The New York Times has declined to publish an op-ed by Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, Drudge reports. Why? According to the explanation by the NYT Op-Ed editor, David "Chicken" Shipley, it just wasn't Obama enough. Chicken Shipley said that if McCain would rewrite it so that it "mirrors Senator Obama's piece" - yes, no joke, he actually wrote that - the NYT would be pleased to run it.

Why refuse to run it? Because in the marketplace of free ideas the left routinely gets it's collective butt kicked. And they know it.

This egregious case of leftward media slant, denying any evidence of victory in Iraq which McCain cites in his op-ed, is proof of that. They simply can't compete. Worse, the NYT and their Copperhead ilk spent so much ink and whining promoting defeatism in Iraq for 5 years that rather then admit wrong and premature commitment to defeat they just avoid the facts on the ground in Iraq. Period.

They redefine diversity, inclusiveness, open-mindedness, enlightenment, intellectualism, all the other leftist buzzwords, etc., to mean that they'll just refuse to acknowledge any opinion that doesn't neatly fit their "progressive" point of view. Well, I'm laughing at their superior intellect.

Because, for conservatives, having the New York Times refuse to publish your opinion is a badge of honor. Shipley, such the schmuck that he is, will probably help McCain by promoting his op-ed, and getting more people to read it, than would have happened had they just run the piece. What a moron.

Here's the McCain op-ed which the NYT was too scared to run.

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation "hard" but not "hopeless." Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there," he said on January 10, 2007. "In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that "our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence." But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, "Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress." Even more heartening has been progress that's not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama's determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his "plan for Iraq" in advance of his first "fact finding" trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military's readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five "surge" brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his "plan for Iraq." Perhaps that's because he doesn't want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be "very dangerous."

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we've had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the "Mission Accomplished" banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don't win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Labels: 2008, Iraq, mccain, media bias, NYT, Obama

The NY Times has published an article alleging that Sen. John McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, in the late 1990s.

The NY Times alleges corruption without using the word. The story is short on new facts and old news to those who have been following politics. The Keating Five scandal is far dead and buried and everyone who has paid even a little attention to the subject understands that McCain's self-imposed penance for his involvement in that warped into a severe over-reactive legislative attempt to "reform" money in politics via the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law. McCain-Feingold, in turn, became nothing more than an obscene infringement of the First Amendment.

Indeed, were McCain corrupt he's a cheap date. According to the Washington Post, "Iseman clients have given nearly $85,000 to McCain campaigns since 2000, according to records at the Federal Election Commission." Best put (via David Freddoso): "Eighty-five grand? Over eight years? That's it? He was the chairman of the [Senate Commerce] committee! If McCain is an extortionist, he's a pathetic excuse for one."

McCain's legal council, Bob Bennett (brother of Bill Bennet, by the way), pointed out to the NBC today show that the Times (nor the Wa. Post for that matter) didn't bother adding facts that support McCain's defense:

A Washington attorney representing Mr. McCain, Robert Bennett, told NBC's "Today" show that Mr. McCain's staff provided the Times with "approximately 12 instances where Senator McCain took positions adverse to this lobbyist's clients and her public relations firm's clients," but none of the examples were included in the paper's story.
We'll see where this all goes, but so far, it could actually work to McCain's advantage. After all, this digging up of old bones is the best gift that the NY Times could have given to McCain -- for nothing can rally conservatives to McCain harder or faster than a traditional slimy and slanted NY Times hit piece!

Meanwhile, Gabriel Sherman of The New Republic (warning: the same magazine who tried to sell Beauchamp) has an interesting report on the internal politics at the NY Times and their decision to run the story:

The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.
Read the rest.

Beyond all this is some notable commentary regarding McCain's apparent "disappointment" that the NY Times - which had often published positive views on McCain - would turn on him.

