
My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018) - spof84
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-times-reporter-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-on-terror/
======
resters
The major takeaway is that one can't count on the NYT to challenge powerful
interests. This makes the NYT a powerful _conservative_ force in US culture.

It follows that most of the articles that appear opposed to powerful interests
are a) inconsequential, or b) used as a distraction, helping to create the
impression that the paper is anything _but_ a powerful conservative force.

It's no accident that the paper ran the Judith Miller work selling the Iraq
war, or that it was an early participant in the smear campaign against
Assange, or that it is a thought leader on the threat posed by China. Sure
there are stories about CSAs and the homeless, but ultimately it's a big
budget right wing PR operation, intent on _preserving_ the status quo.

For even more obvious evidence, just look at the people whose weddings are
covered in the paper's nuptials section -- predominantly children of powerful
elites who the paper wishes to flatter with its coverage.

If one were to ask "what kind of coverage might we expect from a paper
controlled by a billionaire industrialist?", we might actually predict a
right-wing perspective. But due to the Times' history as a progressive paper
(most notably the writings of Frederick Law Olmsted which fueled the
abolitionist movement), the paper is uncritically viewed by many in the
present day as a voice that opposes the right wing, authoritarian social goals
held by powerful elites.

~~~
justaman
I think its narrow minded to assume a tool of the government is right wing, or
left wing for that matter.

~~~
Tomte
I think in his comment he is making a clear difference between "the right" and
"conservative", which is a related, but not entirely identical, term.

~~~
someguy101010
Exactly right. Conservatives vs Liberal != Republicans vs. Democrats

------
rdtsc
> Obama was determined to extend and even expand many of Bush’s national
> security policies, including a crackdown on whistleblowers and the press.
> Ignoring the possible consequences to American democracy, the Obama
> administration began aggressively conducting surveillance of the digital
> communications of journalists and potential sources, leading to more leak
> prosecutions than all previous administrations combined.

I am still thinking periodically about what happened there. Like the saying
goes "I don't know what I expected..." but I certainly expected more from
Obama. For some reason I thought privacy, freedom of speech and transparency
would be priorities but they weren't. Granted, looking back I don't think he
explicitly said those would be his top policies, it was just beliefs people,
including me, imbued into his presidency. It was a very successful "Hope and
Change" marketing campaign. He even fooled the Nobel Committee into getting a
Nobel Peace Prize, so I guess I shouldn't feel too bad.

Other good things happened of course like ACA, a push to regulate pollution
but overall it was a disappointment vis-a-vis the expectations.

~~~
ngngngng
During the Obama administration it became legal to assassinate US citizens
without trial as long as they are presumed "terrorists" and aren't currently
on US soil. It was a deeply flawed presidency that deserves much more critique
than it has ever received.

[https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-
killed-a-16-year-o...](https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-
killed-a-16-year-old-american-in-yemen-trump-just-killed-his-8-year-old-
sister/)

~~~
tptacek
The United States killed its own citizens in military operations long before
Obama.

~~~
detcader
Well, Obama OLC's legal memo advocated it explicitly, though.

From Wikipedia: 'Barron's memo was described by The New York Times Editorial
Board as "a slapdash pastiche of legal theories — some based on obscure
interpretations of British and Israeli law — that was clearly tailored to the
desired result."[7] A lawyer for the ACLU described the memo as "disturbing"
and "ultimately an argument that the president can order targeted killings of
Americans without ever having to account to anyone outside the executive
branch."[8]'

