9 ms·

Only Nixon Harmed a Free Press More

143 points by teawithcarl 13y ago

Nrsolis 13y ago
I'll just leave this right here: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/American-Newspaper-Publishers-Association_19610427.aspx http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeche...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
forgingahead 13y ago
Why is the title like that? The article makes it obvious the brunt of his criticism is on Obama.
- Shivetya 13y ago
  because the NY Times cannot call him out completely having bent over backwards to support him. Simply put, its no different than Obama claiming he was no Dick Cheney. What is going on now is far far worse than Nixon. I am referring to NSA and IRS activities brought to light over the last few months. I am not sure which is worse, nah strike that, what the IRS is accused of is worse.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    I'm not sure what kind of inside-the-beltway myopia it would take to think that controversy over who gets 501(c)(4) status is worse than dragnet surveillance.
    - forgottenpass 13y ago
      Protection of citizens matters much more strongly to politicians when a politically-connected citizen is targeted. When people are targeted en mass it is less of an existential threat to the two-party dog and pony show. Would Watergate have been much of a scandal at all if it weren't for the fact the offices Nixon broke into belonged to the Democratic Party?
    - hga 13y ago
      Let's just quote half-reformed Obamacon Peggy Nonan (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578515673945731506.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732441260457851...): "What does it mean when half the country—literally half the country—understands that the revenue-gathering arm of its federal government is politically corrupt, sees them as targets, and will shoot at them if they try to raise their heads? That is the kind of thing that can kill a country, letting half its citizens believe that they no longer have full political rights." Note, it doesn't matter a wit that you don't believe this. Because we do, and it's at least a debatable point, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. A potentially country killing one. I suggest you work to fix it, either by convincing us we're wrong, or by fixing it---at this point, one necessary ingredient is clear, completely revising our tax system to eliminate the IRS's discretion.
      - _delirium 13y ago
        It's usually the case that half the country thinks the federal government's revenue-allocation is biased against them. If indeed 501(c)(4) status is allocated in a biased way, that's functionally equivalent to government subsidies being allocated in a biased way (because a targeted tax exemption is equivalent to a targeted subsidy). This is quite different from police intimidation, surveillance and similar things: it is solely an argument over whether subsidies are being allocated in a viewpoint-neutral manner. Controversies over whether federal subsidies are being given out in a biased way are important, I think, but not a novel or apocalyptic matter. Sometimes the right alleges bias (as with funding going to e.g. NPR, and climate-science funding), other times the left alleges bias (as with the bill explicitly excluding Planned Parenthood from funding, or the tax exemption given to political organizations organized as church branches). It's worth investigating, but nobody is being shot for raising their heads. Compare, say, COINTELPRO, which was not a dispute over whether federal tax exemptions or funds were being allocated fairly, but direct state intimidation of political organizations. That is what I think we need to be most wary of. Now, there is some contingent of raving loons who already have it in their heads that IRS=UN=jackboots=Waco=helicopters, and certain opportunists (e.g. Glenn Beck) and politicians (some Tea Party groups) like to egg them on. I am not as sure what to do about them, but I don't think they are responding to any particular set of events based on any attempt at rational analysis of the actual events. And percentage-wise, they're closer to 10-15%. If you ask people to agree with particularly strong interpretations of the IRS scandal, which involve paranoid fantasies of violence by jackbooted government thugs, you don't get anywhere near 50% agreeing. As for your proposed solution: I do think it's prudent to reform the tax-exemption laws to remove subjective categories. Some subjectivity is difficult to avoid, e.g. in the definition of a 501(c)(3) charity, but clearly 501(c)(4) is one of the more problematic categories. I would support just eliminating that status entirely, rather than attempting to have the IRS determine who legitimately belongs in it vs. who doesn't; an organization aimed at "the promotion of social welfare" but not necessarily a "charity" is just too subjective a catch-all.
sergiosgc 13y ago
The article is biased and, from what I gather from the comments, factually incorrect. However, the comparison with Nixon must be done, because: a) Nixon and Watergate happened, so it is plausible that Administrations feel the pull towards excessive surveillance and illegal actions. I.e. It happened before so it will happen again. b) If Watergate happened today, would the Administration get caught? I'd wager a sound "No, it wouldn't". With current powers and control structure, the Watergate objective could be secretly achieved, while controlled by secret courts all the while having any whistle-blower incarcerated under perfectly legal reasons. Lastly, this is not a Dems vs Republicans issue. Both parties have failed. Bush set the ball rolling while Obama gladly let it roll...
gasull 13y ago
tl;dr "President Obama wants to make it a crime for a reporter to talk to a leaker" Worth reading it in full.
- mtgx 13y ago
  I don't get it. How can someone make such a drastic 180 degree turn on his principles and in such a short time? If there ever was a civil rights activist in him, how can he so easily go ahead with trying to harm US' historical press freedom so drastically by trying to make it illegal for a reporter to speak to a leaker, and prosecuting twice as many whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all presidents in the past 100 years? I really don't get it and I don't see how a person could change so radically in only a few short years. Unless the whole initial campaign was just a major joke played on the American public, and it was all a set-up, saying that he'll turn things around from the Bush era, while he was actually plotting to continue his surveillance policies all along. There's also the blackmail possibility, but would the US president really be that dependent on a blackmail to change his policies 180 degrees and also continue the charade for so long? I think the second possibility, that he was lying the whole time, seems more realistic than this.
