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powerclown, is it your position that if a news media outlet intiates a report with an inaccurate or false claim that a government operation is secret, when it actually isn't, it is proper and justifiable conduct on the part of the POTUS and the VEEP, to validate the inaccurate or deceitful reporting by attacking the offending media outlet repeatedly in public statements, with criticism that officially validates the flawed reporting as the reporting of "secret methods and sources", when these elected officials have knowledge that the erroneous reporting did not involve publication of "secret methods and sources", but instead involved reporting of details that were long available in the public domain? Wouldn't our president and vice-president, in those circumstances, either avoid commenting, or if they did, simply inform the public that the claim that a "secret government program" was being reported, was intentionally false or misleading, on the part of the reporting news media outlet?

Wouldn't that be an ethical, forthright, and a fair set of alternatives, when it comes to communicating the reaction of high elected leaders to the American people of such deception by the major media, as well as informing the public about the media outlet's lapse in the integrity of it's reporting?

Instead, doesn't the response to the NY Times' reporting of a SWIFT monitoring, by Bush and Cheney, align them with the Times' reporting deception, since they too, confirm the Times' assertion, to us, that indeed, a secret government monitoring program is being disclosed to us, when that is not what is happening, and Bush and Cheney know it, or should know it?
Confirmation of the latter scenario comes from the circumstances that led to this discussion. You and I did not find out from the Times or from the president or vice-president that the Times did not report about a heretofore
secret government monitoring program, we found out independently, after both the NY Times made the mistake of misreporting the status of the program as "secret" and the President and Vice-President deliberately and repeatedly made statements that reinforced the Times assertions that their article disclosed a secret program. The result is that I view this as another instance, in a long series of instances, where these two leaders seem to choose to mislead the rest of us, even in this case, where their decision seems to be contrary to their own best interests, which seems to me lie in the direction of informing the American public that the Times was reporting no secret on June 22, and then by speculating publicly that.... if the Times was reporting unreliably in that instance, how could the authenticity of their future reporting be relied on?

Just as in addressing the question as to whether Bush and Cheney knew about the existence of the September 21, 2001 SWIFT monitoring reporting before they made attack statements against the NY Times, or whether they were incompetent because they did not know that the SWIFT monitoring was info that existed in the public domain, and approved the continuation of the program for 58 months because they didn't know, I don't have a hunch, even after observing these two "leaders" as they've served 66 months in their offices, whether they were too incompetent to respond to the NY Times reporting in their own best interest, as I described above, or whether they attacked the Times as a smokescreen to distract attention from some other activity that they are still concealing. Since they both have devoted their terms in office to a priority of keeping me and every other member of the public as uninformed about their plans and priorities as they possibly could, I am inclined to believe that they are motivated to attack the Times as a tactic of distraction, rather than because they are too incompetent to simply expose the Times flawed reporting, damage the newspaper's reputation, and impress us all with their prompt and forthright communication about a report that they competently defused and dismissed.

But they didn't react that way, did they? So how can you regard Bush and Cheney's part in this in such a passive and incurious way, while you direct all of your disapproval and disdain at the NY Times.....like....Bush and
Cheney have done!

I'll agree that the NY Times June 22 article intro that called the SWIFT program a <b>"Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database"....</b> is misleading to the point of being a lie, if the NY Times editor knew before June 22 about the December, 2002 UN report paragraph #31, and about the U.S. SWIFT monitoring details still retrievable today, on more than 50 websites, where they apparently resided since they were reported on September 21, 2001.

We can assume that Time's "Blog of the Year 2004" founder, John Hinderaker didn't know about the September, 21, 2001 reporting, either, and....as with the NY Times, it should be his business to know that....because now he seems very foolish when his attempt to minimize the influence of that UN report on terrorist financial transaction methods, is examined next to the fact that the September, 21, 2001 reporting was out in the public realm and widely available.....for 58 months.....

I would never accept at face value, without a thorough independent fact check, anything that John Hinderaker states on his CNN appearances, or on his blog. I find it ironic, that for you current purpose, you hold the "authority" or "reliability" of NY Times reporting, up, to any stature or respect, at all.

I doubt that you, or Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney, turn to the NY Times as a prime source for your news intake...we know from Cheney's own statements and a recent report about his accomodation requirements, that Fox news is his prime source for news. You do, however, seem to want to make a convincing pitch that you somehow expected more from the NY Times. You take offense at their June 22 reporting because you say, an important, mid-term election, that incidentally does not include candidacies of either Bush or Cheney, would take place <b>20 weeks after</b> the questionable NY Times reporting about a "secret" data mining program.

IMO, Bush and Cheney's roles in the attack on the NY Times reporting, cannot be considered in a vacuum, and John Hinderaker is much closer in stature and influence (64 million hits on Power Line Blog's website counter....) to the NY Times, than either the Times or Hinderaker is to the stature and influence of Bush or Cheney. There is at least equal motivation for Bush and Cheney to attack the NY Times, in view of their reporting on warrantless and FISA-less NSA data collection, that Bush specifically asked the Times' editor, not to publish, as their is to motivate the Times to describe SWIFT as "secret" because of a chance to negatively influence republican election prospects, 20 weeks in the future.

What you avoid discussing...and I specifically asked you to do so....is whether you agree that Bush and Cheney are the elected officials who run one of the three branches of the U.S. federal government, and indisputably the most powerful one, at that, and thus, they are accountable and responsible in a much more signifigant way....to all of us, than the NY Times or John Hinderaker are. You give the impression that you absolve them completely, because the NY Times reporting has somehow, vicitmized them, and provided them the unquestioned right to attack the NY Times for "disclosing secret methods and sources", as Cheney put it, and when Larry King asked Bush about what the NY Times did, Bush declared that "disclosure is disclosure."

powerclown, you and I seem to be in agreement now, that the disclosure of the SWIFT data mining by the US government. conducted for the last 58 months, was not disclosure of a secret. We disagree that what should follow, are explanations from Bush and Cheney as to why they attacked the NY Times for "disclosure"....they should be able to tell us much, since they are unrestrained from discussing the disclosure of info that was long in the public domain. We should be given an opportunity to ask them if they knew of the existance of the September 21, 2001 reporting about SWIFT monitoring, or about the December, 2002 UN report that described SWIFT, before they launched their criticism of the NY Times. They should also answer the question, if they did know, why SWIFT monitoring continued for 58 months, when the existence and description of the monitoring of terrorists program was known in the public domain. Why did they bother to continue it when anybody who should have had an interest in knowing to avoid SWIFT scrutiny, could easily know, and what other justification was there to continue SWIFT monitoring for so long a time period, and was the info that was data mined, used for any other purposes by US agencies?

If they didn't know that SWIFT monitoring was long described in the public domain, how do they explain their lack of knowing as anything other than incompetence, and inattention to a condition that must have signifigantly degraded the expense and justification of continuing SWIFT data mining. They should also answer questions as to whether info obtained via SWIFT monitoring was obtained without warrants or with warrants too unspecific to yield evidence that was admissible in criminal courts.

I come away from this exchange with you, powerclown, appreciating that you made the time and effort to engage in a real discussion of these issues, but it concerns me that you seem to demand so much accountability, explanation, and integrity of the NY Times editors, a newspaper that you had little regard before June 22, and even less for now.....and so little of any of these three traits/responses from either Mr. Bush or from Mr. Cheney, regarding their decisions, actions, and comments, in this matter, a matter of the management of national security policy and operations, during a U.S. war on terror.