Andrew McCarthy summarized thusly:

Senator McCain appears to have been smeared by the Times. I'm sorry that happened, but if indignation is the order of the day, count me out. You see, I also feel sorry — really sorry — for the intelligence officers who've been maligned as torturers, for those who want the immigration laws enforced and are libeled as racists, for those who doubt the wisdom of campaign finance reform and are glibly scandalized as promoters of public corruption, and so on. Each of these Gray Lady smears has a common thread: John McCain has been only too happy to help, and to bask in the resulting glow: the Times' very own favorite Republican.

The Senator's reaction says it all: he's "disappointed in the New York Times." Of course, we can only be disappointed by those from whom we expect better. McCain expects better from the Times because he's accustomed to getting it, and he's accustomed to getting it because he's been very good about holding up his end of the bargain — especially when it comes to demagoguing the Right. The Times is a politicized rag and no one should take satisfaction in seeing McCain subjected to its journalistic version of waterboarding. I only wish I were convinced the Senator would learn the right lesson from this experience. I'm not.
Well, okay, so it appears that McCain will still have to do some wooing before conservatives rally to McCain, NY Times hitpiece or not.

Labels: 2008, campaign finance, mccain, media bias, NYT

Well there's a first for everything apparently. Finally, The New York Times has published a thoughtful, unapologist, solid opinon piece condemning recent Islamic outrages without resorting to blaming American foreign policy, Israel, Dick Cheney, Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh. I'm speechless.

Muslims who wonder why non-Muslims are often baffled, angered, even frightened by some governments’ interpretation of Islamic law need only look to the cases of two women in Saudi Arabia and Sudan threatened with barbaric lashings.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman who was gang-raped was sentenced to 90 lashes. The reason? Before the rape, the woman, who was then 19, had been in a car with a man who was not a family member — a crime under the kingdom’s legal code, which is based on a strict Wahabi reading of Islamic law. Punishing the victim of a brutal rape is reprehensible. Then a Saudi appeals court more than doubled her lashings to 200 and added six months’ jail time, apparently because she had the audacity to publicly challenge the court’s ruling. Her lawyer had his license to practice suspended.

In Sudan, a British primary school teacher was originally threatened with 40 lashes, a fine, or six months in jail after her class of 7-year-olds voted to name a teddy bear Muhammad. The government accused her of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad is one of the most common names among Muslims, including the student who suggested it for the teddy bear. On Thursday, the court reduced the teacher’s sentence to 15 days in jail, but found her guilty and ordered her deported.

Saudi Arabia and Sudan have notoriously bad human rights records and the cases have ominous political overtones. The Khartoum government — so willing to punish the crime of naming a teddy bear — is responsible for the genocide in Darfur. The case was widely seen as a warning against Westerners who protest that mass slaughter. In the Saudi case, the girl was a member of the country’s persecuted Shiite minority, and experts said her sentence was harsh even by Saudi standards.

Khartoum’s few friends, in the Arab League and China, should make clear that such cynical games will only increase its isolation. The world should expect better from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who has introduced some — but not nearly enough — political and judicial reforms. The king has a hallowed responsibility in Islam as Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. What one Muslim leader, Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain, said about the Sudan case can also be applied to the Saudis’: “How does this help the cause of Islam? What kind of message and image are we portraying about our religion and our culture?”

Labels: Islamic extremism, NYT, Saudi Arabia, sudan

On Thursday, the United States Navy announced that Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a Navy Seal killed in Afghanistan, would be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during a mission to find a key Taliban leader in 2005. This will be only the third Medal of Honor awarded since 2001, and the first given for actions in Afghanistan.

As a resident of New York City, I opened the New York Post on Friday morning and read about the Lt. Murphy's heroics. And then, by force of habit, I checked the New York Times. Certainly, since Lt. Murphy is a New Yorker (Long Island) they would cover the story. Certainly, given the noble shade the paper grants the Afghan war (as opposed to the Iraq war), they would cover the story.

