Eskow: The Spy Story: Five Questions for the New York Times

[Catchawave]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-spy-story-five-ques_b_12382.html

Today the New York Times revealed that the Bush Administration used the NSA to spy on Americans and others in the U.S. If the facts as presented in the Times are true, this seems to have been a large-scale illegal operation. We'll be learning more about this operation in the days and weeks to come -- hopefully.


These lines from the Times piece are particularly interesting, however:

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. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting.

Let's see, it's now December of 2005. So here are a few questions the Times should be prepared to answer:

Cont'd at link.....

[speedoo]

1. All the questions need to be answered by the NYT.

The two most important are:

(snip)

1) Does that "one year delay" mean that the article would have been published in December 2004 -- or earlier?
2) Specifically, were you aware of the existence of a large-scale domestic spying operation prior to the 2004 elections -- and did you suppress the story before then?

(snip)

We all know the answers, don't we.

[Catchawave]

2. Especially #5.....

5) Will the New York Times conduct a public investigation of its decision to delay publication, so it can demonstrate to its readers than the decision was genuinely based on national security -- and not just another case of press manipulation for political purposes?