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December 28, 2005
Bush pressures newspaper editors...lobbyists buy off winger journalists
One of the most corrupt administrations in US history keeps up the march.
President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics.
Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest's Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.
But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.
"When senior administration officials raised national security questions about details in Dana's story during her reporting, at their request we met with them on more than one occasion," Downie says. "The meetings were off the record for the purpose of discussing national security issues in her story." At least one of the meetings involved John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and CIA Director Porter Goss, the sources said.
National security issues...right. The White House knows it's gone way over the line. They're trying to cover their asses by silencing the press. This was a story that had already been held for a year. The White House had plenty of time to prepare for its release. They don't want reports of their illegal and immoral activities reported to the public.
And the buy off of "journalists" is another link in the chain of White House malfeasance. Like Armstrong Williams..just another way to get propaganda in the public realm while masquerading it as news:
The admission by two columnists that they accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff may be the tip of a large and rather dirty iceberg.Copley News Service last week dropped Doug Bandow -- who also resigned as a Cato Institute scholar -- after he acknowledged taking as much as $2,000 a pop from Abramoff for up to two dozen columns favorable to the lobbyist's clients. "I am fully responsible and I won't play victim," Bandow said in a statement after Business Week broke the story. "Obviously, I regret stupidly calling to question my record of activism and writing that extends over 20 years. . . . For that I deeply apologize."
Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation has acknowledged taking payments years ago from a half-dozen lobbyists, including Abramoff. Two of his papers, the Washington Times and Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, have now dropped him. But Ferrara is unapologetic, saying: "There is nothing unethical about taking money from someone and writing an article."
Ferrara is taking the Bush approach of admitting his transgression while systematically claiming that it isn't wrong. Much the way that Krauthammer claimed in his column that Bush circumvented the law without actually committing a crime.
I'm dumbfounded that anyone could still support this administration. In my view it would at this point, demonstrate a lack of character and common decency to do so.
Posted by Carla at December 28, 2005 10:05 AM