  - gasull 13y ago
    About the blackmail possibility, the NSA wiretapped Obama in 2004: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa-obama_n_3473538.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa-obama... Another possibility is that Obama is under a lot of stress (like any president) and those who advise him and were in power before him (NSA, the Fed, etc.) end up persuading him. This is perfectly possible if you are under stress and suffer constant interruptions that don't allow you to think long term. This is another way of saying that he's in fact a puppet, even if he doesn't realize.
    - pstuart 13y ago
      This is the charitable reason. He has all these possible risks brought before him and has to make a decision quickly -- why not err on the side of "safety", especially if the ultimate responsibility for that safety is in his hands. Plus a little blackmail if it's on tap.
coldcode 13y ago
But he paid the price. The current president will never face the same punishment.
- _delirium 13y ago
  Nixon wasn't punished for what this article is complaining about, though. He wasn't impeached over his handling of the Pentagon Papers case, but because he paid some people to break into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters. I would guess that if Obama got caught running an operation to break into the RNC headquarters, Congress would be pretty quick to impeach him, too. And conversely, had Nixon not organized the Watergate break-in, he wouldn't have been impeached over his (and Kissinger's) hardline view on prosecuting leakers and those in their vicinity.
tptacek 13y ago
Worth a read: http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-field-guide http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-field-guide Generally: the First Amendment protects the right to publish news, but not to gather it; when it comes to newsgathering, the law generally doesn't favor reporters over any other kind of person. There are (according to RCFP) some jurisdiction-specific protections for newsgathering, but it's hard to read RCFP's guide and leave with the sense that the Constitution permits reporters to commit felonies in the interest of getting stories. So, James Rosen. James Rosen (allegedly; for brevity, add "allegedly" mentally to everything else in this graf) received secret information from Stephen Kim, a counterproliferation analyst at LLNL. Kim passed information to Rosen about the proximity of a North Korean nuclear test. Kim's response was that the information he shared was harmless. The DoJ's response was that it wasn't, and that aside from the direct details about the DPRK nuclear test, the specificity of the information shared threatened sources & methods, and that regardless Kim was criminally liable for sharing top secret classified information. (FAS, as always, does a great job of keeping up with the paperwork of the case: http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/kim/ http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/kim/) It's not at all surprising to me that in a case where an analyst leaks counterproliferation data to a reporter, the DoJ would have an interest in ensuring that the reporter wasn't an accessory to the crime of leaking the information. Simply hearing a leaked story isn't criminal, but coaching an insider to do so is. DoJ has a valid interest in figuring out which happened with Rosen. James Rosen has not been charged with any crime. Stephen Kim, the leaker, is dollars-to-donuts going to prison; his defense seems already to have conceded the leak occurred, and posits that his prosecution is political. As I've said on other threads, I'm ambivalent about counterterrorism. When I think about it in the context of signals intelligence, I'm fine with it. When I think about it in the context of the TSA and electronic strip searches, I'm not. But this isn't a terrorism case. I am not at all ambivalent about counterproliferation. Just 40 years ago the US was locked in a standoff with an adversary with enough nuclear weapons to end life on the planet. Today, that adversary is a shambles, split into countries of varying competence and openness, any of which might have enough nuclear materiel to end a major world city. Meanwhile, the world's most evil country has a functioning nuclear arms program and is thought to be arming dictatorships around the world for money. I'm glad DoJ isn't playing games in cases involving proliferation.
- austenallred 13y ago
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
This is easily much worse than Nixon. Nixon was a paranoid president with a cadre of political flunkies willing to do whatever it took for him to stay in power. Once the bozos were thrown out, that game was up. This is a systemic problem, not just one president. Obama's just the first guy really seeing how far he can push things. You can bet that the next president, no matter which party, will keep pushing. This is much worse than Nixon. Nixon was a scandal. His own party deserted him. With Obama you still have millions standing by to make apologies for whatever has been done -- and whatever comes next. A very bad situation. What we're going to see now is what the world would have looked like if Nixon had gotten away with it.
- tptacek 13y ago
  This is the kind of comment one could have written without reading the article. Did you? What do you think about the Rosen case?
  - DanielBMarkham 13y ago
    You can't make a reporter doing his job a crime. ADD: Further details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5924505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5924505
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Rosen hasn't been charged with a crime.
      - jbronn 13y ago
        He was served a search warrant alleging he was part of a criminal conspiracy. This is a prelude to criminal charges. Stop your semantic hysterics.
        tptacek 13y ago
        Ahh, 2013 Hacker News, where the difference between "being charged with a federal crime" and "not being charged with a federal crime" is "semantic hysterics".

