warning the citizens of the US and were dismayed by how quickly that was turned into a callous game to make the administration look bad.
Sebastian, are you seriously trying to claim that Tom Ridge and Michael Bloomberg, who used the terror alert on Sunday to deliver a political message praising President Bush, were part of a “callous game” to “make the administration look bad”?
Or do you mean that you interpreted their commentary some other, apolitical way? Or that you feel it was entirely appropriate to include partisan political comment in what should have been a straightforward, detailed warning? Or what?
If terror alerts are to be taken seriously, they should be delivered straight. If they’re used to deliver a party political message, then it’s the fault of the people who included the message that the terror alert is taken less seriously than it should be.
When the Bush administration then responded to the (relatively mild) criticism they got for doing that by outing Khan to prove that their terror alert was serious, they proved that they are utterly irresponsible. As far as they’re concerned, security for US citizens takes a back seat to getting Bush re-elected – whatever the long-term cost.
And yes, somehow I was expecting a degree more outrage from you – even now you know that you have to direct your outrage at the Bush administration. But I guess Dave was right, after all.
“Or that you feel it was entirely appropriate to include partisan political comment in what should have been a straightforward, detailed warning? Or what?”
I think that the straightforward, detailed warning had a small political tag at the end which was not a big deal and certainly not worth freaking out over the way you in fact did.
So I disagree with the word “entirely”. If they had said something along the lines of “And Kerry will be unable to do the same” it would have crossed the line into entirely inappropriate.
“then it’s the fault of the people who included the message that the terror alert is taken less seriously than it should be.”
You apparently are willing to allow any level of political message to allow for complete discount of the non-political message. No blame for those who hyped the political message whay out of proportion? No bothering with proportion whatsoever? I don’t buy it. Ridge’s political comment was short, at the end of factual briefing and became the entire focus of 4-5 days of hand-wringing. The Democratic meme on the warnings would still be that they were useless political posturing if that didn’t conflict with the idea that Khan was an important source. And that, very specifically is what I have decried–the desire to have it both ways without even acknowledging the change. I’m with you on the fact that Khan shouldn’t have been revealed–especially if we knew he was involved in a sting. Extra-especially if we knew that. You may have noticed I brought up the whole topic. That doesn’t mean I can’t notice how the importance of the information in the eyes of Democratic partisans has gone from nearly zero to nearly infinite based on a change from “good for the administration” to “bad for the administration”.
Late to this game, but this gives some additional background
There were a lot of us on the left who did not join in this criticism. Speaking for myself, I didn’t have any confidence that they would not politicize something like this, but I didn’t have any evidence that they had, either. In particular, the fact that the information was old didn’t seem all that important to me: I thought the relevant question was not when they had first cased these buildings, but how recently the information had been accessed.
That being said, however, it is (in my view) much, much worse for the administration to burn a double agent inside al Qaeda than for random citizens to question their motives, especially when they have been given so much evidence that this administration is willing to subordinate all sorts of things to politics.
All things being equal it is much, much worse for the NYT to burn a double agent.
All things being equal, it’s pretty dumb for anyone to be coming to conclusions based on inadequate information without waiting for confirmed information to be available.
Is there some compulsion some people have for looking dumb by making partisan charges based solely on unconfirmed or partial information?
For me it may be a geas.
All things being equal it is much, much worse for the NYT to burn a double agent.
I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m called upon to cast a ballot for Publisher or Editor-In-Chief of the New York Times.
Sebastian: You apparently are willing to allow any level of political message to allow for complete discount of the non-political message.
In a terrorist alert? Sebastian, please, think. The message on Sunday was supposed to be a dead serious warning to citizens of the US that there was a real threat that there could be an al-Qaeda strike in areas where they live/work. There should have been no political message included in with that terrorist alert whatsoever – can we agree on that, at least?
That Ridge and Bloomberg appear, at the kindest interpretation, to have used the terrorist alert as an excuse to deliver a political message, is completely irresponsible. When a fire alarm goes off in my workplace, I don’t expect a mission statement from the CEO.
But they did, and this was criticized. Fair enough. So it should be.
That the Bush administration reacted to this criticism by outing a double-agent to prove that the alert was real just shows that as an administration they are irresponsible: a grown-up reaction would have been to apologize for including the political message but reiterate that the threat was real. They’d still have got flack for it, sure: but if they put the security of the US over their political agenda, that’s what they should have done.
What you appear to be doing is blaming people for criticizing the administration. That’s just bizarre, Sebastian, even if you disagree with the criticism: the government of the US is supposed to be open to criticism by all citizens. At all times.
“What you appear to be doing is blaming people for criticizing the administration. That’s just bizarre, Sebastian, even if you disagree with the criticism: the government of the US is supposed to be open to criticism by all citizens. At all times.”
I second!
Jesurgislac: If terror alerts are to be taken seriously, they should be delivered straight. If they’re used to deliver a party political message, then it’s the fault of the people who included the message that the terror alert is taken less seriously than it should be.
Sebastian Holsclaw: You apparently are willing to allow any level of political message to allow for complete discount of the non-political message.
“Taken less seriously” is radically different from “complete discount”. This is a very important distinction.
Sebastian Holsclaw: One last thing, I’m a little dismayed by attempts to have it both ways on the terror alert. There was massive outrage on the left (including some on this site) about the allegedly political nature of the terror alert and now we have, without skipping a beat and in less than seven days, skipped to how unusually and amazingly important this source is. I agree. Khan was an important source. If the US knew he was being used in a sting as opposed to just being captured, revealing his name was atrocious. But you might want to realize that this suggests the vicious attacks last Sunday through Thursday were completely wrong.
Your logic is inscrutable. Khan was an important source. The terrorism alert was inappropriately politicized. How are those two statements incongruous? Have Jesurgislac and others on the left not typically begun from the premise that terrorism alerts need to be taken seriously?
Sebastian,
I’m not trying to pile on here, but I too can’t figure out what it is that has you so riled. Could you maybe break it down a little more clearly?