One could say it "became executive doctrine" then.

~~~
tptacek
What "doctrine" is this? Since World War 1, when the military has deemed it
necessary to kill combatants who happen to be American citizens abroad, it has
done so.

------
AndrewKemendo
_I discovered that there was, in effect, a marketplace of secrets in
Washington, in which White House officials and other current and former
bureaucrats, contractors, members of Congress, their staffers, and journalists
all traded information._

This is why I left that world.

The US Government and policy makers decide that it is sometimes necessary to
do things that put US Govt employees at mortal risk. It is important that
there are employees like this that are willing to take those risks and they do
so knowingly.

Where this goes off the rails is when those same Policymakers put their ego
over the safety of the people they are risking in order to repugnantly gain
status or money.

This "marketplace" is a dark pool of real risk that is opaque to those who are
trying to execute the orders given. An operator can reasonably evaluate what
the risks are going into any intelligence activity, but there has
traditionally been an underlying assumption that the people giving the orders
aren't going to comprimise the activity. I'm not sure that's an assumption
worth holding anymore.

I should note that is a separate point from accountability and transparency
with respect to the "should" of these activities. There is an equal need for
democratic accountability for these activities, and OPSEC is often in conflict
with democratic discoverability. There should be more discussion on the "how"
of that, because as it stands such information sharing is not magnanimous or
virtuous - it's exploited for personal gain.

~~~
Gibbon1
Guy I went to school with in the late 80's had an internship at Lockheed
working on the video recorders used in fighters to record bombing runs. They
were designing a new system because the old system had some defects that the
Soviets found out about. The reason they found out about them was the Reagan
Administration released the full bombing run tapes to the press after
Operation El Dorado Canyon. Which then made it onto national TV and was copied
as well.

Air force was livid but wasn't going to publicly go after the Reagan
Administration officials responsible. If you did that you'd get 25-life.

Lockheed probably wasn't unhappy though.

------
spamizbad
I think it's fair to say the majority of the US "Mainstream Media" is
overwhelmingly pro-interventalist and by extension pro-military. MSNBC had a
clear conflict of interest in the run-up to the Iraq war, with its parent
company being a defense contractor, yet ran overwhelmingly pro-invasion
stories. A more modern example was the run-up to our involvement with Syria,
where you had major network personalities like Jake Tapper deliver almost
nightly pearl-clutching lectures about how _we must do something_. The efforts
to appear balanced and to "both sides" an issue end when it involves
interventionist campaigns. All of a sudden those who suggest caution and
restraint become problematic and need iron-clad arguments.

One one think committing American "blood and treasure" to these engagements
would demand careful reasoning but often it's those pushing for restraint that
are tasked with the intellectual heavy-lifting.

~~~
deogeo
> MSNBC had a clear conflict of interest in the run-up to the Iraq war, with
> its parent company being a defense contractor

I'd be grateful if you could elaborate - I'm having trouble following the
ownership chain, since there was a merger with Comcast I think after the Iraq
War.

~~~
spamizbad
General Electric owned what ultimately became NBCUniversal between 1986-2009,
after which Comcast bought 51% of NBCUniversal and finally fully acquired it
in 2013.

~~~
deogeo
Thank you.

------
georgecmu
This aspect of the Yugoslav civil war is usually missing from the mainstream
narratives.

 _During one interview, a source was droning on about a minor bureaucratic
battle inside the CIA when he briefly referred to how then-President Bill
Clinton had secretly given the green light to Iran to covertly ship arms to
Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan wars. The man had already resumed talking
about his bureaucratic turf war when I realized what he had just said and
interrupted him, demanding that he go back to Iran. That led me to write a
series of stories that prompted the House of Representatives to create a
special select committee to investigate the covert Iran-Bosnia arms pipeline._

[https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/15/world/us-looks-away-as-
ir...](https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/15/world/us-looks-away-as-iran-arms-
bosnia.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/19/opinion/l-iran-to-
bosnia-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/19/opinion/l-iran-to-bosnia-arms-
transfer-is-old-news-085502.html)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/05/12/u...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/05/12/us-
allies-fed-pipeline-of-covert-arms-to-
bosnia/9d2d9f71-c191-490a-b1cc-c468c0a8468a/?utm_term=.d0200919cfbf)

~~~
stevenwoo
Given what I remember what we knew at the time, having Iran arm the Muslims in
a civil war to defend themselves against ethnic cleansing was the best option
short of what continuing what had been done before - intercede with NATO to
broker a ceasefire. This was pretty well documented in the daily news versus
the manufactured testimony to justify Gulf War 1/2.

