CASE STUDY: Secret or not?
Organizational Winner 2007:The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times
The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times received considerable criticism after both newspapers published a story on June 23, 2006, that revealed a U.S. government program to access an international banking database. The Bush administration had asked the papers not to run the story because disclosure would weaken the country’s war on terror.
The story, which also ran in The Wall Street Journal, detailed a CIA program that had been initiated a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks. It allows the government to gain access—through a subpoena process—to a vast international financial records database, known as Swift, in order to trace banking transactions of people suspected of ties to al-Qaeda. It is used to transmit instructions about bank transfers, not the actual transfers.
The administration said the decision to run the story would compromise an effort that has been instrumental in disrupting the financing of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The government’s primary concerns were that disclosure would cause international banking executives to withdraw support and cause terrorists to change their behavior. It also argued that the program had the support of Congress and the international banking community.
The newspapers countered in editorials and op-ed pieces published after the story had appeared that they had carefully weighed the national security issue with the public’s right to know before deciding to publish. They concluded that the story did not pose a threat to lives or thwart terrorism inquiries, and that the public interest outweighed the potential cost to the counterterrorism efforts.
They said that while the general public may not have known about the program, it was no longer a secret. Their investigations indicated that hundreds, if not thousands, of people were aware of it. They added that the program’s oversight was minimal even though it had been operating for more that five years after initially being touted as an urgent but temporary measure.
Other media offered various opinions about the story, comparing it to stories that generally revealed questionable government programs and actions that were initiated for national security purposes, including Abu Ghraib, the CIA secret prisons in Europe and the NSA wiretapping story. Some questioned the value of the story since it discovered no illegalities, there was some oversight and the invasion of privacy seemed to be less of a problem than in the NSA story.
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
- When at war, should civil liberties be less important than national security?
- Under what circumstances should the government be allowed to censor the press?
- Do you trust the government to look out for your best interests? Or the media?
- Do you think the media allows the government to use it in too many instances?
