Bill Keller Rewinds The Tape

LA and New York Times editors Dean Baquet and Bill Keller thought it all over and decided the best way to defend their exposure of a banking-data program that respected American law and caught terorrists was to repeat everything they were saying before.

Oh, and they have reporters at the front. Good to know.

But this must have been stuck on one of those old save-get keys:

A few days ago, Treasury Secretary John Snow said he was scandalized by our decision to report on the bank-monitoring program. But in September 2003 the same Secretary Snow invited a group of reporters from our papers, The Wall Street Journal and others to travel with him and his aides on a military aircraft for a six-day tour to show off the department's efforts to track terrorist financing. The secretary's team discussed many sensitive details of their monitoring efforts, hoping they would appear in print and demonstrate the administration's relentlessness against the terrorist threat.

How do we, as editors, reconcile the obligation to inform with the instinct to protect?

See, if Treasury Secretary John Snow strongly advised you not to expose a legal program that was catching terrorists, that would be a hint right there.

Is it going to be in all-caps next? Because that's where these comboxes usually go.

BUT IN SEPTEMBER 2003 THE SAME SECRETARY SNOW INVITED A GROUP OF REPORTERS FROM OUR PAPERS TO TRAVEL WITH HIM ON A MILITARY AIRCRAFT FOR A SIX-DAY TOUR TO SHOW OFF THE DEPARTMENT'S EFFORTS TO TRACK TERRORIST FINANCING.

Nope. Not moving me. The military aircraft's neat though.

PERO EN SEPTIEMBRE 2003 LA MISMA NIEVE DE LA SECRETARIA INVITÓ A GRUPO DE REPORTEROS DE NUESTROS PAPELES QUE VIAJARA CON ÉL EN UN AVIÓN MILITAR PARA UN VIAJE DE "SIX-DAY" A LA DEMOSTRACIÓN DE LOS ESFUERZOS DEL DEPARTAMENTO DE SEGUIR El FINANCIAMIENTO DEL TERRORISTA.

Too soon. Try this again in ten or twenty years. Meanwhile they cite a Postie:

As Robert G. Kaiser, associate editor of The Washington Post, asked recently in the pages of that newspaper: "You may have been shocked by these revelations, or not at all disturbed by them, but would you have preferred not to know them at all?

I think this is supposed to be an agonizing, gut-wrenching question.