Crying 'Treason': the right goes into hysterics over The New York Times.

• Author: Young, Cathy
• Position: Columns: Cathy Young - Column

TENSIONS BETWEEN THE government and the press are nothing new. But it's not every day that an administration's supporters call for executing the editor of a major newspaper.

That is what happened in June, when the San Francisco talk show host Melanie Morgan, a frequent guest on Fox News and MSNBC, declared that New York Times Editor in Chief Bill Keller should be convicted of treason for a story his newspaper had published. The article had revealed information about a Treasury Department program that monitors international financial transactions for terrorist connections.

"If he were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber" Morgan told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, never to be outdone, opined in her syndicated column, "I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution" In Congress, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) urged the Justice Department to prosecute The New York Times for "treasonous" action, though he stopped short of suggesting the death penalty.

In fact, the fantasy of Bill Keller in the dock is just that: a fantasy. Ask Gabriel Schoenfeld, the Commentary editor who had argued earlier that the editors could theoretically be prosecuted under the so-called Comint statute for disclosing the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program. Even he acknowledged that a similar prosecution for the banking story would be even less feasible.

The White House itself never called for criminal charges, but it did rail against the Times for running the story. President George W. Bush proclaimed that "the disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America"

This particular program, which used the database of financial transactions kept by the Belgium-based Swift banking consortium, was not illegal, and it was subject to congressional oversight. But it's far from clear that the disclosure jeopardized an anti-terror program.

A June 29 Times report pointed out, self-servingly but convincingly, that the administration and the Treasury Department had themselves trumpeted their efforts to follow the A1 Qaeda money trail and their successes in that quest. In 2004, the story noted, none other than Rep. King convened a hearing at which...