143 points by teawithcarl 13y ago

I'll just leave this right here: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/American-Newspaper-Publishers-Association_19610427.aspx http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeche...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

forgingahead 13y ago

Why is the title like that? The article makes it obvious the brunt of his criticism is on Obama.

Shivetya 13y ago
because the NY Times cannot call him out completely having bent over backwards to support him. Simply put, its no different than Obama claiming he was no Dick Cheney. What is going on now is far far worse than Nixon. I am referring to NSA and IRS activities brought to light over the last few months. I am not sure which is worse, nah strike that, what the IRS is accused of is worse.
- _delirium 13y ago
  I'm not sure what kind of inside-the-beltway myopia it would take to think that controversy over who gets 501(c)(4) status is worse than dragnet surveillance.
  - forgottenpass 13y ago
    Protection of citizens matters much more strongly to politicians when a politically-connected citizen is targeted. When people are targeted en mass it is less of an existential threat to the two-party dog and pony show. Would Watergate have been much of a scandal at all if it weren't for the fact the offices Nixon broke into belonged to the Democratic Party?
  - hga 13y ago
    Let's just quote half-reformed Obamacon Peggy Nonan (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578515673945731506.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732441260457851...): "What does it mean when half the country—literally half the country—understands that the revenue-gathering arm of its federal government is politically corrupt, sees them as targets, and will shoot at them if they try to raise their heads? That is the kind of thing that can kill a country, letting half its citizens believe that they no longer have full political rights." Note, it doesn't matter a wit that you don't believe this. Because we do, and it's at least a debatable point, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. A potentially country killing one. I suggest you work to fix it, either by convincing us we're wrong, or by fixing it---at this point, one necessary ingredient is clear, completely revising our tax system to eliminate the IRS's discretion.
    - _delirium 13y ago
      It's usually the case that half the country thinks the federal government's revenue-allocation is biased against them. If indeed 501(c)(4) status is allocated in a biased way, that's functionally equivalent to government subsidies being allocated in a biased way (because a targeted tax exemption is equivalent to a targeted subsidy). This is quite different from police intimidation, surveillance and similar things: it is solely an argument over whether subsidies are being allocated in a viewpoint-neutral manner. Controversies over whether federal subsidies are being given out in a biased way are important, I think, but not a novel or apocalyptic matter. Sometimes the right alleges bias (as with funding going to e.g. NPR, and climate-science funding), other times the left alleges bias (as with the bill explicitly excluding Planned Parenthood from funding, or the tax exemption given to political organizations organized as church branches). It's worth investigating, but nobody is being shot for raising their heads. Compare, say, COINTELPRO, which was not a dispute over whether federal tax exemptions or funds were being allocated fairly, but direct state intimidation of political organizations. That is what I think we need to be most wary of. Now, there is some contingent of raving loons who already have it in their heads that IRS=UN=jackboots=Waco=helicopters, and certain opportunists (e.g. Glenn Beck) and politicians (some Tea Party groups) like to egg them on. I am not as sure what to do about them, but I don't think