The Chicago Tribune is still defending its treachery following the Battle of Midway, wherein it reported that the Navy had broken the Japanese naval code.
It was treason or, at least, aiding and abetting the enemy.
Would anyone have approved of a paper printing that the codebreakers of Bletchley Park had broken the codes used by the Germans and the Italians? I doubt it very much.
You may recall that one of the reactions of Admiral King to the capture of U-505 was initially to order the court-martial of Capt. Gallery, as if the Germans had learned that the boat had been captured, they would have changed their codes, which were being ready by the British and Americans.
Revealing during wartime that we've broken an enemy's code isn't a brave act of bringing sunshine. It is treason. In 1942, it was by no means clear that we were going to win. If the Japanese had learned of the codebreaking, it may have prolonged the war. A lot more people would have been killed as a result of the Tribune's reckless, nay, treasonous action.
Roosevelt's initial reaction was correct: The editors and publisher of the Chicago Tribune should have been prosecuted and shot.
(H/T for reminding me of this)
Eye Can’t Resist!
1 hour ago
10 comments:
Depends upon whose side you are.....
I'm not always sure that journalists are loyal to the republic.
Yeah, journalists like John Peter Zenger, that disreputable Benjamin Franklin, Nelly Bly, Ida Tarbell, all dedicates to stirring up trouble over decent people like John D. Rockefeller and Donald Trump.
Yep, much like the New York Times and its disclosure of the SWIFT program in 2006. Oftentimes American journalists seem to happily support America's enemies.
Aaron, you don't see a difference in giving away actual secret information to an enemy in time of war, and letting the American people know that the government was rooting through their emails without any search warrants, a direct violation of the 4th Amendment?
The only problem with the NYT disclosure of the SWIFT program is that they sat on it for 2 years. It should have been an issue in the 2004 election. FTFNYT.
Good... bad... we NEED the function of news reporting in a democracy. An attack on the veracity of news reporting, either through groundless claims of lies, or through corporate ownership and manipulation from above, should be treated the same as attacks on our sovereignty, defenses, or government.
As I see in the reports, they never said the code was compromised, but it was widely accepted by readers as the only explanation. Treason is a big ask, “the act of betraying one’s country”, that is more than a bit fuzzy here.
Do I support them having done that, no. In the end, it served no journalist propose, in this context, to release that information. But again, we must be very cognizant of the role of the free press in situations akin to this...makes me want to read the details from the testimony.
re the paragon:
The disclosure of the SWIFT international funds transfer program was secret information given away to the enemy in time of war.
It was not as you say dealing with reading American's emails, but instead foreigners financial transactions funding terrorism interdicting terrorist funding and even leading to the capture of terrorists overseas. So much so that even the NYT editors themselves regret disclosing it. The disclosure caused terrorist funding networks to escape notice and has probably cost a lot of live since as terrorist have shifted their means and methods since it was disclosed.
Even the NYT editor has agreed it was a legal program and they shouldn't have disclosed it, but too late.
So yes, I see no difference except these traitors are now alive and well and sitting behind their desks contemplating how brave they were to disclose a legal secret program that saved lives, whereas those who disclosed the Japanese Code reading are long dead and will face no consequences for their actions. If you're annoyed about the long dead disclosures then, you should be at the very least annoyed about the disclosure of classified information leading to lives being lost here and now.
If the IJN had read the dots connected for them, it would have led, directly and indirectly, to more deaths of Americans, our allies, and all those suffering through the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
One could hope that Andrew J. May regretted his big mouth. The Tribune is remarkably indifferent to what was wrong with their desire to publish their 'scoop' and damn the sailors and soldiers who would pay the price.
If JN-25 and other ciphers had changed soon after, I am sure that the publishers would have paid a serious price for their 'we will not be intimidated' bravado.
So how do you feel about John Brennan (then Director of the CIA) publicly stating that he had evidence that Putin was personally involved in the "interference" in the 2016 election in January 2017? I think he revealed by that that there was a human "asset" very close to Putin. That should have immediately started Russian counter-intelligence taking a close look at the dozen or so people closest to Putin and probably it wouldn't take long to find the spy. Doesn't that fall into the same category? Recently there was a story that Brennan was so concerned to protect his spy that he carried those reports in a separate envelope and only showed them to the President. There were several possibilities back in 2017. (1) Brennan was lying, which was the explanation I preferred, or (2) the "spy" was a double agent, feeding false information to Brennan, who fell for it completely, or (3) that Brennan had just compromised the most valuable resource since we broke the Japanese code Purple. The recent story that there really was such a spy who is apparently still close to Putin seems to support (2) and does not rule out (3).
I'm not always sure that journalists are loyal to the republic.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-agrees-not-to-use-foreign-help-in-2020-campaign%3f_amp=true
https://www.google.com/amp/nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2019/06/trump-goes-on-tv-to-solicit-2020-foreign-collusion.html
I’m always sure that Trump isn’t loyal to anything, except his pocketbook.
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