Thirty-five years ago, the NYTimes published excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, allowing Americans to more fully understand what their government was doing in Vietnam.
When Do We Publish a Secret? – New York Times:
Thirty-five years ago yesterday, in the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers, Justice Hugo Black wrote: “The government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people.”
This week we have heard repeated calls for the NYTimes to be censored, for its management to be executed.
Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., wants to pull the Congressional press credentials for the New York Times. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., asked the administration to assess what damage the stories caused to the tracking program. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., accused the paper of “treason,” and Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., said, “The New York Times is putting its own arrogant, elitist, left-wing agenda before the interests of the American people.” King asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to begin a criminal investigation of the paper.
Hysteria ensues:
San Francisco talk show host Melanie Morgan believes that Times editor Bill Keller should be jailed for treason for approving the publication.
The maximum penalty for treason is death.
“If he were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber,” Morgan, whose show airs on KSFO-AM, told The Chronicle on Wednesday. “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.”
Eeew: And Now, Your Adam Yoshida Moment of Zen
And these people claim to be true patriots. They have more in common with the monsters who conducted Soviet-era show trials and “disappearances.”