Lannis stopped his pacing and pointed an accusing finger at Buffalo. “That’s backward to how we do things in this country. Besides, the people you’re likely to catch are ordinary citizens discussing terrorism. The terrorists know better than to talk about it on the phone. You’ll have the FBI showing up at schools and questioning little girls because they said key words while discussing a homework project with their friends.”
“You make it sound like just because you get some false alarms, you should never turn on a burglar alarm!” Buffalo shot back. He took a menacing step toward Lannis. “And don’t point your finger at me like I’m being un-American. I know it’s backward, but it’s necessary and the reporters should have known it. They and their source pretty much destroyed our ability to detect attacks prior to DC. I’d say even under your rule, the harm caused by the leak far outweighed the benefit, so they should have to disclose their source.”
George got up and paced thoughtfully across the room to the window where he looked out at the beautiful view of the alley and trash dumpster behind the headquarters building. “I never knew you had such a beautiful view, Lannis.”
“Very funny,” Lannis sullenly responded.
George laughed. “Seriously, I think you’re both missing the point. All of the attention is on whether or not these reporters have to respond to a subpoena to testify in court and reveal their confidential sources. In a case where top-secret national security information has been leaked, I would certainly like to see the source of that leak identified and prosecuted — he or she did an excellent job as a spy for the terrorists. However, the more pressing issue is what should be done about the reporters themselves.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lannis, sitting back down at his desk as Buffalo eased away.
“Well, back before the Washington Post was blown up by al-Qaeda, I heard one of their reporters, Walter Pincus, say something that’s very appropriate here. He said just because someone tells you something, even if it’s true, it doesn’t mean you have to put it in the newspaper.”
“Here, here!” said Buffalo.
“The fact is,” George continued, “Risen and Lichtblau learned information they knew was top secret. Now these are intelligent men. They knew the nature of the War on Terrorism. They knew it was basically a war of intelligence.”
George held both hands up in a gesture indicating he didn’t want any interruptions until he finished this thought. “They also knew of the danger of failing to obtain and analyze data in a timely fashion in this age of nuclear proliferation. They understood the information they had obtained was crucial to our ability to weed out terrorists in our midst. To a large extent, the success of our intelligence efforts depended on the terrorists assuming the U.S. government would never wiretap its own citizens. The terrorist cells here were probably told by the al-Qaeda leadership that the emphasis placed on the rule of law in the U.S. would preclude our intelligence agencies from implementing the type of surveillance program necessary to thwart their activities.”
George lowered his hands and stepped back.
“Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Buffalo. “If they thought we weren’t listening, they would be more careless in their communications, making it easier for us to spot them.”
“That’s right. But once the program is revealed, even if the program continues, the terrorists clam up and become a lot more careful. They change their calling patterns to avoid detection. Then the only people you catch are little girls doing their homework.”
Buffalo turned to Lannis. “That’s a great service the Times is performing for the nation,” he said sarcastically.
Lannis just shook his head like George and Buffalo were a couple of conservative morons.
“In fact,” George continued, “before that article was published, the Bush administration asked that the story not be published because the surveillance program was an essential part of its efforts to prevent another 9/11 on American soil. Then, in the face of all of this knowledge, Risen and Lichtblau and their editors chose to take this crucial information and openly publish it in the New York Times.”
Lannis let out an exasperated sigh. “George, the Bush administration made that request all the time — probably more often than any other administration. They were always asking the media not to publish stories. Some stories were; some weren’t. The administration really abused that privilege, and it caught up with them.”
“I’m not saying the Bush administration was perfect,” continued George, “Far from it! But I don’t buy that Little Boy Who Cried Wolf excuse. Reporters and editors should be able to tell which stories the administration wants to suppress for political reasons and which ones are crucial to national security. In 1972, the Washington Post had every right to publish Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate story. A president broke the law, and he did it for political reasons. But in 2005, it was a serious breach of national security for the New York Times to publish details of how we were tracking terrorists.”
“But wiretapping without a warrant is illegal,” said Lannis.
“But the Times didn’t stop at just reporting that wiretapping was being done. They followed up the article and published details about sophisticated techniques that were being used to recognize suspicious calling patterns. Those techniques were significant because there were just too many millions of phone calls and e-mails for our intelligence agencies to monitor them all. You have to understand that this type of intelligence gathering is based on probabilities. The pattern-recognition techniques gave us a way to cull through millions of calls by little girls doing their homework, to identify perhaps a few hundred or a few thousand calls worthy of more scrutiny.”
“Great!” said Buffalo sarcastically. “So after warning the terrorists not to use certain words on the phone, we followed it up by warning them not to make calls that would fit into any of these patterns. What else could we tell them?”
“We didn’t have to tell them anything else,” said George. “Just take a look at our nation’s capital!”
“Well, that’s not fair, George,” said Lannis. “We know now what happened in Washington DC, but they didn’t know that then. We’re looking at this with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight.”
“Lannis, you’re an idiot,” George responded. “It was a surprise to no one that terrorists were trying to obtain nuclear weapons. Hell, the whole basis for the War in Iraq was to try to prevent that from happening. The fact is Risen and Lichtblau weakened our defenses by publishing information about how our intelligence agencies were analyzing phone traffic. You can call it aiding and abetting the enemy, or you can call it treason. Either way, these Benedict Arnolds should be shot. At the very least, they should spend the rest of their lives in prison. The only balancing Risen and Lichtblau did was to balance their desire for personal fame — their desire to be the next Woodward and Bernstein — against their anonymity. Unfortunately for those in Washington DC, they chose personal fame. As a result, two hundred and fifty thousand of us are dead, and our capital is uninhabitable for at least ten more years.”