Germany wants to be a player

I’ve got all kinds of things to say about this story but have to get going. Read it. It’s kind of funny.

Looking at Leakers

We go to Protein Wisdom again today for another story out of Newsweek. The leaker for the NSA surveillance program is being investigated, at the same time that Democrats have passed a law saying “Ok – now that it’s all out in the open and everyone knows we’re doing this, we’ll go ahead and say it’s ok”.

From Newsweek:

The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)-the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm’s desktop computer, two of his children’s laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI.

Dinocrat notes the Democrats passage of the bill while following up on “hawala transactions” and how they work.

We had been wondering why the Democratic Congress — seemingly a little out of character — went along with the extension of the approval of warrantless surveillance that the President just signed. Now perhaps we know. And we are reminded yet again of the harm done to the United States by the New York Times in its scandalous reporting on the monitoring of the SWIFT money transfer system.

Scott Beauchamp

Ok – so now we really know that Scott is a fairy tale teller.

Here’s what I want to know. What the heck was TNR “investigating” and “fact checking” when they said the following after this whole affair first came up?

This was before publication.

All of Beauchamp’s essays were fact-checked before publication. We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details.

Then questions came up, so what did TNR do:

After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp’s account.

In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp’s company, and all corroborated Beauchamp’s anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)

What the ?????

UPDATE: Protein Wisdom has his take on this too today.

[John Cole] The funniest thing in all of this is that there is no way to prove one way or another Beauchamp is lying, but now, even if Beauchamp is lying, he comes out looking better than the asshole armchair commandos attacking him.

[Jeff Goldstein]Sure. Why wouldn’t a guy who published lies in a prominent national policy magazine come out looking better than those who called him on those lies — and turned out to be correct?

After all, Beauchamp is only guilty of lying. Whereas those who “attacked” him? They’re guilty of being, well, terrible meanies.