they are responding to any particular set of events based on any attempt at rational analysis of the actual events. And percentage-wise, they're closer to 10-15%. If you ask people to agree with particularly strong interpretations of the IRS scandal, which involve paranoid fantasies of violence by jackbooted government thugs, you don't get anywhere near 50% agreeing. As for your proposed solution: I do think it's prudent to reform the tax-exemption laws to remove subjective categories. Some subjectivity is difficult to avoid, e.g. in the definition of a 501(c)(3) charity, but clearly 501(c)(4) is one of the more problematic categories. I would support just eliminating that status entirely, rather than attempting to have the IRS determine who legitimately belongs in it vs. who doesn't; an organization aimed at "the promotion of social welfare" but not necessarily a "charity" is just too subjective a catch-all.

sergiosgc 13y ago

The article is biased and, from what I gather from the comments, factually incorrect. However, the comparison with Nixon must be done, because: a) Nixon and Watergate happened, so it is plausible that Administrations feel the pull towards excessive surveillance and illegal actions. I.e. It happened before so it will happen again. b) If Watergate happened today, would the Administration get caught? I'd wager a sound "No, it wouldn't". With current powers and control structure, the Watergate objective could be secretly achieved, while controlled by secret courts all the while having any whistle-blower incarcerated under perfectly legal reasons. Lastly, this is not a Dems vs Republicans issue. Both parties have failed. Bush set the ball rolling while Obama gladly let it roll...

gasull 13y ago

tl;dr "President Obama wants to make it a crime for a reporter to talk to a leaker" Worth reading it in full.

mtgx 13y ago
I don't get it. How can someone make such a drastic 180 degree turn on his principles and in such a short time? If there ever was a civil rights activist in him, how can he so easily go ahead with trying to harm US' historical press freedom so drastically by trying to make it illegal for a reporter to speak to a leaker, and prosecuting twice as many whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all presidents in the past 100 years? I really don't get it and I don't see how a person could change so radically in only a few short years. Unless the whole initial campaign was just a major joke played on the American public, and it was all a set-up, saying that he'll turn things around from the Bush era, while he was actually plotting to continue his surveillance policies all along. There's also the blackmail possibility, but would the US president really be that dependent on a blackmail to change his policies 180 degrees and also continue the charade for so long? I think the second possibility, that he was lying the whole time, seems more realistic than this.
- gasull 13y ago
  About the blackmail possibility, the NSA wiretapped Obama in 2004: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa-obama_n_3473538.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa-obama... Another possibility is that Obama is under a lot of stress (like any president) and those who advise him and were in power before him (NSA, the Fed, etc.) end up persuading him. This is perfectly possible if you are under stress and suffer constant interruptions that don't allow you to think long term. This is another way of saying that he's in fact a puppet, even if he doesn't realize.
  - pstuart 13y ago
    This is the charitable reason. He has all these possible risks brought before him and has to make a decision quickly -- why not err on the side of "safety", especially if the ultimate responsibility for that safety is in his hands. Plus a little blackmail if it's on tap.

coldcode 13y ago

But he paid the price. The current president will never face the same punishment.