------
jackpirate
I found the following passage remarkable:

 _In another recent incident that gave me chilling insight into the power of
government surveillance, I met with a sensitive and well-placed source through
an intermediary. After the meeting, which occurred a few years ago in Europe,
I began to do research on the source. About an hour later, I got a call from
the intermediary, who said, “Stop Googling his name.”_

~~~
VBprogrammer
I think the implication is clearly that there existed a government survalence
dragnet and that the source was well placed enough to have unfettered access
to it.

However, it strikes me that there are a number of other possibilities: perhaps
his own computer had been specifically compromised; maybe they targeted his
hotel room or WiFi network; or, one which I find really compelling, it was
simply a well timed ruse intended to bolster the legitimacy of whatever
information the source was sharing.

~~~
owenversteeg
[edit] Ok, so I actually read the whole article now. I still have a small
amount of skepticism but two things sway me towards thinking this is real: 1)
the author got called to the White House to sit down with the CIA director and
Condoleezza Rice to shut down an earlier story, so clearly there are high-up
people watching him and trying to shut him up at all costs. 2) there are a
surprising amount of people in the CIA doing idiotic and more career-risky
things here.

My original idea of how it went down was that some mid-level Joe Schmoe looks
him up and calls him to spook him, which I didn't believe for a number of
reasons. But if, say, Condoleezza Rice was personally watching this guy (which
she was) and ordered someone to go intimidate him, then I would not be
surprised.

[original comment] Yeah... I'm a little skeptical. I completely believe that
there's horrifyingly extensive dragnet surveillance out there and something
like this is _possible_. But if you've got access, why would you risk it with
some stupid comment like this, to a reporter of all people? Seems a little
fishy.

~~~
DoctorOetker
I think it would be a frequent occurence that ordinary people approached for
whatever reason by members of intelligence community are suspected by these
ordinary people to have a different role than their cover. When these ordinary
people or sometimes targets proceed to google either the True Name or cover
identity, it would seem like standard procedure to have an automated system
immediately notify the agent that somebody is googling them, so they can make
lessons about their poor tradecraft/cover/...

It would be pretty negligent toward both the individual agent and the
organizational mission as a whole not to detect these events.

Since they are supposedly relatively frequent however (the web of lies gets
ever more complicated, and different people pay attention to different
details) those red flags would usually be ignored by other agents or
datasharing allies, but as the person in question you would still prefer your
journalist not to generate these red flags nonetheless..

------
turingcompeteme
Is there any 'wall' between the owners and editors of a newspaper?

Does someone like Bezos now have access to similar information that the Times
was hiding from the public shown here?

That information would appear to be worth a lot more than the 250 million he
paid for the Post.

------
mturmon
The author, James Risen, has had a long trajectory as a reporter. The OP
(which I admit I have not read all of yet) touches on Risen's reporting on the
Wen Ho Lee case while at the NYT. Risen and Gerth's story, and their later
follow-up story, was based on "leaks" from "senior intelligence officials"
that were either false or slanted.

It was a disgrace. The case was eventually thrown out of court, and a mealy-
mouthed NYT recantation was issued (linked in OP - it's a typical NYT non-
retraction retraction).

There was other reporting at the time, from Robert Scheer of the LA Times,
that contradicted the Risen/Gerth story. But the combination of the
endorsement of the NYT, and the mesmeric hold of "national security" on
peoples' minds, led to an establishment take that Lee had committed serious
crimes. Scheer tells the story here: [https://www.thenation.com/article/no-
defense/](https://www.thenation.com/article/no-defense/)

The whole affair serves as a warning about the dangers of taking selected
"senior intelligence officials" at their word. We seem to need these warnings.

~~~
microdrum
James Risen has a checkered reporting background, to be sure. [1] There are
all kinds of attacks on the press these days, and we are told to be afraid of
attacks on the press. But the devaluation of the press is owed more to its own
behavior than to that of its enemies. (In the U.S. Less so in Saudi, China,
Russia)

[1] [https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/is-james-
rise...](https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/is-james-risen-a-law-
unto-himself.php)

~~~
mturmon
Here we seem to disagree. I think it's clear that this "devaluation of the
press" is being pushed _far_ beyond reason by people who have their own
reasons to cloud the notion of an objective truth.

My caveat was more circumscribed - just that one needs to be careful of thinly
sourced NYT stories, even when they are said to be from reliable sources,
especially when they mirror administration talking points. I say this as a
longtime subscriber to the NYT.

------
herbstein
I think people would do well to read about the propaganda model.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model)

