The Plaming of the NY Times

I've suspected almost from the start that the "leak" published by the NY Times (and the Wall Street Journal and others) was a setup by the Bushies: The fringe-right press was just too orchestrated in its denunciation of the Times, and the "leaked" info was actually in the public domain already, and thus the "leakers" could not get in trouble. 

From the Boston Globe: 

But a search of public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist-linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT.

``There have been public references to SWIFT before," said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. ``The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before."

Victor D. Comras , a former US diplomat who oversaw efforts at the United Nations to improve international measures to combat terror financing, said it was common knowledge that worldwide financial transactions were being closely monitored for links to terrorists. ``A lot of people were aware that this was going on," said Comras, one of a half-dozen financial experts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recruited for the task.

Seemed like a perfect setup - even if the Bushies got caught, nobody goes to jail.

Well, it turns out that it was another Plame-like "leak".

From the Wall Street Journal editorial:

"Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn't mind seeing in print. If this was a 'leak,' it was entirely authorized...."

Now all we need is for Bush to tell us that anyone in his administration who was involved in this leak will be fired.