Why redact anything? That is the question that springs to mind in reading the self-justification offered by the New York Times for lending its megaphone to Wikileaks.
The paper is now publishing breathless reports, accompanied by verbatim excerpts, drawn from about a quarter-million sensitive U.S. government documents. This dump is much like the tranche of intelligence files leaked in October to the Times and other reliable media — “reliable” in the sense that Wikileaks’ anti-American founder, Julian Assange, was confident these outlets would publish information whose revelation embarrasses the United States and endangers those who cooperate with our government.
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Assange’s leaks are intended to be thematic. The first focused on American combat operations in Iraq. The new burst targets American diplomacy and is thus more wide-ranging. But each instance elucidates that our government, regardless of who is steering it, must operate in a dangerous world where, particularly in Islamic countries, there are bastions of virulent anti-Americanism. Our friends — be they regimes, spies, well-wishers, or allies of convenience — cooperate with U.S. officials at great risk to themselves.
For that reason, the Obama administration implored the Times not to publish the materials — since, despite the fact that the entire cache of documents is available online, having the paper of record provide a reading guide to them greatly extends the damage done by their disclosure. The Gray Lady has largely rebuffed the president, except for an accommodation here and there. The paper explains its rationale this way: “As daunting as it is to publish such material over official objections, it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.”
Yet, it turns out the Times is plenty presumptuous. Its mawkish invocation of the public “right to know” comes only after the editors pat themselves on the back for what they’d have you see as their admirable restraint in withholding “information that would endanger confidential informants or compromise national security.” Of course, the administration’s precise point in pleading for nondisclosure is to protect U.S. informants and security — and it knows far better than the Times could what revelations are likely to trigger threats.
The point, though, is that despite its self-serving blather about your supposed right to know everything that government does in your name, the Times isn’t opposed to suppressing information. It is opposed to government officials having the power to decide what gets suppressed. The Times wants that power for itself.
Should a newspaper, or any media outlet, have that power? That depends on whether you think there really is a public right to know. The Times’s claim of such a right is disingenuous, but the concept is a serious one. Our government, after all, is supposed to be our servant, not our master. The government was created by the American people, not the other way around. The federal government was, moreover, quite intentionally designed with severe limitations, not least the First Amendment’s command that Congress “make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press[.]”
So how could it be that government may tell people what they are at liberty to speak about, or tell a newspaper what it may publish? The answer to this question is political, not legal. Because we are conditioned to think of politics as dirty and every problem as a legal issue, this is more difficult for us than it ought to be. But it is simply a fact that the legal niceties here are very unsatisfying.
The New York Times is not being disingeuous, it is being hypocritical. On The Factor last night, Bernard Goldberg pointed out how, when the Climategate e-mails became public, the Times refused to publish them. Yet, in this case, it has no qualms at all. The Times needs to change its moniker from, 'All the news fit to print,' to 'All the news that fits our views, that what we print.'
It is not a right to know, it is a need to know, that would satisfy the question of whether or not a document which is properly classified for national defense issues, is released. I believe therefore, that if any information that meets the prerequisites for classification is obtained or released without that need to know, there is a violation of the U.S. Code that specifies the controls on such documents.
Yes, there is a right to know, but is there a right to know right now? I doubt it. Historians usually have to wait thirty years to gain access to this sort of material and for good reason; after thirty years the passions of the moment have passed, as have many of the people who might be embarrassed by what they've written in a cable, and secrets that could get people killed now are no longer viewed as worth arguing about. This is why the thirty year rule exists. It exists to allow diplomats to say what they think, not what will look good in the NYTimes, it allows the CIA to recruit foreign agents without them having to worry about their safety, and, in the end, it gives the public the information they need. The release of these documents now tells anyone who might want to help the US to think twice about the matter, tells our foes that we are feckless, and tells our allies that we are inept fools who can't be trusted with important matters, all of which is a good way to get Americans killed in the long run.
I don't think the issues surrounding the unauthorized release of classified information are nearly so murky. Information is classified under authority granted by Congress. Unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a flat violation of democratically enacted law and an abrogation of the rights of all citizens to protect themselves. There is no gray area that needs quibbling about.
