Another Stab From The New York 'Aids The Enemy' Times

The New York Times 'Peace Baby'

'Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda' is the title of today's New York 'Aids The Enemy' Times'. Could have well been written by Al-Jazeera, starting with the title. Unbelievable. I have no idea what hatred driven anti-American propaganda has taken them to this new all time low:

    A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees.

    The Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations company, was told early in 2005 by the Pentagon to identify religious leaders who could help produce messages that would persuade Sunnis in violence-ridden Anbar Province to participate in national elections and reject the insurgency, according to a former employee.

    Since then, the company has retained three or four Sunni religious scholars to offer advice and write reports for military commanders on the content of propaganda campaigns, the former employee said. But documents and Lincoln executives say the company's ties to religious leaders and dozens of other prominent Iraqis is aimed also at enabling it to exercise influence in Iraqi communities on behalf of clients, including the military.

    "We do reach out to clerics," Paige Craig, a Lincoln executive vice president, said in an interview. "We meet with local government officials and with local businessmen. We need to have relationships that are broad enough and deep enough that we can touch all the various aspects of society." He declined to discuss specific projects the company has with the military or commercial clients.

    "We have on staff people who are experts in religious and cultural matters," Mr. Craig said. "We meet with a wide variety of people to get their input. Most of the people we meet with overseas don't want or need compensation, they want a dialogue."

    Internal company financial records show that Lincoln spent about $144,000 on the program from May to September. It is unclear how much of this money, if any, went to the religious scholars, whose identities could not be learned. The amount is a tiny portion of the contracts, worth tens of millions, that Lincoln has received from the military for "information operations," but the effort is especially sensitive.

    Sunni religious scholars are considered highly influential within the country's minority Sunni population. Sunnis form the core of the insurgency.

    Each of the religious scholars underwent vetting before being brought into the program to ensure that they were not involved in the insurgency, said a former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Lincoln's Pentagon contract prohibits workers from discussing their activities. The identities of the Sunni scholars have been kept secret to prevent insurgent reprisals, and they were never taken to Camp Victory, the American base outside Baghdad where Lincoln employees work with military personnel....

    Mr. Rubin was quoted last month in The New York Times about Lincoln's work for the Pentagon placing articles in Iraqi publications: "I'm not surprised this goes on," he said, without disclosing his work for Lincoln. "Especially in an atmosphere where terrorists and insurgents - replete with oil boom cash - do the same. We need an even playing field, but cannot fight with both hands tied behind our backs."

Robert Spencer: "The appeasement strategy favored by so many on the Left, and I have nothing but contempt for the New York Times' continual attempt to kneecap our defense against the jihad by exposing covert operations."

As Ace reminds us: "Woody Allen said in Sleeper, "The New York Times is an organization that helps terrorists kill innocent civilians. Sort of as a public service."

The latest NYT defender Senator Chuck Schumer, from Michelle Malkin who has the video:

"First, watch Schumer spin when Chris Wallace asks him about the DOJ criminal investigation into the NYT/NSA leaks:
"There are differences between felons and whistleblowers, and we ought to wait until the investigation occurs to decide what happened," Schumer sputtered as he complained about Republican "distractions." The quote, of course, found its way into a prominent place in the NYTimes and elsewhere."

Those distractions will no doubt include the very investigation into the leaks by the NYT presumably. Yeah right.

Here is the transcript from Fox News.

Jeff Goldstein has an interesting take on "domestic spying," historical context, and media manipulation:

"You’ll note that the complaint here is not that the “Clinton administration did it too”—which is how many on the left have chosen to characterize arguments made by defenders of the NSA program, a straw man argument they then knock down by arguing quite self-righteously that wrong is wrong, and that they’d be against any executive order that shredded the Constitution and trampled on the rights of ordinary Americans, no matter which party was doing it (but for the record?  What Clinton did was, like, totally different anyhow. Seriously. Have you read Think Progress?).

Instead, what is obvious is that the media chose to frame very similar stories in ways that were entirely different—in the first instance, effectively protecting an administration by softening the headline; in the second, couching the headline in rhetoric that sensationalizes the story and barely even approaches what can fairly be called an accurate portrayal of what the President ordered or what the NSA is doing, if we can believe any of the official statements addressing the substance of the program (as I’ve discussed at length, most recently here)."

The Anchoress is wondering if we should sue the Press and  Strata-Sphere agrees, and proposes a direct hit approach.

Ed Morrissey @ Captain's Quarters has written a great not to be missed article about the clueless media.

My exciting new discovery is the cool The Zero Point blog - "Politics from the baseline to the edge of reason". Check out the extensive links on the media spins: "Of course the media frenzy and the Democrat huffing and puffing could not blow the Bush White House down. As everyone has seen, the public support for the NSA program is around 64%. And as I see it any further articles that come out showing that Bush was doing his job and protecting this country will raise those numbers even further."

