NYT Forced to Acknowledge U.S. Spy Efforts due to Third Party Release of Leaked Documents

In Daniel Ellsberg’s day, the NYT was seen as a place friendly to whistle-blowers and those who have documents exposing secret government activities. No longer. Further, the NYT refuses to post a link to the leaked documents, only linking to its own hand-wringing articles. Nowadays, secret documents are leaked elsewhere and the NYT needs to play catch-up, coupling its reluctant acknowledgement with a warning about the damage that could be caused by leaks about secret U.S. activity:

The leak has the potential to do real damage to Ukraine’s war effort by exposing which Russian agencies the United States knows the most about, giving Moscow a potential opportunity to cut off the sources of information. Current and former officials say it is too soon to know the extent of the damage, but if Russia is able to determine how the United States collects its information and cuts off that flow, it may have an effect on the battlefield in Ukraine.

The leak has already complicated relations with allied countries and raised doubts about America’s ability to keep its secrets. After reviewing the documents, a senior Western intelligence official said the release of the material was painful and suggested that it could curb intelligence sharing. For various agencies to provide material to each other, the official said, requires trust and assurances that certain sensitive information will be kept secret.

On the other hand, if you are part of the U.S. security state, the NYT is more than happy to post your propaganda, as it did in the case of the Nord Stream Pipeline. Unbelievably, knowing that it’s “explanation” of the pipeline destruction is bullshit, the NYT suggests it’s not a good idea to dig further into who destroyed the pipeline:

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It’s a good day to celebrate the immense good fortune of NYT reporters who get to draw big salaries while not having to do the difficult work of actually practicing journalism.

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Proposed new Mission Statement for the New York Times: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.

Joe Biden promised to disable the pipeline prior to its destruction:

Biden’s neocon crony, Victoria Nuland, helped to lead the post-destruction cheerleading, as Aaron Maté reminds us, but, again, Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.

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No wonder the corporate media and their U.S. government partners hate Twitter 2.0…

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

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