The reign of secrecy.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: George W. Bush

I was speaking with John Dean of Watergate fame a couple of months ago, and he said flat out that the Bush Administration is even more obsessed with secrecy than Nixon's was. At the time, I thought he might have been engaging in hyperbole. But his assessment looks increasingly accurate.

This gang doesn't believe the people have the right to know. And when the media find something out and dare to tell it (that is, when the leak comes not from the White House as propaganda, in which case Bush looks the other way), the Administration goes after them with both barrels.

That's what we've been witnessing with the witch hunt against The New York Times, which was just doing its job in exposing the wholesale gathering of private financial data by the Bush Administration without a warrant.

The Wall Street Journal, a Bush cheerleader, also reported on this story, but Bush and his hatchet men singled out the Times because it serves their political interests to attack a liberal newspaper.

Representative Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security committee, wanted to get the cuffs on the editors of The New York Times.

"We're at war," he said, "and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous."

King said he would ask Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times--the reporters, the editors, and the publisher." (Gonzales needs little encouragement. He's been threatening for months to prosecute journalists.)

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert followed with "loose lips sink ships," suggesting yet again that the liberal media are endangering the troops.

One pundit on Fox even suggested the editors of The New York Times should be lined up and shot by firing squad!

Dick Cheney, who might volunteer for the duty, also dumped on the Times, saying that "some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs." This most offensive Vice President said, "That offends me."

Taking his cue from Cheney, as usual, Bush called the publication of the story "disgraceful," adding, "For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America." The revelation, he said, "makes it harder to win the war on terror."

But the terrorists surely know that the U.S. government has been tracking their financial transactions. Bush himself has boasted of this. What the Times story revealed, though, was that the Administration may be violating the law and our privacy in the process.

The Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978 says, "No Government authority may have access to, or...