The 'Times' Is Us

Eric Alterman

Mainstream media coverage conveys the impression that the Administration's attacks on the New York Times were motivated by the paper's 3,550-word story detailing US attempts to track terrorist financing methods, published despite an official request for self-censorship. In fact, they constitute another front in the Bush (& Co.) war on the press. And once again many members of the media have enlisted as apparatchiks in undermining their own putative profession, preferring ideology to independence and access to accountability.

Remember: The Administration has been bragging about its post-9/11 money-tracking efforts for years. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group discussed it in its December 2002 report to the Security Council, and former State Department official Victor Comras explained that "the information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002." "Quite frankly, I don't think the terrorists were tipped off to anything," said Ron Paul, like Bush a Texas Republican.