Whoa: NYT Now Has Snowden Docs Carried By Secret Courier into the US

[kpete]

Last edited Fri Aug 23, 2013, 07:27 PM - Edit history (5)

The New York Times is in the Snowden game.


And get this:

Now the Times or an agent for the paper, too, appears to have carried digital files from the United Kingdom across international lines into the United States. Discussions of how to partner on the documents were carried out in person between top Guardian editors and Times executive editor Jill Abramson, all of whom declined to comment on the movement of documents. But it appears likely that someone at one of the two papers physically carried a drive with Snowden’s GCHQ leaks from London to New York or Washington — exactly what Miranda was stopped at Heathrow for doing

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/new-york-times-guardian-snowden
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/23/1233373/-Whoa-New-York-Times-Now-Has-Snowden-Docs-Carried-By-Secret-Courier-into-the-US

To paraphrase Winston Churchill:
The New York Times can always be counted on to do the right thing after it has exhausted all other options.

per Emptywheel .. the NYT reporter this is assigned to ... is noted gov't bootlicker Scott Shane:


That reporter is not James Risen — who of course broke the original NSA story with Eric Lichtblau. It is not Charlie Savage — who had an important story based on the Snowden leaks already.

It is Scott Shane.

The Times’s Charlie Savage and other reporters have chased the NSA story aggressively, despite Snowden’s choice to go to fillmmaker Laura Poitras, theGuardian’s Glenn Greenwald, and Barton Gellman, who has written about the documents for the Washington Post. Snowden said he did not go to the Times because the paper bowed to Bush Administration demands to delay a story on warrantless wiretapping in the interest of national security; he was afraid, he said, the paper would do the same with his revelations.

Now, Times reporter Scott Shane is at work on a series of stories expected to be published next month jointly with the Guardian, a source familiar with the plans said. The source said the internal arrangement has also been the cause of some tension in the newsroom, as other national security reporters working on the NSA story — Savage and James Risen, among others — are not centrally involved in stories based on the Guardian’s documents.

Scott Shane has an increasingly consistent ability to tell grand tales that serve the interests of The Powers that Be. And somehow his stories about extremely sensitive subjects like drones don’t get chased for leaks.

- See more at: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/23/how-to-get-the-government-to-ease-up-involve-scott-shane/#sthash.SUr1gc4B.dpuf
http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/23/how-to-get-the-government-to-ease-up-involve-scott-shane/

and why we should worry:
http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/05/29/when-nyt-accused-jim-comey-of-approving-torture/
http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/04/12/scott-shane-defends-the-commander-in-chiefs-language/

[trumad]

1. Getting good.

[LearningCurve]

2. Jeffrey Toobin was the mule.

Pass it down.

This is sarcasm, I don't know how to find the smiley.

[Aerows]

3. NYT Journalists are traitors!!!!

You heard it hear, first. Throw Jill Abramson under the bus.

[leveymg]

4. Where are the anti-"GiGi" posters and why aren't they demanding indictment of NYT editors?

Amidst the curious silence we can hear the double-standards chirping.

[Aerows]

5. Jill Abramson needs to flee to Moscow!!!

Or a cell next to Manning, or she's a traitor that can't face up to her crimes of ... possessing classified information!

[kentuck]

6. Good!

At least we know that our government, along with the UK, are not going to be able to bury the information without someone knowing what is going to be buried. At least, for the time being...

[Harmony Blue]

7. Oh this will be good

[Aerows]

11. A fascinating view of propaganda

at the very least. We get to see it with our own eyes.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. The revolution is growing out of the control of the control freaks trying to stop it.

[Aerows]

9. I wish I was present in the talking points round table tonight

I'll bet there is some serious pant-shitting on "well how do we frame it from here? Now we've pissed off journalists from the NYT and in the UK."

[Fire Walk With Me]

10. Miranda was a distraction. Good work. n/t

[Wilms]

13. LOL! That's what I was thinking.

The "mule" might have been on the same flight and sailed right through as smug agents molested Miranda.

[Demo_Chris]

12. I suggest drone strikes and torture to recover the data...

It's the only way we can be safe.

[Coyotl]

14. Question #1: Is this how USG finally gets a copy, from their NYT buddies?

The only way USG can find out USG's secret actions is via journalism

[cherokeeprogressive]

15. Kick!

[Fearless]

16. Turning point is definitely

The UK govt making the guardian destroy their files. Now they will undoubtedly pay a price for it.

[valerief]

17. So the Times will edit the documents and tell lies to the public to protect the powerful? nt

[winter is coming]

19. Hey! No giving away the end of the movie!!

[grasswire]

20. the fix may be in

if this reporter is as friendly to authoritarians as they say.

[Safetykitten]

18. Oh dear...this is going to get wild.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. The Guardian was already doing the work in its New York offices

It resulted in one of the stranger episodes in the history of digital-age journalism. On Saturday 20 July, in a deserted basement of the Guardian's King's Cross offices, a senior editor and a Guardian computer expert used angle grinders and other tools to pulverise the hard drives and memory chips on which the encrypted files had been stored.
...
Twelve days after the destruction of the files the Guardian reported on US funding of GCHQ eavesdropping operations and published a portrait of working life in the British agency's huge "doughnut" building in Cheltenham. Guardian US, based and edited in New York, has also continued to report on evidence of NSA co-operation with US telecommunications corporations to maximise the collection of data on internet and phone users around the world.
...
Rusbridger took the decision that if the government was determined to stop UK-based reporting on the Snowden files, the best option was destroy the London copy and to continue to edit and report from America and Brazil. Journalists in America are protected by the first amendment, guaranteeing free speech.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london

And the Guardian's editor had this in mind from before - during the Wikileaks article work, he knew the New York Times had 1st Amendment protection he didn't in London:

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-schedule7-danger-reporters

So this idea of a 'secret courier' carrying stuff into the US is almost certainly rubbish, especially done by the NYT. The Guardian took its copies in around the time the story first broke - probably before, either physically or electronically (after all, its journalists would be targets after that, and they wouldn't want to lose their only copy).