Frank Rich: Any 'witch hunt' for traitors should begin in the W. H.

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Sun, 14 May 2006 00:44:12 -0700 (PDT)

Frank Rich: Any 'witch hunt' for traitors should begin in the

W. H.

 

 

 

Times' Frank Rich: Any 'witch hunt' for traitors should begin in the

White House

RAW STORY

Published: Saturday May 13, 2006

 

Defending journalists who have been castigated as traitors for

exposing government blunders, New York Times columnist Frank Rich

writes that any " witch hunt " for traitors should begin in the White

House, RAW STORY has found.

" What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the

Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise

about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but

the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort

riddled with ineptitude, " Rich writes.

" It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press'

exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at

risk and potentially sabotaged national security, " Rich continues.

" That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for

traitors, that's where it should begin. "

Ex-CIA Director Porter Goss should not be allowed to " escape into

retirement unexamined, " Rich argues, calling him " so inept that an

overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaida double agent. "

" His mission was not to protect our country but to prevent the airing

of administration dirty laundry, including leaks detailing how the

White House ignored accurate CIA intelligence on Iraq before the war, "

Rich writes.

Rich ends his column by suggesting that if Air Force General Michael

Hayden is confirmed by the Senate to replace Goss then " someone should

charge those senators with treason, too. "

Excerpts from Rich's " Will The Real Traitors Please Stand Up? " set for

Sunday's edition of the New York Times:

#

When America panics, it goes hunting for scapegoats. But from Salem

onward, we've more often than not ended up pillorying the innocent.

Abe Rosenthal, the legendary New York Times editor who died last week,

and his publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, were denounced as

treasonous in 1971 when they defied the Nixon administration to

publish the Pentagon Papers, the secret government history of the

Vietnam War. Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials

who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war

and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes. It was precisely

those lies and mistakes, of course, that were laid bare by the

thousands of pages of classified Pentagon documents leaked to both The

Times and The Washington Post.

This history is predictably repeating itself now that the public has

turned on the war in Iraq. The administration's die-hard defenders are

desperate to deflect blame for the fiasco, and, guess what, the

traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the

newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on

Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the CIA's

secret " black site " Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the

Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from

publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism.

#

TIMES SELECT SUBSCRIBERS CAN READ FULL RICH COLUMN HERE

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Frank_Rich_Any_witch_hunt_for_0513.html