Post by Moses on Dec 27, 2005 17:31:14 GMT -5
Bush Pressed Papers to Kill Scoops on Spying, Prisons
Submitted by editor on December 27, 2005 - 12:15pm.
By E & P Staff
Source: Editor and Publisher
President George W. Bush and senior administration officials have met with top editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post in recent months to try to dissuade the papers from publishing what the administration considers to be articles harmful to its prosecution of the war on terror.
The administration's efforts ultimately failed, although sensitive details likely were removed from the articles that eventually ran. The latest revelations show just how serious the Bush White House views the media's reporting on its anti-terror tactics, and how it would prefer to conduct much of the war on terror in secret.
In his Media Notes column today, Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz wrote that Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., met with White House officials on multiple occasions to discuss the paper's Nov. 2 article by Dana Priest disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe where terrorism suspects are interrogated.
"When senior administration officials raised national security questions about details in Dana's story during her reporting, at their request we met with them on more than one occasion," Downie told Kurtz. "The meetings were off the record for the purpose of discussing national security issues in her story."
Kurtz could not get Downie to confirm the meeting with Bush, but Kurtz' sources told him that at least one of the meetings involved John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and CIA Director Porter Goss.
Priest's article set off widespread criticism of the CIA's interrogation methods. Shortly after publication, the House Intelligence Committee launched an investigation into who leaked the information, while the CIA asked the Justice Department to review possible sources.
Earlier, on Dec. 19, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter reported that Bush had summoned Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and Executive Editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office on Dec. 6 to try to dissuade them from publishing their domestic spying story. The Times had already sat on the story for nearly a year, a delay the paper has yet to fully explain.
"The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny," the newspaper reported in its Dec. 15 spying scoop.
But Alter concluded that because the Bush administration could not point to any specific details in the Times story that would compromise national security, the real reason "Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story" was "because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker."
Submitted by editor on December 27, 2005 - 12:15pm.
By E & P Staff
Source: Editor and Publisher
President George W. Bush and senior administration officials have met with top editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post in recent months to try to dissuade the papers from publishing what the administration considers to be articles harmful to its prosecution of the war on terror.
The administration's efforts ultimately failed, although sensitive details likely were removed from the articles that eventually ran. The latest revelations show just how serious the Bush White House views the media's reporting on its anti-terror tactics, and how it would prefer to conduct much of the war on terror in secret.
In his Media Notes column today, Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz wrote that Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., met with White House officials on multiple occasions to discuss the paper's Nov. 2 article by Dana Priest disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe where terrorism suspects are interrogated.
"When senior administration officials raised national security questions about details in Dana's story during her reporting, at their request we met with them on more than one occasion," Downie told Kurtz. "The meetings were off the record for the purpose of discussing national security issues in her story."
Kurtz could not get Downie to confirm the meeting with Bush, but Kurtz' sources told him that at least one of the meetings involved John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and CIA Director Porter Goss.
Priest's article set off widespread criticism of the CIA's interrogation methods. Shortly after publication, the House Intelligence Committee launched an investigation into who leaked the information, while the CIA asked the Justice Department to review possible sources.
Earlier, on Dec. 19, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter reported that Bush had summoned Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and Executive Editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office on Dec. 6 to try to dissuade them from publishing their domestic spying story. The Times had already sat on the story for nearly a year, a delay the paper has yet to fully explain.
"The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny," the newspaper reported in its Dec. 15 spying scoop.
But Alter concluded that because the Bush administration could not point to any specific details in the Times story that would compromise national security, the real reason "Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story" was "because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker."