The NY Times Public Editor

“I hated Bush so much I couldn’t do my job…”

Byron "Barney" Calame seems like a decent, honorable guy. He served in the U.S. Navy in the early 60s, and then worked for the Wall Street Journal (my favorite newspaper) for nearly 40 years, retiring as their deputy managing editor in 2004. Currently Mr. Calame is the Public Editor (formerly known as the ombudsman) at the New York Times.

Humble readers may recall the public furor over the Times revealing a secret program called the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program last June. (Flashback: Michelle Malkin's column at Townhall) The program essentially gave the Treasury Department and the CIA access to SWIFT communications. As a tool in the Global War on Terrorism, it allowed the U.S. to track terrorist financing. Well, not anymore. Clearly the disclosure of TFTP persuaded the terrorists to change their methods. Our terrorist enemies are not THAT stupid.

Here's where Mr. Calame showed his new boss that he feels right at home with the supreme arrogance of the Grey Lady. After much public criticism (especially from the blog community), he writes a Public Editor column on July 2nd, defending the actions of the Times in revealing the secret program. More outrage ensues!

Fast forward to yesterday (it's already the 23rd as I write this in Afghanistan). Mr. Calame writes a new column where he admits it was a mistake to reveal the TFTP. Here it is:

My July 2 column strongly supported The Times’s decision to publish its June 23 article on a once-secret banking-data surveillance program. After pondering for several months, I have decided I was off base. There were reasons to publish the controversial article, but they were slightly outweighed by two factors to which I gave too little emphasis. While it’s a close call now, as it was then, I don’t think the article should have been published.
Those two factors are really what bring me to this corrective commentary: the apparent legality of the program in the United States, and the absence of any evidence that anyone’s private data had actually been misused. I had mentioned both as being part of “the most substantial argument against running the story,” but that reference was relegated to the bottom of my column.

Uh-huh. Do you want to know why? Here it is:

…What kept me from seeing these matters more clearly earlier in what admittedly was a close call? I fear I allowed the vicious criticism of The Times by the Bush administration to trigger my instinctive affinity for the underdog and enduring faith in a free press — two traits that I warned readers about in my first column.

It's President Bush's fault! My favorite is the part about "...my instinctive affinity for the underdog..." I believe that statement could be used to explain much of the bad behavior we see in the press. When it comes to the United States vs. (insert any noun here), who is the underdog? Are there any journalists who have an "instinctive affinity" for the United States? Probably not many.

It certainly appears that the Times jeopardized national security just to add luster to its Bush-bashing reputation. Calame should take his job more seriously, and not act as Chief Toady for the Times. All of us have to live in this world, and undermining U.S. counterterrorism efforts for political gain is reprehensible.