
Only Nixon Harmed a Free Press More - teawithcarl
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/05/21/obama-the-media-and-national-security/only-nixon-harmed-a-free-press-more
======
sergiosgc
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...

------
DanielBMarkham
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.

~~~
electromagnetic
Nixon was also operating at the height of the Cold War, when there _may_ have
been a legitimate right to more control over what the press can and can't say
or release.

Obama is operating at the height of what? Asymmetric warfare where we're
basically beating third world peasants into submission. Or maybe the War on
Drugs where we're basically beating first world peasants into submission and
slavery, whilst turning a complete blind eye to what's only comparable to
genocide in a country we share a boarder with.

What our government is trying to do is on par with returning us to serfdom. I
keep hearing that things are supposed to get better, but it's important to
remember; freedom comes after the blade of a guillotine. No one in power is
going to stop abusing it, we only have to look at the repeated introduction
copyright legislation, time after time after time it gets submitted until it
gets broken down and submitted piece by piece and slips under the radar. This
will stop when its forcibly stopped, and the longer it takes the greater
chance it will be done by violence.

~~~
hga
How about the less inherently violent Pareto " _history is a graveyard of
aristocracies_ ". We've got something akin to that in our ruling class, and we
need a Pareto style circulation of elites to fix it. That doesn't inherently
have to be ultra-violent, then again, there doesn't seem to be much in the way
of limits our ruling class has in what they're willing to do to retain power.

As you specifically note, " _on par with returning us to serfdom_ ", which
does not strike me as hyperbole.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
> ... there doesn't seem to be much in the way of limits our ruling class has
> in what they're willing to do to retain power.

I disagree. There are strong limits on what our courtier class is willing to
do. Those limits are not even particularly objectionable. The problem is that
the limits are beyond what it takes to provoke a strenuous response from the
average person.

Our government is unstable. If it were to move one millimeter beyond public
toleration, a vicious cycle of escalation would start. The last straw would be
something seemingly trivial, like a flippant speech about how hungry Americans
could just eat cake. (A scenario that is actually plausible, given Washington,
D.C.'s obsession with paying their cronies to turn corn into transportation
fuel.)

The most disturbing thing about the courtiers' obsession with espionage is how
careless they are being with operational security. They are using espionage to
score PR points but neglecting the basics of opsec: mandatory access controls,
cryptography, competent background checks, etc. If some Booz Allen yahoo could
rifle through NSA documents, then other countries already had everything.

~~~
electromagnetic
What's worth pointing out with the corn->ethanol issue is that it would take 1
acre of prime farmland to run your average F150 for 5 weeks. That acre would
be damn close to perfect nutritionally (IE mixed diet, animals actually use
more land but can feed on relatively infertile but pasture-able land) feeding
one person for a year.

However, in actuality one bushel of corn averages 50 ears, the national corn
harvest average per acre is 123, which means 6150 ear of corn, which means
~16.8 ears of corn a day. 110 calories for your average ear of corn, meaning
1800 food calories a day for a full year. On one tank of gas for your average
commercial vehicle.

I do not get why anyone would want to turn corn into fuel, because even
fuelling a statistically insignificant portion of the market would literally
mean removing hundreds of thousands of peoples food from circulation. And it
_is_ food grade corn that goes to make ethanol, because unsellable ears of
corn are already spoken for and sold for animal feed.

One of the main reasons I want to buy land is so I can become as close to
fully self sustaining as possible.

------
gasull
tl;dr "President Obama wants to make it a crime for a reporter to talk to a
leaker"

Worth reading it in full.

~~~
mtgx
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.

~~~
Corvus
While I have no personal insight into Barack Obama, I have dealt personally
with several politicians; and while there are many earnest politicians
dedicated to public service, there are also those who conflate public service
with their own personal interest.

I do not mean they are cynical; that they are lying or have abandoned their
principles, but that their principles are directed solely to getting
themselves elected. Any form of lie-detection or telepathy would reveal they
truly believe they are doing the best, most moral thing by getting themselves
in a position of power. I find this attitude hard to describe; imagine “I am a
good person”, “anything that is good for me is good for everyone”, “I should
be leader”, “anything that makes me leader is good”, “anything that restricts
my leadership is bad for everyone” all merged together into one single
thought. Perhaps “I am the state” is the best summary.

This is how you get civil libertarians restricting others’ civil liberties,
homosexuals getting elected on anti-homosexual legislation, and drug-users
campaigning for harsh penalties for drug use. These people do not see any
contradiction between their words and their actions; it is as if words and
actions are the same thing to them. If I campaign for civil rights, then I am
a civil rights leader, my actions are irrelevant. They do not seem to
understand that other people can be good, that they themselves can be evil; or
how restricting their own power could possibly be good. They do not seem to
understand that arrests, investigations, or invasions, whether of privacy or
of nations, which do not harm themselves could harm other people.

~~~
tripzilch
There ought to be a DSM classification for this type of disorder.

------
tptacek
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
I don't mean to be sarcastic in my response, but the "most evil country" could
be any number of countries, even given the context. Who are you referring to?

~~~
tptacek
North Korea is the most evil country in the world.

~~~
anon1385
Number of deaths due to US wars of aggression since 2001 [1][2]: 400,000 -
1,000,000

Number of deaths due to North Korean wars of aggression since 2001: 0

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_cas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan_war)

~~~
tptacek
Sophomoric comments like this are why we'd be better off if all politics
stories were kept off HN, wholesale, like the guidelines suggest.

~~~
summerdown2
From the guidelines:

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.

~~~
tptacek
If you reread my comment I think you'll see that I wasn't in fact calling
anyone a name.

~~~
summerdown2
Really?

> Sophomoric comments like this ...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling)

> Name calling is abusive or insulting language referred to a person or group,

If I squint in a half light, I might consider you have obeyed the literal
letter of the guidelines. So, congratulations.

But seriously? You want to defend that comment as not insulting to the poster?

Also, at what point did you reply to the argument?

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

~~~
_delirium
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.

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

~~~
Shivetya
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
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.

~~~
hga
Let's just quote half-reformed Obamacon Peggy Nonan
([http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732441260457851...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578515673945731506.html)):

" _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
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.

~~~
hga
Geeze, you simply have not been paying attention, this goes _way_ beyond
501(c)(4) denials (while Obama's Organizing for America -> Organizing for
Action was waived through), to the minor detail of 501(c)(3) denials, to
leaking of application data to 3rd parties (as admitted by Pro Publica, one
recipient), to the campaign calling out major Romney donor as evil people, _to
all of the above getting audits_ ... and that's just counting the IRS
harassment.

And characterizing these as "subsidizes" is flatly wrong. Money donated for
political action is _not_ tax deductible; rather, it is the question, why are
political efforts organized as non-profits? It's not like any of these
organizations are trying to make monetary profits, their objective is of an
entirely different kind.

Without a level playing field and with particular, focused harassment of
donors ... well, many asked in 2012 what happened to the "TEA Party" that was
so powerful in 2010 ... well, now after all these revelations, our side
believes we know.

You may consider half the country to be "raving loons" ... even if it's only
"10-15%", _YOU_ still have a very big problem, history suggests only 3% are
necessary to successfully prosecute a hot civil war (we're already in a cold
one), and at least on my side we believe we're sliding towards one, since
peaceful means of engaging in politics have and are being foreclosed by these
actions (none of this has stopped), and no reform seems to be on the horizon.

------
Nrsolis
I'll just leave this right here:

[http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-
Speeche...](http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-
Speeches/American-Newspaper-Publishers-Association_19610427.aspx)