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin delivers the late night slam dunk, and has the video:

"MSNBC's Hardball show actually delivered some interesting news for once tonight, despite Chris Matthews' anti-Bush spin and uninformed sputtering over the NSA counterterrorism program. NBC's DOJ correspondent Pete Williams corrects Matthews' assertion (borrowed from the NYTimes' report yesterday) that top Justice Department officials opposed the NSA program."

Jeff Goldstein here and Glenn Greenwald here fight it out over the.....well I guess finally it is over two things, the constitution and the media who pretend to be unbiased. He lays into Jeff's arguments and attempts to dismantle them without much success. Jeff is simply saying: "What I am bothered by is that same aggressive, opinionated, adversarial media pretending to dispassion and objectivity" And he is of course right. He goes on to list his arguments further (although all of them are extensively explained in his post linked above), in the comments section:

    "Unsurprisingly, your characterizations of my arguments continue to purposely misstate every point.

    I have no problem with and adversarial press; my problem is with an adversarial press that pretends to fairness and "objectivity" but who manipulates and massages stories from within that ostensible paradigm. That is perfectly clear from my post -- and the example I give is the way the WaPo headlined a similar intelligence program under Clinton. "Domestic spying" wasn't the way that story was being sold.

    Re: FISA

    I have said that the President and the DoJ have cited an exemption from FISA, and so they have not run afoul of the statute. Beyond that, we have Gen Hayden saying that when the surveillance is wholy domestic, FISA warrants were used.

    You cite the NYT's version of the story; I cite the NSA's and the President's. Lots of long, numbered, legalese-filled subsections don't change that fact.

    2) Several people have explained how national security was damaged by the leak of this program. That you throw up your hands continually and say, "can someone please show me how!" after you've been shown how is disingenuous. Just admit that you don't buy the reasons given. At least that's more honest than pretending they haven't been offered.

    After that, we can go about drafting up the Greenwald exemption to the prohibition to leaking highly classified info -- something like, "the leaker truly really really truly believes that the a leak of said classified information isn't a big deal, and that to call me on the leak is tiresome, manipulative, and facially preposterous. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW! EXCEPT ME!"

    The rest of your argument is just more of the same: attempt to shame me into seeing more "nuance" (and avoid being a Bushbot), show how some other conservatives jumping ship, etc.

    Bandwagon arguments don't faze me. If I truly believed the President acted illegally -- or if somebody could show me some evidence -- I'd change me tune.

    But the fact is, I don't. Nobody was calling me a Bush dead ender during the Schiavo affair, so I take it my sudden elevation as the wingnut's wingnut is provisional -- and like everything else with those who argue like you do, subject to change without notice, provided it fits your needs.

Discussing across the Blogosphere on both sides of the spectrum are: American Future  The Washington Monthly, Rhymes with Right Martin's Musings Power Line, The Heretik  Dr Sanity American Princess The Bo'sun Locker Don Singleton Right Voices The Political Dogs Scipio the Metalcon Rantingprofs, Informed Comment, The Hedgehog Macsmind, ScrappleFace, The Truth Laid Bear  Joe Gandelman @ The Moderate Voice  Betsy's Page

Comments

[Alexandra]

An interesting comment from a commenter over @ Jeff Goldstein's:

"My expertise is not law, it is computer systems… an expertise that goes back to the days when “telecommunications” meant handing a computer tape to a courier to transport over to the satellite uplink. In the Air Force I supervised a then-classified “breakthrough” system designed by Honeywell that was one of the parent system designs of the Arpanet, later known as the Internet. I’m currently an operations manager and team leader in the mainframe room of a major Florida concern. Because of my “historic memory”, I know how computers work, but more importantly, I know WHY computers work. I do not quote sources. When it comes to computers, I AM a source. Other people quote me. Among the things I do is teach computer technology in English instead of Conversational Unix, so perhaps it is incumbent upon me to explain this so it can be understood, since I understand how a keyword database works.

Those are my bona fides. Take them or leave them, given that I could be a bratty high school kid putting you on, for all anyone knows. That having been said, I advise you all to take this message VERY seriously because I completely understand what the New York Times exposed.

Let’s ABC this.

The NSA has a list of phone numbers outside the US that known Al Qaeda operatives have used. These numbers were lifted off of the speed-dials and “most recent calls” of jihadis who were captured.

A number from that listing makes a call into the US. Maybe Abdul Al Jihadi is calling Auntie Jasmin in Dearborn to find out how her ulcers are doing. If that’s so, nothing happens. There are no “code words” from the terrorist keyword database that will trip the monitoring. The system has recorded the entire call, but without the presence of the keywords, it will throw the recording away as “useless”.