~~~
fumar
Or watching Manufacturing Consent.

~~~
polaco
It's also still a great read and has held up well, imho.

------
TadaScientist
thank you for post this article here - it's easily one of the best articles
I've ever had the pleasure of reading through

------
decasia
Still an important story. But the title should read (January 2018) or
something to indicate that it is not breaking news.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
The title intentionally implies it is still ongoing.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
If you don't think the government and the press are in bed, I have a bridge to
sell you.

~~~
Angostura
Before I buy that bridge, I'd want to you to be a lot more explicit about
which parts of government, which parts of the media and on which issues. I
haven't seen most of the media notably pro-Trump for example, to which I've no
doubt you will say "ah yes, well Trump isn't the _true_ government", or some-
such.

~~~
ceejayoz
Every single bit of government, with different parts of the press. No, Trump's
not in bed with NPR... but it's hard to argue he's not closely involved with
Fox personalities. Hannity showed up at Trump rallies and often chats to Trump
via phone.

Every Congress member will have a variety of sympathetic press sources that
match their politics. Every department has a press corps that depends pretty
heavily on access to do their jobs. etc. etc.

~~~
untog
Right, but IMO that's meaningfully different from "the government and the
press are in bed", which implies a wholesale conspiracy.

The fact that individuals within government can find favourable coverage from
one of dozens (hundreds?) of independent media outlets, each with its own
perspective and bias, isn't really all that surprising or scandalous.

~~~
ceejayoz
Trump asking the NYT to squash a corruption story about one of his Cabinet
secretaries would likely fall flat, for sure.

Obama's CIA asking Fox to suppress a story about the impeding attack on Bin
Laden would probably have been honored, regardless of Fox's generally negative
opinions on Obama.

Stuff with the "national security" label, or stuff that requires fairly
specialized access to sources, is where the close relationship between press
and subject can cause issues like the article here is highlighting.

------
paraditedc
TLDR. Judging from the comments, it's basically the same as Chinese government
and state media?

~~~
justtopost
We use the Carrot first.

------
sudden
And they said alex jones was crazy.`

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I like that the thing people make fun of Alex Jones for the most is that _"
chemicals were turning the frogs gay!"_ ... and then that turned out to be
_effectively_ true.

EDIT: Sorry if you don't like this, but it's true. This isn't a defense of
Jones's tactics or character, just that people make fun of him for an
outlandish claim he was more or less right about.

~~~
bm1362
The context is important, Alex Jones was using that study to say that the
government was turning people gay intentionally.

~~~
scottlocklin
Probably so, but nobody else with his reach was covering this. Seems kind of
important to me!

~~~
ceejayoz
That's simply false.

NYT in 2003: [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/19/us/popular-pesticide-
faul...](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/19/us/popular-pesticide-faulted-for-
frogs-sexual-abnormalities.html)

BBC in 2007:
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1930658.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1930658.stm)

~~~
scottlocklin
Humor me for a minute here:

1) Google Atrazine (I get 1.7m hits)

2) Google "making frogs gay" (I get 4.9m hits)

I'm pretty sure this means Alex Jones did a better job of informing humanity
that atrazine might be a problem than the NYT or any other news organization.
I'm assuming Alex Jones is the source, or at least the main popularizer of the
meme "making frogs gay." I could be wrong about that, and maybe it was someone
else! Or maybe everything Alex Jones does is bad. But it looks like he raised
an important issue and effectively put it into people's brains.

~~~
Nasrudith
Quality matters a lot in raising awareness of facts. You can't just say
comicbooks are better at raising for showing everyone the dangers of radiation
when basement levels of radon is depicted as causing people to melt into goo
because lung cancer is also dangerous.

~~~
scottlocklin
You have to communicate with Alex Jones fans somehow if you believe in
Democracy. I mean, what are the other options? Not telling them anything?
Sending them LaTeX formatted papers?

