The Gray Lady Tries Another Line

The New York Times, having given valuable information to our enemies with its wiretapping scoops, has now shifted its defense of the much-criticized stories. Old Line: Wiretapping U.S. citizens chatting up terrorists is illegal. New Line: It's unproductive. The Times reports:

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

Virtually all? Why not all? I bet it's because at least one of the searches turned up a non-innocent person--and that's good enough for me. If lots of futile searches had turned up one hijacker, only one, before Sept. 11, the skyline of New York might be different today. The Weekly Standard shows why the story reveals that New York Times doesn't understand intelligence gathering:

After exposing yet another top-secret program, the New York Times is now doing its best to portray the program as not having much intelligence value....But if accurate, why is it surprising that much of the NSA data led to "dead ends" exactly? We still don't know everyone the 9/11 terrorists associated with and immediately following the attacks officials were worried that al Qaeda had inserted other "sleeper cells" inside the U.S. to carryout more attacks. The follow-on attacks never came but does that mean al Qaeda has no presence inside the U.S.? After our intelligence agencies failed to detect the 9/11 plot, we shouldn't presume that such cells might exist and use a variety of methods to detect them before they become operational? Do Democrats disagree? Do Democratic leaders agree with those saying that the president has no constitutional authority to authorize "wiretapping" outside of FISA?

On the bright side, extreme liberals can't stay away from this stuff--they basically hate the Bush administration more than they hate terrorists--but it doesn't play with the public. Do I see Republicans holding Congress at the mid-terms? Unless Democrats in Congress denounce the New York Times for revealing a vital part of our anti-terrorist program, I believe I do.