However, if Abdul Al Jihadi is calling an Al Qaeda CELL in Dearborn and mentions certain words in any of several languages, the monitoring is tripped. And it happens immediately. Excellent information is gathered; this WAS our most important intelligence tool. Past tense.

The “civil rights” shouters would want it so that the NSA has to interrupt the call and say, “Wait, Mr. Al Jihadi… could you please hold up your conversation for a few moments while we get a warrant to listen in to your US receiver’s side of the call?”

And that makes no f***ing sense!!!!

But the worst part of all, the jihadis are now aware, thanks to the New York Times, that their calls are being monitored via a keyword database.

So now they start using codes that we are going to have to decrypt and completely rebuild the keyword database… something that we do NOT have time for. Maybe “Auntie Jasmin” becomes a code word for the Sears Tower, and “Dearborn” for Chicago. And maybe “ulcers” becomes a code word for bombing.

And there is NO reason anyone should be able to decode such a simple swap code until the Sears Tower blows up. In this most idiot of all codes, any word can mean anything. The only way we could learn the meanings of the codes would be if we got extremely lucky and captured a new code book.

Or maybe they’ll just throw away their current phones and get new ones, since they’ll assume that their phone number is known to the NSA.

We’ve lost a MAJOR ingelligence tool, and the public is no longer as safe as it was a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you EVER so much, New York Times.

And it’s about damn time DOJ is looking into this treason!

I’m of the opinion that if this leads to ANY terrorist attacks in the US, the New York Times should be sued by the general public for gross journalistic negligence, and any other charge we can hang on them. The only acceptable outcome should be the complete shutdown of this rag.

The exposure of the keyword database has put all of us, personally, in danger. The keyword database is a large part of the reason there have been no successful terrorist attacks in the US since 9/11. We were catching them even as they were planning their actions. Every “tripped” call to a number in the US exposed a new terrorist cell.

We have lost that now. Congratulations, NYT!

The stance of the left trying to say that warrants are needed to intercept those calls is that we are not at war, so wartime powers do not apply.

We ARE at war, and wartime powers DO apply. The government thinks we are at war. Every terrorist group that has ever declared a jihad against the US (which is most of them in the Middle East!) thinks we are at war. Congress thinks we are at war, given that they voted to give President Bush wartime powers to fight terrorists “by any means necessary”.

Warrants are NOT NEEDED. Further, the very idea of thinking that we need to get warrants for the situation of monitoring a call in which someone has actually SAID something along the lines of, “Go to Chicago and blow up the Sears Tower,” in any one of several languages, is utterly ridiculous. The incoming calls that tripped the keyword database were ALL saying something along those lines.

That is how the keyword database works.

There is not ONE SINGLE innocent call among those they wanted to get warrants for. Even if an al Qaeda operative calls the US and is JOKING about, say, blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge, I find that sort of humor singularly unfunny, and deserving of investigation, with or without warrants.

The NSA doesn’t have the frikkin’ TIME to monitor all calls coming into the US, not even from just those “special” numbers. ALL of the monitored calls have keywords in them that tripped the monitor. NONE OF THE CALLS ARE INNOCENT!

Amazingly, more than 70% of the US population… including 51% of Democrats… understand that the NSA SHOULDN’T need warrants for this sort of thing. ALL of these people view the claim that warrants are needed as obstruction of national security. They understand that the NSA is not trying to build a legal case but rather are trying to save YOUR neck.

This entire “outrage” about the warrants needs to be deep-sixed… wartime powers are in effect… and the leaker discovered and sent to prison. Not wrist-slapped, sent to PRISON. The blood of the victims of the next successful terrorist attack (WHEN, not if!) will be on his hands.

And the New York Times, I repeat, should be shut down for journalistic negligence and gross incompetence.

This is a national security violation every bit as dangerous as exposing ENIGMA would have been during WWII.

[Darrell]

They were paid to tell the truth. Something that could never be done here. No amount of money could get them to do that. Military intelligence knows that paying someone to tell a lie is wasted money--peoples' senses always win that battle. I think that's why reporters are overtaking used car salespeople as the most distrusted individuals in America.

[sigmund, carl and alfred]

Let's see...the NYT doesn't believe we ought to use persuasion to encourage freedom and democracy.

Fine by me- we can bomb them into civilized behavior.

It's OK for the NYT to promote a clear agenda- but not for anyone else.

[ZP]

TrackBack from The Zero Point: The New York Times - Winning Terrorist Hearts and Minds

[John M. Martin]

TrackBack from Martin's Musings: New York Times Attempts To Out Sunni Muslim Scholars