Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Bush admin uses war on terror to justify war on journalists

That's what former presidential adviser David Gergen (adviser to four Presidents: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton) says. "This administration has engaged in secrecy at a level we have not seen in over 30 years," he tells Howard Kurtz. "Unfortunately, I have to bring up the name of Richard Nixon, because we haven't seen it since the days of Nixon. And now what they're doing -- and they're using the war on terror to justify -- is they're starting to target journalists who try to pierce the veil of secrecy and find things and put them in the newspapers. ... This is the first administration that I can remember, including Nixon's, that said ... that we need to think about a law that would put journalists who print national security things to bring them up in front of grand juries and put them in jail if they don't -- in effect, if they don't reveal their sources."

Source: Romanesko (3-6-06)
Posted on Monday, March 6, 2006 at 9:46 PM