Protest planned against 'treasonous' Times

New York Times Building in New York City

Two conservative groups plan to lead a demonstration Monday at the Washington, D.C., bureau of the New York Times to protest the newspaper's publishing of stories exposing national security intelligence programs.

The D.C. Chapter of the popular web forum FreeRepublic.com and watchdog Accuracy in Media are calling for the prosecution of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Executive Editor Bill Keller and reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for "giving aid and comfort to al-Qaida."

The protest will take place at noon at 1627 I St. N.W. in Washington.

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The groups note that despite pleadings from the federal government and Democrat and Republican members of the 9-11 Commission, the Times recently published a report detailing lawful surveillance of international banking transactions that was employed to prevent terror attacks.

The report followed the Times' publication last year exposing the federal government's National Security Agency surveillance of international-based phone and electronic communications aimed at preventing terror attacks.

The Times was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the story.

At an annual Times meeting in April, Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid confronted Sulzberger about the NSA story. The Times chief said he and his editors "made the decision that, in the battles between civil liberties on the one hand and national security on the other, civil liberties won."

Kincaid responded, "Whose civil liberties are you talking about? Certainly not the civil liberties of those Americans who are possible victims of a terrorist attack carried out by the terrorists who are under surveillance. So whose civil liberties are you protecting in this case by going public and alerting our enemies as to what we're doing?"

The co-leader of the D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com, Kristinn Taylor, said that as a military family member, he finds it "appalling that the New York Times would place the lives of soldiers in the field and civilians at home in danger by giving our national security secrets to al-Qaida."

Suzlberger, Keller, Risen and Lichtblau are nothing more than ink-stained enemy combatants who should be prosecuted for treason," he said.

U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has called for the New York Times and other newspapers to be indicted for their reports on the secret financial-monitoring program.

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"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told the Associated Press.

King, who serves as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he would contact Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging him to "begin an investigation and prosecution of the New York Times – the reporters, the editors and the publisher."

Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, said at the time that editors listened to the government's argument for withholding the information, but "remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told AP the paper acted responsibly, both in last week's report and the December wiretap issue.

"Its pretty clear to me that in this story and in the story last December that the New York Times did not act recklessly. They try to do whatever they can to take into account whatever security concerns the government has and they try to behave responsibly," Dalglish said. "I think in years to come that this is a story American citizens are going to be glad they had, however this plays out."

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