“Project Gunrunner” deployed new teams of agents to the southwest border. The idea was to stop the flow of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico’s drug cartels. But in practice, ATF’s actions had the opposite result: they allegedly facilitated the delivery of thousands of guns into criminal hands. The idea, they said, was to gather intelligence and see where the guns ended up. Sen. Grassley was quite concerned that Congress was being stonewalled by the Justice Department.
It is clear that the Department of Justice under Holder has become very politicized and has been drawn into the service of a left-wing, politically-correct agenda, and the media don’t seem to care.
Intelligence Leaks Not Very Intelligent
By “Senator Bob” Smith
The tracking down and recent killing of Osama bin Laden were major accomplishments of the U.S. Intelligence Community, the elite Navy SEAL team, which took out this terrorist murderer, and those in the Obama administration who authorized the successful raid. Ten years, and two Presidents later, justice was done. Whether seeking revenge is right or wrong, it sure felt good to see bin Laden go down. Payback is a “son of a gun” as the expression goes!
The persistence of those in our Intelligence Community and all of our special operations personnel are a real source of pride. I remember personally witnessing the murders in front of the CIA Headquarters in 1993. I watched in horror while trapped in traffic, waiting for a light to change, while terrorist Mir Aimal Kasi murdered two innocent people in their cars. It took several years, but again another terrorist was apprehended in Pakistan and later tried and executed for his crime. It defines who we are as Americans that we would never give up until these terrorists met justice at our hands. But as Paul Harvey used to say, “now for the rest of the story.”
Clearly, President Obama had to “sign off” on the raid and he deserves full credit for doing so. However, what appears to be happening now is the shameful exploitation of the incident by extracting the maximum public relations value from its success. We have seen photo after photo of the Obama “team” watching the raid unfold in “real time.” Press briefings have reminded us that “candidate Obama” had pledged to continue to pursue and eventually bring bin Laden to justice (Shouldn’t that go without saying?).
The President went to New York City at the site of the World Trade Center attacks and spoke there to again remind us that he had gotten bin Laden after he had already told us this on national TV.
The truth is that this was a well prepared, highly skilled and professional military SEAL team doing their job in an extraordinary manner. They put their lives on the line because they are the best America has to offer. They are patriots. They volunteered to do the job. They reacted to incredibly accurate, fortunate and specific intelligence information. The administration’s role was to authorize this elite force to go in and execute. The aggressive way in which the administration has promoted this makes one wonder why they need to prove that the President wished to pursue bin Laden in the first place. Guilty conscience, maybe?
There is one more troubling aspect to this entire operation.
Why are the administration and the media so intent upon providing so much detail on the intelligence gathered during the raid? Sources and methods may easily be compromised by leaking so much detailed information. Tracking down more al Qaeda terrorists could be hindered. We hear news stories about computers, hard drives, bin Laden’s personal handwritten diaries, and even the fact that we have names of certain operatives and specific terrorist action plans in America and around the world.
Clearly, this information is coming from the administration officials and not from the Intelligence Community. They are the first to know that releasing such information could result in letting people slip away from capture or killing. It could also make the information less valuable and even threaten the lives of certain U.S. intelligence operatives. Even as a U.S. Senator, I reviewed intelligence on a “need to know” basis only. Yet, the press talks about it incessantly in almost every news story.
Elizabeth Flock, in a Washington Post article on May 2nd, 2011, thought it would be nice to let the world and our enemies know that the SEAL team was stationed at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach. What is she going to do next? List their names and addresses?
On May 12th in remarks at a Town Hall meeting at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Secretary of Defense Gates indicated that he was very concerned about the safety of the SEALs and their families as a result of what intelligence officials have called an “unprecedented breach of confidentiality.”
Gates told a largely Marine audience that “Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the situation room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day.”
Gone are the days of World War II, when correspondents were not only asked to hold up stories that could compromise the success of a mission, they held up the information willingly.
We just lopped off the head of the serpent. Now we have the chance to destroy the rest of the al Qaeda body. That is, unless the exploitation and politicization of the mission and the lack of intelligence of our media compromises the intelligence found in the raid.
Or even worse, compromises the safety of our SEALs and their families.
White House Press Office Shows Its Bias
By Don Irvine
The White House Press Office denied the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fundraiser because they weren’t sure the paper would cover the event fairly in light of a front-page editorial by Mitt Romney that had been published recently.
In response to the access request, White House spokesman Matt Lehrich told the Herald:
“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” adding that:
“My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits.”
Lehrich also told the paper that it wasn’t banned on purpose and that the pool report arrangements had been made previously with the White House Correspondents Association and that they may be granted pool access for future visits.
So Lehrich denies it was an intentional slight and claims that the die was cast well in advance of the scheduled visit. But at the same time, he questioned whether or not the paper could be fair given the publication of the Romney op-ed?
Politicians play this game all the time with the press. But for the White House to put it out in the open and then deny that it has anything to do with a preference to only have a liberal newspaper cover the President’s event is another thing entirely.
Maybe the White House should listen to Boston University journalism professor Fred Bayles who told the Herald:
“Newspapers don’t have to be unbiased to get access. You can’t just let only the newspapers you want in.”
As the Herald points out, the Obama administration has had a testy relationship with the press and in particular with Fox News. Obama’s communications director, Anita Dunn, called Fox “an arm of the Republican Party,” and generally avoided interviews with the number one cable news network.
This is probably not the only time that this has happened to a conservative newspaper, but the Herald is the first one to expose the bias of the White House Press Office for all to see and they deserve credit for doing so.
Letter from the Editor
Dear Fellow Media Watchdogs:
As I researched this AIM Report, I was amazed at the amount of scandal and controversy that I came across. And this is supposed to be the Department of Justice. One story that’s gotten very little attention may be a turning point because it hits close to home for the media.
The New York Times reported in late May on one of its own reporters, James Risen, who was subpoenaed in a CIA-Iran Leak case. The story is that federal prosecutors, with a green light from Eric Holder, are trying to force Risen, the author of the book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, to identify his source for a story about the agency’s attempt to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program late in the Clinton administration. They want him to testify at a criminal trial about who leaked the information to him. Risen has been served with a subpoena to appear at a trial on September 12 to testify, and he plans to fight the subpoena.
It turns out that since Obama took office, between civilian and military prosecutors, they have charged five people in cases involving leaked information, “more than all other presidents combined.”
In addition, when Holder went before Congress for his confirmation hearing, he failed to disclose two Supreme Court amicus briefs in the terrorism case of Jose Padilla that he had joined in signing. Sen. Jon Kyl was very suspicious that this was an intentional oversight, given that Holder has had so few briefs.
Another “oversight” on Holder’s part occurred in May, when the New York Post reported that Holder and his brother had failed to pay the property taxes on their childhood home in Queens, which they inherited last year after their mother died, and the charges went unpaid for more than a year. They only paid them, amounting to more than $4,000 when confronted by the Post. Can anyone say, “Timothy Geithner?”
There is another report that whistleblowers, most of whom are left-wingers, are arguing that the Obama administration was worse than the Bush administration in punishing critics. The article is titled, “Whistleblower Says: Obama’s DOJ Declares War on Whistleblowers.”
And finally, there is the issue of the Justice Department announcing that it will no longer be enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act, because the administration has decided it is unconstitutional and discriminatory. The problem with that is that it is not up to the Executive branch to decide which laws it will enforce, and which it won’t.
For Accuracy in Media, Roger Aronoff
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