'NYT' Public Editor Posts E-Mails, But Mum On His Own Reaction to Bank Records Story

By: Joe Strupp The letter by Executive Editor Bill Keller of The New York Times posted on the paper's Web site on Sunday, explaining the decision to disclose a secret bank records monitoring program, has prompted a "strikingly good" mix of responses from readers, according to Public Editor Byron Calame.

Calame, who declined to comment on the controversy himself, has started posting a sample of the letters, which he described as "original, intense and varied."

Asked by E&P if he planned to write about the bank records story or the resulting controversy in his next column, which is slated for Sunday, he replied, "If I think I have something to say, I want to say it first to the readers of the Times. I am trying to decide what I need to do, if anything."

Some of the letters he posted support Keller's decision, with one stating "I want to applaud the Times for going with the story about the administration's program of invading the privacy of the personal finances of American people," while another said, "Please don't back down on the Times' commitment to revealing secret operations by the U.S. government. Without fear or favor, that's your mission."

Others, however, slammed the paper, with comments like "the NYT has gone over the edge in your zeal for 'scoops'" and "You have placed freedom of speech ahead of our freedom to live!"

The postings come days after the Times, as well as The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, disclosed the existence of a secret federal government program that has been monitoring personal bank accounts since shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Bush Administration officials had asked the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times to hold off publication prior to their reports, but apparently did not seek the same cooperation from the Journal.

After the stories were published, several administration officials, from Bush himself to Vice President Dick Cheney, criticized the papers, while at least one congressman suggested that The New York Times be prosecuted.

In addition to Keller's Web letter, Dean Baquet, executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, has also sought to explain his reasons for publishing the story. In a column today, Baquet wrote that the paper "considered very seriously the government's assertion that these disclosures could cause difficulties for counterterrorism programs. And we weighed that assertion against the fact that there is an intense and ongoing public debate about whether surveillance programs like these pose a serious threat to civil liberties."