Tony Snow Tells E&P: 'NYT' Deserves Special Criticism

By: Joe Strupp White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told E&P today that The New York Times deserves the brunt of criticism for disclosure of a secret bank records monitoring program, even though two other newspapers -- The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times -- reported the same story at almost the same time.

But he added that, no matter what the National Review argues, the Times will not be losing its White House credentials.

Snow, along with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, on Monday criticized the Times for publishing the story despite administration efforts to halt it. He told E&P that the criticism was directed at the New York paper because it "was way ahead of the other two and started [reporting on the story] much earlier. The other two were playing catch up."

Reminded that the administration had reached out to both The New York Times and Los Angeles Times with requests to hold the story, Snow repeated his assertion. "The other newspapers were not involved to the same extent," he added. "The Times is really pulling the train on this one."

Snow noted that the Treasury Department had been in talks with the New York Times for several weeks trying to get them to withhold publication, a fact previously confirmed to E&P by Times reporter Eric Lichtblau, one of two reporters on the story. He also said that the delay allowed the other papers to catch up.

"They had been working with the Times for a long time, more than a month," Snow said. "It had been a considerable period of time."

When asked why the administration had not asked the Wall Street Journal to hold off publication as it had with the other two papers, Snow said he did not know, referring such inquiries to Treasury Department Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tony Fratto. "I don't think they did because the Journal was so late to the story," Snow said. "But I don't know."

Fratto could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

Although both Executive Editor Bill Keller of The New York Times and Los Angeles Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet have written explanations to readers about why they published the stories, the Journal's editors have remained silent on the subject.

Journal managing editor Paul Steiger has not been reachable for comment since Monday, but Journal spokesman Robert Christie said he knew of no effort by the administration to halt his paper's story prior to publication.

The paper's Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot declined to comment when asked if he planned to editorialize on the Journal's decision to publish the story, saying in an e-mail message through Christie that he does not discuss pending editorial subjects. Whatever he produces will be interesting, given the paper's conservative and pro-Bush editorial line.

Snow declined to comment on other criticism of The New York Times from outside the White House, such as New York Republican congressman Peter King's assertion that the paper should be prosecuted and National Review's Monday editorial urging that the Times' White House press credentials be revoked. "They are not going to lose their credentials," he said.

"Congress acts on its own without White House direction," he added about King's comments. "I don't want to get in any further on this than we have. We have said what we are going to say."