Can You Hear Me Now?

No? Then the NSA must be tapping my satphone…

During President Bush’s Monday press conference, Bush cited a 1998 incident in which a newspaper (he didn’t out the paper, but it’s the Washington Times) revealed details of the National Security Agency’s tracking of Osama bin Laden. According to Bush’s interpretation of events, the revelation led bin Laden to learn of the NSA’s efforts, abandon his satellite phone, allude authorities and go merrily about his way in planning Sept. 11. Bush used the example to demonstrate why such revelations by media outlets (like the New York Times’ recent revelation of the NSA’s domestic surveillance) compromise national security. (Shame on you, journalists!)

But how true is Bush’s account? Earlier this week, the Washington Times defended themselves, arguing that, “The story in The Washington Times was not based on a leak, and it did not say the U.S. was monitoring the phone. Reports of bin Laden’s using a satellite phone had been in the press for years.”

And all week, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler has been following the story, backing the Washington Times’ defense and calling Bush’s interpretation of events “an urban myth.”

The Times gets pegged because of poor timing. Bin Laden ditched his satellite phone soon after the Times story ran, but Kessler goes to great lengths in citing numerous other news outlets that also reported on bin Laden’s phone.

Most worrisome is the fact that these other articles alluded the all-knowing 9/11 Commission:

But [Lee] Hamilton said he did not recall any discussion about other news outlets’ reports. “I cannot conceive we would have singled out the Washington Times if we knew about all of the reporting,” he said.

Bush and Hamilton aren’t the only ones misusing the Times example. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., and Paul Wolfowitz have also used it as ammo against journalistic leaks.

Slate’s Jack Shafer also sticks up for the Times.

Perhaps the intelligence establishment has conclusive evidence up its sleeve that proves the Washington Times article caused Bin Laden to abandon his satphone. But that would mean that 1) Bin Laden and his people didn’t read about it in either Time article; and 2) they didn’t hear Peter Bergen make reference to it on CNN the day before the Washington Times published its story. Also, by 1996 your garden variety terrorist already knew from reading press accounts that he could be tracked—and killed, as Chechen leader Dzhokar Dudayev was—by the signal emitted by his satphone.

Any way you look at it, the satphone facts were in the public domain the week the Washington Times published its story. For Bush—or anybody else—to blame the story on a leak just doesn’t hold water.

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