Bush-tzpah: Said NYT Would Have "Blood on Hands" if it Published NSA Story

[BurtWorm]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2006/09/10/new-york-mag-bu_e_28985.html

New York Mag: Bush Warned NYT's Keller Of Having "Blood On Your Hands"





Huffington Post | Rachel Sklar | Posted Sunday September 10, 2006 at 10:30 AM

New York Magazine runs a big cover story next week on the beleaguered New York Times, bane of the Bush Administration for its stories on NSA spying and secretly-reviewed bank records. Joe Hagan gets more details on the fateful December 5th* meeting at the White House where Bush had summoned the Times brass — consisting of executive editor Bill Keller, publisher Arthur Sulzberger and Washington Bureau Chief Philip Taubman — to prevail upon them not to publish the warrantless-wiretapping exposé. According to Howard Kurtz in WaPo, those meetings were supposed to be off the record; but in the NY Mag story, Keller reveals to Hagan many previously unpublished details of the meeting, including the fact that Bush warned Keller that, if they published the story, the NYT would bear responsibility if there was another attack:

"The basic message," recalls Keller, "was, 'You'll have blood on your hands."

Hagan also reports that joining Bush, Keller, Sulzberger and Taubman were national security adviser Stephen Hadley, Bush lawyer Harriet Miers, and the then-current NSA Director Michael Hayden "with a thick briefing book in his lap." The story had already been held for over a year. Keller, Sulzberger and Taubman listened to Bush, and eleven days later, they published the story.

Hagan explores the aftermath of that decision, the right-wing backlash against the NYT (as well as from the left), plummeting public support and eroding press freedom in the piece, which the mag teases as wondering "Is this the right time for quiet and deliberate leadership at the Paper of Record?" To this end (based on the cover, which contains a mock-up of the NYT front page with the actual stories excerpted for verisimilitude), New York also profiles Keller, calling him "fiercely intelligent, taciturn, occassionally prickly," and citing New Yorker editor David Remnick who says: "To watch him work, there's a certain kind of cool intelligence to his bearing."

[AX10]

1. Again we have more evidence that Bush is a FASCIST!

[Kagemusha]

2. Small quibble: "The basic message was" doesn't mean he said it

It means he was conveying it with other words, according to my reading of what normal people mean when they say that, anyway.

I realize how it can easily be read otherwise so wanted to make the small quibble rather than regret not doing so later.

[BurtWorm]

3. Fair enough.

[msongs]

4. Bush's war crimes include deaths of perhaps 100,000+ people

so he knows blood on his hands when he sees it. Like Pontius pilate he will try to wash his hands forever.


Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[bluestateguy]

5. The Times did sit on the wiretapping story

They held it through the election. I'd say the Times was being pretty damn generous to Team Baby Bush.

[yourout]

7. The Times already has blood on there hands because it held it through the.

election. If they had broke the story when they should have we might now have President Kerry and there would be several thousand citizens of New Orleans that might still be alive.

[Danascot]

6. And that stuff on his hands

is what? Spaghetti sauce?