_delirium 13y ago
Nixon wasn't punished for what this article is complaining about, though. He wasn't impeached over his handling of the Pentagon Papers case, but because he paid some people to break into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters. I would guess that if Obama got caught running an operation to break into the RNC headquarters, Congress would be pretty quick to impeach him, too. And conversely, had Nixon not organized the Watergate break-in, he wouldn't have been impeached over his (and Kissinger's) hardline view on prosecuting leakers and those in their vicinity.

tptacek 13y ago

Worth a read: http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-field-guide http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-field-guide Generally: the First Amendment protects the right to publish news, but not to gather it; when it comes to newsgathering, the law generally doesn't favor reporters over any other kind of person. There are (according to RCFP) some jurisdiction-specific protections for newsgathering, but it's hard to read RCFP's guide and leave with the sense that the Constitution permits reporters to commit felonies in the interest of getting stories. So, James Rosen. James Rosen (allegedly; for brevity, add "allegedly" mentally to everything else in this graf) received secret information from Stephen Kim, a counterproliferation analyst at LLNL. Kim passed information to Rosen about the proximity of a North Korean nuclear test. Kim's response was that the information he shared was harmless. The DoJ's response was that it wasn't, and that aside from the direct details about the DPRK nuclear test, the specificity of the information shared threatened sources & methods, and that regardless Kim was criminally liable for sharing top secret classified information. (FAS, as always, does a great job of keeping up with the paperwork of the case: http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/kim/ http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/kim/) It's not at all surprising to me that in a case where an analyst leaks counterproliferation data to a reporter, the DoJ would have an interest in ensuring that the reporter wasn't an accessory to the crime of leaking the information. Simply hearing a leaked story isn't criminal, but coaching an insider to do so is. DoJ has a valid interest in figuring out which happened with Rosen. James Rosen has not been charged with any crime. Stephen Kim, the leaker, is dollars-to-donuts going to prison; his defense seems already to have conceded the leak occurred, and posits that his prosecution is political. As I've said on other threads, I'm ambivalent about counterterrorism. When I think about it in the context of signals intelligence, I'm fine with it. When I think about it in the context of the TSA and electronic strip searches, I'm not. But this isn't a terrorism case. I am not at all ambivalent about counterproliferation. Just 40 years ago the US was locked in a standoff with an adversary with enough nuclear weapons to end life on the planet. Today, that adversary is a shambles, split into countries of varying competence and openness, any of which might have enough nuclear materiel to end a major world city. Meanwhile, the world's most evil country has a functioning nuclear arms program and is thought to be arming dictatorships around the world for money. I'm glad DoJ isn't playing games in cases involving proliferation.

austenallred 13y ago

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

This is easily much worse than Nixon. Nixon was a paranoid president with a cadre of political flunkies willing to do whatever it took for him to stay in power. Once the bozos were thrown out, that game was up. This is a systemic problem, not just one president. Obama's just the first guy really seeing how far he can push things. You can bet that the next president, no matter which party, will keep pushing. This is much worse than Nixon. Nixon was a scandal. His own party deserted him. With Obama you still have millions standing by to make apologies for whatever has been done -- and whatever comes next. A very bad situation. What we're going to see now is what the world would have looked like if Nixon had gotten away with it.

tptacek 13y ago
This is the kind of comment one could have written without reading the article. Did you? What do you think about the Rosen case?
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  You can't make a reporter doing his job a crime. ADD: Further details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5924505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5924505
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Rosen hasn't been charged with a crime.
    - jbronn 13y ago
      He was served a search warrant alleging he was part of a criminal conspiracy. This is a prelude to criminal charges. Stop your semantic hysterics.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        Ahh, 2013 Hacker News, where the difference between "being charged with a federal crime" and "not being charged with a federal crime" is "semantic hysterics".