Blaming the messenger
Editorial, NYTimes on
the web, November 10, 2005
Republican leaders of the U.S.
Congress are piously demanding a full investigation into the sources of a
Washington Post article about the CIA's chain of secret prison camps.
These are the same leaders who have spent 18 months crushing any serious look at
the actual abuse of prisoners at those camps, and at camps run by the U.S.
military. So why have they jumped on last week's Post article before you
could say "double standard"? The answer is painfully obvious:
Republican leaders, doing the White House's bidding, are trying to shut down
discussion of the policies that led to the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the CIA's
"black site" prisons.
This new drama is a case study for why it is so vital for news organizations to
be able to give the public information that the government wants to suppress for
political reasons. That sort of journalism depends on maintaining the
confidentiality of sources. For that reason, we generally oppose leak
investigations.
This page did support the independent investigation into the Valerie Wilson case
-- rather than having the administration continue its own inquiry -- not to stop
leaks, but to determine whether administration officials had abused their power
and possibly endangered Valerie Wilson, an undercover CIA officer, to undermine
her husband, Joseph Wilson. He had drawn the White House's ire by
disputing one of the central and ultimately false justifications for war with
Iraq: that there was an active effort by Saddam Hussein to get parts for a
nuclear bomb.
The current talk of leaks is utterly different. The Post article provided
powerful details that expand what we know about the camps and the abhorrent
practices there. The administration and its allies in Congress want to
suppress this information because they don't want a full accounting of how
American soldiers and intelligence agents have been turned into torturers, and
because the administration wants to go on abusing prisoners.
Some Republicans are saying The Post's article damaged America's image, harmed
national security and jeopardized American soldiers and agents. We've
heard that absurd attempt to blame the messenger before.
The truth is that the damage is caused by the administration's underlying acts
and policies, not by the news media's disclosures, which serve only to hold
officials accountable for their actions. It is the secret camps themselves
and the abuse and torture of prisoners that smear America's image and jeopardize
Americans serving their country, not newspaper articles.
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