Treason
Updated on July 1, 2006 at 5:58 pm and 6:27 pm (I) and on July 2, 2006 at 8:02 am (II).
The whole The New York Times wants to destroy America episode has really become appalling. For obvious reasons, the crowd which presided over perhaps the greatest national security failure in American history is not particularly fond of American history. They’d prefer instead to focus America’s attention elsewhere, and the press is as good a target as any. After all, it’s the press that insists on constantly almost reporting how badly the administration bungled pre-9/11 intelligence and disingenuously orchestrated its response.
But it’s not just the administration. We actually have journalists, pundits and Congressmen climbing over each other to find a camera and level the charge of treason against a newspaper for preforming its most essential function — informing the citizenry of its government’s excesses:
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you Melanie, do you really mean treason? You mean put them in jail for life? I don’t know what treason carries as a sanction, but I assume the penalties are incredible severe, 20 years perhaps.
MORGAN: Yes.
MATTHEWS: You are saying to put Bill Keller and his associates in prison for 20 years?
MORGAN: Absolutely. I am absolutely advocating that. What has happened is shameful If he’s the one that is ultimately responsible for making this decision.
MATTHEWS: Well, its his call. What about the NSA? Would you do the same in the NSA case?
MORGAN: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely I would.
MATTHEWS: You’d put them in jail for 20 years for that.
MORGAN: Yes, I would. When you break the law, you break the law. And the press, the media in this country have to learn one thing. They have to operate under the same laws and the same rules and regulations that all of the rest of the American people do.
Matthews apparently forgot that the crime of treason is punishable by death. No matter. Morgan has no problem with that:
San Francisco talk show host Melanie Morgan believes that Times editor Bill Keller should be jailed for treason for approving the publication.
The maximum penalty for treason is death.
“If he were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber,” Morgan, whose show airs on KSFO-AM, told The Chronicle on Wednesday. “It is about revealing classified secrets in the time of war. And the media has got to take responsibility for revealing classified information that is putting American lives at risk.”
My God.
Such narcissistic naivete to think that ours is the first generation to confront terror. Perhaps Morgan’s mother never told her of time spent huddling under her desk during elementary school nuclear drills, and her grandfather never sat her down to discuss his experiences during World War II. Past generations have confronted much greater perils than ours and managed to pass down an essentially intact Bill of Rights.
It was no accident that when the Founding Fathers set out to codify our most basic liberties, they stuck that bit about freedom of the press right there at the top. It’s too bad that MSNBC can’t book Thomas Jefferson to counter Morgan’s outrageous statements. Jefferson would have little patience for her outbursts:
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom….
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Those were some strong words. Those spouting the treason rhetoric du jour would have you believe that Jefferson was the original American traitor. Instead, he and his compatriots recognized the profound danger in restricting the ability of the press to scrutinize government. That, they would argue, is almost treasonous.
Unclaimed Territory has a very good post up about what the term treason meant back when words had meaning.
UPDATE I: No longer content to hurl allegations of treason, wingnuttia now libelously contends that the the Times is involved in a plot to assist would-be assassins.
UPDATE II: Rich is right (subscription required):
OLD GLORY lost today,” Bill Frist declaimed last week when his second attempt to rewrite the Constitution in a single month went the way of his happy prognosis for Terri Schiavo. Of course it isn’t Old Glory that lost when the flag-burning amendment flamed out. The flag always survives the politicians who wrap themselves in it. What really provoked Mr. Frist’s crocodile tears was the foiling of yet another ruse to distract Americans from the wreckage in Iraq. He and his party, eager to change the subject in an election year, just can’t let go of their scapegoat strategy. It’s illegal Hispanic immigrants, gay couples seeking marital rights, cut-and-run Democrats and rampaging flag burners who have betrayed America’s values, not those who bungled a war.
No sooner were the flag burners hustled offstage than a new traitor was unveiled for the Fourth: the press. Public enemy No. 1 is The New York Times, which was accused of a “disgraceful” compromise of national security (by President Bush) and treason (by Representative Peter King of New York and the Coulter amen chorus). The Times’s offense was to publish a front-page article about a comprehensive American effort to track terrorists with the aid of a Belgian consortium, Swift, which serves as a clearinghouse for some 7,800 financial institutions in 200 countries.
It was a solid piece of journalism. But if you want to learn the truly dirty secrets of how our government prosecutes this war, the story of how it vilified The Times is more damning than anything in the article that caused the uproar.
* * *
The real news conveyed by The Times and its competitors was not the huge program to track terrorist finances, but that per usual from the administration that gave us Gitmo, the program was conducted with little oversight from the other two branches of government.
* * *
The assault on a free press during our own wartime should be recognized for what it is: another desperate ploy by officials trying to hide their own lethal mistakes in the shadows. It’s the antithesis of everything we celebrate with the blazing lights of Independence Day.
It’s a shame that much of the country won’t read the piece because the Times elected to stick his commentary behind its TimesSelect wall. Subscribers may read it here.
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