Looking over blogs and new sites today, I'm beginning to sense a "Big Lie" campaign begin used by the White House and their Republican supporters on the blogs, at Fox News, and on Republican talk radio. They keep talking about the release of classified information by the media.
Well, the financial tracking program was not a classified program.
But, they hope, if they keep repeating the lie, perhaps people will believe it (like the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection).
Roger Cressey, a former official from the National Security Council, made non-classified nature of the program clear last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Go here to watch the video (click on "Watch the video" under "War on the Media"). While he didn't think disclosing the program was helpful, he believed that terrorists were likely to have known about the monitoring of financial information for some time and also to have responded by changing their methods long ago. It was not a classified program, he said.
So, when Andrew Sullivan quotes a San Francisco talk show host as saying the following...
"If he were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber. It is about revealing classified secrets in the time of war. And the media has got to take responsibility for revealing classified information that is putting American lives at risk," - San Francisco talk show host Melanie Morgan, on what she'd be happy to see happen to the NYT executive editor, Bill Keller.
... we're really seeing an effort to intimidate through dishonesty (by Morgan, not Sullivan). Yes, the US has the death penalty on the table for treason, which has a precise legal definition. Publishing non-classified information wouldn't seem to fit.
The supporters of the President cannot "big lie" the NY Times into a treason charge.
Their message is quite clear: How dare anyone challenge the Imperial President?
GP
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