Both Sides Of Times Battle Seem Keen On Kean
So what side of this raucous debate is Kean on? It kind of seems like that depends on what you're reading – his interview with National Review's Byron York or his interview with the American Prospect's Greg Sargent. More accurately, it probably depends on how these two reporters focused their articles.
Kean was one of the officials who called New York Times executive editor Bill Keller to ask him not to run the story in the first place, and has strangely been left out of many of the stories surrounding this issue. York nabbed the first interview with him, which appeared to demonstrate Kean's profound disappointment at Keller's eventual decision to go with the story. From York's story:
Kean tells National Review Online that the New York Times's decision to expose the terrorist finance effort — Kean called Times executive editor Bill Keller in an attempt to persuade him not to publish — has done terrible damage to the program. "I think it's over," Kean says. "Terrorists read the newspapers. Once the program became known, then obviously the terrorists were not going to use these methods any more."The article noted that the 9/11 commission report card on the government's anti-terror record last year gave the administration low marks in most areas, but gave a rare "A" for its performance in tracking terrorist financing. Now, according to Kean, an effective part of that has been severely damaged due to the publication of the story.
But, according to Sargent, Kean thinks it wasn't really that big of a deal:
Thomas Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey who co-chaired the 9-11 Commission, has said in an interview with me that he doesn't think the Times's publication of its story on the U.S.'s secret financial surveillance program put American lives at risk. He also said he opposes any criminal prosecution of the Times for publishing its scoop.Sargent allows the points York made – Kean's belief that the program was effective and should not have run – but stresses a slightly different aspect of the debate: The Times' right to run the story. So, while these two articles at first appear to contradict one another, they are really looking at different issues. But this tells us more than the fact there is more than one focus to this story. It demonstrates how partisan outlets can use the same story, or same person, to score points for their own side. It also tells us that Kean is the rarest of players in the public square these days – an authoritative voice accepted as legitimate by both sides.This is important because those insisting that the Times put American security at risk by publishing the story -- including Treasury Secretary John Snow and many other critics -- have pointed to the fact that Kean, along with other officials, privately argued against publication in discussions with top Times editors. In the interview with me, Kean did reiterate the fact that he'd made this case, and also reiterated that he thought publication ended the financial surveillance program.