Just a quick note. Our friend Bill Bennett doesn’t want the New York Times press creds taken away. He’s more concerned with investigating. But in an effort to Stop the Leaks, the Bush administration would send an immediate message.
And we’re with him on wanting an investigation, too. This is what we said yesterday:
The administration should withdraw the newspaper’s White House press credentials because this privilege has been so egregiously abused, and an aggressive investigation should be undertaken to identify and prosecute, at a minimum, the government officials who have leaked national-defense information.
Look, if the publication of that story on Friday did in fact “mak[e] it harder to win this war on terror” and the exposure “does great harm to the United States of America” then the White House should make clear that a publication that is going to recklessly publish information that makes it harder to fight this war — against the pleadings of the White House — is not going to have a privileged chair at the White House. That’s not shutting down free speech – they’re free to whine about it as they willl. Revoking press creds would be saying, we’re at war and we mean business.