The Despicable New York Times

The New York Times is a truly wretched publication. We're in a war here, and these idiots are pretending that it's still Vietnam! On its front page today, and on the front page of my paper the Providence Journal, is a story entitled "C.I.A. Expanding Terror Battle Under Guise of Charter Flights". It's the very detailed tale of a previously (up until this story) undercover operation involving a company called Aero Contractors Ltd., a charter airline that has been providing operational support for the CIA in the War on Terror. Here's just the beginning of the story:

"Nothing gives away the fact that Aero's pilots are the discreet bus drivers of the battle against terrorism, routinely sent on secret missions to Baghdad, Cairo, Tashkent and Kabul.

When the Central Intelligence Agency wants to grab a suspected member of Al Qaeda overseas and deliver him to interrogators in another country, an Aero Contractors plane often does the job. If agency experts need to fly overseas in a hurry after the capture of a prized prisoner, a plane will depart Johnston County and stop at Dulles Airport outside Washington to pick up the C.I.A. team on the way.

Aero Contractors' planes dropped C.I.A. paramilitary officers into Afghanistan in 2001; carried an American team to Karachi, Pakistan, right after the United States Consulate there was bombed in 2002; and flew from Libya to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the day before an American-held prisoner said he was questioned by Libyan intelligence agents last year, according to flight data and other records.

While posing as a private charter outfit - "aircraft rental with pilot" is the listing in Dun and Bradstreet - Aero Contractors is in fact a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service. The company was founded in 1979 by a legendary C.I.A. officer and chief pilot for Air America, the agency's Vietnam-era air company, and it appears to be controlled by the agency, according to former employees."

The New York Times cries foul when Valerie Plame's "cover" is blown by a conservative columnist. But that was an election-centric story used to try to hurt the Bush administration more than anything else. It had been over five years since Plame was undercover - the Wilsons bragged about her past with the cocktail circuit in Washington, her cover company had been disbanded - there was nothing there.

The New York Times, on the other hand, spills the beans on an ongoing covert legal effort in the War on Terror. The story goes as far as identifying the planes used, the airfields used, the names of the business entities, and the names of some of the people involved. The NY Times is going to use as its reason for putting the lives of the people involved in danger the fact that investigations have been opened involving human rights violations involving terror suspects that might have been transported using this method.

Accusations of widespread human rights abuses against the United States is just a technique of lawfare that our enemies, along with accomplices like the New York Times, uses against us. Do some abuses take place? Yes. Are they investigated? Yes, usually before the press finds out about it. Does the reality in any way resemble the portrait that is being painted of this country by the likes of the International Red Cross, Amnesty International, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Senators Jack Reed and Ted Kennedy? Not in the least.

The New York Times should be ashamed of itself. It won't be.