This is the feckless explaination given by the NYT in reference to its revealing the name of the interrogator of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks:
The Public Editor
Weighing the Risk
By CLARK HOYT
Published: July 6, 2008
TWO weeks ago, over the objections of his lawyer and the Central Intelligence Agency, The Times named the interrogator who used shrewd psychology, not rough stuff, to get Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, to talk.The interrogator and his family fear that the newspaper has endangered their lives, and many readers asked why The Times could not have withheld his name. Suzanne Dupre of Evanston, Ill., said she was shocked by The Times’s decision. Deuce Martinez “was loyally serving his country in a dangerous job,” she wrote. “The Times has made him a marked man.”
….The Times and other news organizations have been asked over the years to withhold stories for fear of harm. And they have done so when a persuasive case has been made that the danger — whether to national security or an individual — is real and imminent. In this case, there is no history of Al Qaeda hunting down individuals in the United States for retribution. It prefers dramatic attacks that kill indiscriminately. And The Times took reasonable precautions to prevent Martinez from being easily found.
This is all coming from a newspaper that went into convulsions over the ‘outing’ of Valerie Plame, and does not hesitate to splash national security secrets across its own headlines. Hoyt and company thought nothing of disclosing the existence of a wiretapping program designed to thwart Al Qaeda terrorist operations on U.S. soil.
……I understand how readers can think that if there is any risk at all, a person like Martinez should never be identified. But going in that direction, especially in this age of increasing government secrecy, would leave news organizations hobbled when trying to tell the public about some of the government’s most important and controversial actions.
The New York Slimes interpretation of ‘government secrecy’ is right in line with their standard practice treasonous behavior.
Even if it means dragging the country down with him, Arthur Sulzberger would give Bin Laden the keys to the national security vault, just to sell a newspaper.