Secrets of the Press II

Whom would you trust with America’s wartime secrets? We ask because of the uproar over the leak of a group chat on Signal in which top aides of the Trump administration — plus the vice president of America — were discussing a pending attack on our enemies in Yemen. Turns out that one of the individuals on the chat was the famed editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, and the result was a tumult of the first water.“This is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time,” Senator Schumer harrumphed on a platform owned by the head of DOGE. It was “an extraordinary breach of American national security intelligence,” the Times reports. Its David French reckons Secretary Hegseth has “blown his credibility as a military leader” and adds that “if he had any honor at all, he would resign.”Politico calls the episode “jaw-dropping,” and “damaging stuff for the Trump administration.” That’s because, as Politico sees it, “Signalgate is more than just a serious breach of national security,” as it “raises the most dangerous charge of all for any government — one of rank incompetence.” The Washington Post’s Philip Bump says that the group chat shows “how indifferent” Mr. Trump’s “national security team is to protecting classified information.”So for our question — whom would one trust with our secrets? Mr. Schumer? Where was he when it emerged that Secretary Clinton was using a private email server to host her government email, which included some classified material? What about the Times? Where was the Grey Lady when, in 2005, President George W. Bush begged its publisher not to print a story about the use of “warrantless wiretapping” to combat terrorism?Later, the Times defied Mr. Bush again by disclosing the existence of what the paper’s public editor, Daniel Okrent, called a “secret banking-data surveillance program.” The program tracked some 11 million daily transactions via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as Swift. The Times told the president to, essentially, flake off, never mind that the program was a major tool in fighting terrorism in the years after 9/11. “The disclosure of this program is disgraceful,” Mr. Bush said at the time. “We’re at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America.” Where were the condemnations and editorials proposing that the Times’ publisher be held accountable or even prosecuted for that breach of the public trust?How, too, can the Times and the Post square their high dudgeon over Mr. Hegseth’s group chat with the history of the two papers breaking, via Daniel Ellsberg, the Vietnam-era story of the Pentagon Papers? Far from decrying the breach of classified information or “war plans” when the Times broke the story, the Post scrambled for more of what we’ve called the purploined papyruses. In their zeal to publish both papers challenged orders by federal judges.The papers took their case all the way to the Supreme Court, which vindicated their airing of classified documents. Writing for the Nine, Justice Hugo Black averred that the two papers, “far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting,” should “be commended.” Later, a Pulitzer jury hailed the Times for publishing its scoop, calling it evidence of “devotion” to the public’s “right to know.” We understand that cases aren’t exactly analogous, and there’s hypocrisy on both sides. The left’s failure to call out past breaches of national security doesn’t excuse Messrs. Vance, Hegseth, Waltz et al for a lapse of judgment. Mr. Trump stood by his team, though, saying that Mr. Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact” on a successful military operation. Yet the liberal press and Democratic establishment could at least spare the public the selective outrage.

Secrets of the Press II

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