New York Times Tips Killers

Imagine if the NYTs tipped the Mafia about an investigation tracking money transfers they make. The Mafia bosses recognize some interesting patterns attached to some interesting people associated with their money transfers and said people become part of a future building project, i.e. the foundation to new sky scraper.

Now, imagine if the NYT tipped Terrorists about an investigation tracking money transfers. Imagine covert American and foreign agents associated with those money transactions have their cover blown. Imagine the Terrorists redirecting their money laundering after murdering said agents. Imagine that this act was done while soldiers, whose lives depend on secret means to catch terrorists, fought in a declared war.

What would a just response to the tipster be? A Pulitzer Prize? Yeah! That's what I thought, too.

More at Dr. Sanity.

Update:

Jeff Goldstein says this:

I wonder if the crew at “Townhouse” is busy cobbling together a new civil liberties OUTRAGE narrative in order to distract us from the real violation of trust here—namely, that leakers within our intelligence agencies are jeopardizing national security, and that both the leakers and those publishing the leaks (whose aim, clearly, is to gin up whatever outrage they can with the hope of undermining this Administration’s tactics for conducting a war they don’t believe truly exists), are doing so with impunity. After all, Townhouse has, evidently, secured the services of maverick “conservative-civil libertarian” Glenn Greenwald.

That aside, though, what is most ironic about these leak stories is that dubious decision-making by today’s “adversarial” media will doubtless create a climate in which it is far more likely that future administrations will take extraordinary measures to keep information secret. All because some in the press have forgotten that with access and freedom comes great responsibility. That the NYT is willing to trade that responsibility for a “scoop” it pretends is in the “public interest” is, frankly, embarrassing—and one of the reasons Americans are increasingly unhappy with the mainstream press.

And in the long-run, we could find ourselves less informed because of it. Which is a net negative for a truly free society.