As the fallout of the disclosure of the SWIFT banking surveillance program expands, more right-wing conservatives are jumping on the band wagon and bashing the news organizations that published the story. One of my favorite conservative blogs, the California Conservative, blasts the Los Angeles Times' recent op-ed by Times editor Dean Baquet and New York Times executive editor Bill Keller as failing to address the central grievance against the publication of the story in question.

In the op-ed, Baquet and Keller discuss the role of the press when breaking sensitive stories like the SWIFT banking surveillance story, the NSA domestic surveillance story and even the historic Pentagon Papers case which then Justice Hugo Black said abolished "the government's power to censor the press ... so that the press would be forever free to censure the government."

The California Conservative breaks down the op-ed, line-by-line, ridiculing much of Banquet and Keller's points, eventually arriving at their point:

The decision to publish an article about an effective program that the NY Times says doesn’t break any laws because it’s “in the public’s interest” is a flimsy excuse to publish such a valuable program as the TFTP (terrorist finance tracking program, as best I can estimate).

Conservatives have blasted the papers on this point, wiping away the arguments of the papers with a single string of words: "The story compromises our national security." This is a powerful argument but I don't think this debate can accommodate it anymore. At least not until we acknowledge certain things.

The public editor, Byron Calame, for the New York Times wrote a great piece on the subject, exploring for himself the Times' decision to publish the story. One aspect he pointed out was that the Administration has only recently disclosed the program to Congress once they received word that it would be exposed by the media (this was also espoused by Think Progress in a recent entry):

Eric Lichtblau, one of the two reporters who wrote the Swift story, told me the administration briefed a limited number of Congressional leaders — apparently from both parties, but not the full intelligence or banking committees — toward the beginning of the program. It wasn't until the Treasury Department learned that The Times was working on the story, Mr. Lichtblau said, that the administration apparently briefed all members of the intelligence committees.

That alone, he says, is reason enough to publish the story. He also hits on the heart of this question posed by the California Conservative that I believe we will all have to address in the coming years — whether the surveillance programs employed by the Administration are temporary executive acts in a time of war or permanent shortcuts for enforcement:

Temporary emergency measures cloaked in government secrecy can too easily become permanent shortcuts. That's why oversight is important. It is also a reason to publish the article. The reservations expressed by some of the 20 current and former government officials and industry executives who were disturbed enough to talk to The Times were based on this concern: "What they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization," in the words of the article.

Is this program a temporary measure employed in this war on terror or is it a measure the executive will for years purport to have authority to maintain in the endless fight against terrorism? If the latter is assumed, this program needs Congressional oversight and approval, period. The Constitution is not a doormat, I'd like to think it still means something in this country.

I also take offense to many points of this debate. By simply spitting out those ominous string of words, you know, the whole "national security" argument, is never supported by facts. The press has addressed national security in publishing these articles. Baquet and Keller point out that mundane details that could be vital to terrorists were omitted because they did not deserve the public's interest. Not to mention the fact the the program has already been publicly alluded to for years (a fact routinely swept away by the California Conservative).

Baquet and Keller even point out the the writers of the Washington Post's secret prison story, which prompted an EU investigation, had the names of the countries these prisons operated in but declined to publish them. If the press had a vendetta against the Bush Administration and, as some pundits like Michelle Malkin purport, were jonesing to aid the terrorists in attacking us, don't you think the New York Times would provide full disclosure?

This debate is very serious and it should not be staged in a partisan way. The press holds a very important role in our society and it is an essential freedom that we are supposedly fighting for in this war on terror. As Baquet and Keller point out, "If freedom of the press makes some Americans uneasy, it is anathema to the ideologists of terror."