I open the paper…nothing. Tried again on Saturday and Sunday…nothing. Not a word. Apparently, it never happened. Apparently, Lt. Murphy's courageous actions in a far-off land didn't pass editorial muster.

Surrounded by over 50 Taliban fighters, Lt. Murphy's four-man reconnaissance patrol was pinned down and in need of support. In order to save his fellow SEALs, Lt. Murphy, who was already wounded, crawled into the open to radio for help, further exposing himself to enemy fire. He was killed, but only after successfully calling for help, allowing for the rescue of one of his men.

But you've never heard about this if you read the New York Times. Say what you want about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there are no excuses for the "paper of record" not running this story. The Washington Post noted it, as did the Los Angeles Times. But according to the New York Times, this story of courage and sacrifice is not "fit to print."
-- Pete Hegseth

Labels: Iraq, media bias, NYT

[Washington Post] After two weeks of denials, the New York Times acknowledged that it should not have given a discount to MoveOn.org for a full-page advertisement assailing Gen. David H. Petraeus.

The liberal advocacy group should have paid $142,000 for the ad calling the U.S. commander in Iraq "General Betray Us," not $65,000, the paper's public editor wrote yesterday.

Clark Hoyt said in his column that MoveOn was not entitled to the cheaper "standby" rate for advertising that can run any time over the following week because the Times did promise that the ad would run Sept. 10, the day Petraeus began his congressional testimony. "We made a mistake," Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis was quoted as saying.

... The Times also violated its own advertising policy, which bars "attacks of a personal nature," Hoyt reported. He wrote that the episode "gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the 'liberal media.' "
An apology... or is it? The reason the Times is bashed as a bastion of liberal media is because, you know, it is a bastion of liberal media.

Labels: Iraq, media bias, NYT, Petraeus

Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy derides the New York Times for - what else! - misrepresenting the new Terrorist Surveillance Program bill by suggesting the Feds now have unprecidented search and surveillance powers.

The Times is engaged here in the worst kind of journalistic abuse. Risen and Lichtblau sprinkle their story with the names of several experts, but not a single one is identified as standing behind the explosive claims quoted above. Those are attributed to “experts” — unnamed. And unnamed for good reason: What the Times represents as a respectable, mainstream interpretation of the new law is actually a fringe construction unsupportable by any coherent reading.

All the very narrow reform bill really accomplished was a return of FISA (and only for the next six months) to its original design, stripped of the gloss recently imposed by the imperious FISA court. The law gives Americans modest protection against some forms of national security surveillance but otherwise acknowledges that the NSA and CIA have a free hand to target people outside the U.S. — especially if, as is usually the case, these overseas targets are contacting people who are also outside the U.S.; and even if, as is sometimes the case, they are contacting people who happen to be inside our country (and may or may not be Americans).

The reform bill allows the attorney general and the director of National Intelligence to “acquire foreign intelligence information concerning persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States.” Could that information implicate Americans? Of course it could. If the government is monitoring an al Qaeda operative in Afghanistan and he happens to call you, an American citizen in, say, St. Louis, it will monitor your conversation. But just your calls with him. If the government then wants to take the next step and monitor all your calls, get your business records, or search your house, it still has to go to the FISA court to get authorization. The new law does not change that.

Labels: media bias, NYT, surveillance, TSP, wiretap

In a post titled "Genocide Preferred" Jules Crittenden correctly chastises the New York Times for demanding US troops leave Iraq now while simultaneously acknowledging that genocide could likely occur.

[NY Times] It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit... Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

Mind you, this is the same newspaper that continuously demands action (always a vague word with antiwar liberals) be taken to end the genocide in Sudan!

So apparently genocide is bad in Darfur but okey-dokey in Baghdad. (They seem to forget that it was only US and British airpower and a threat of ground troops that ended genocide in Kosovo [and all without UN approval]).

Come again?

Either you're for liberty or you're not, and if you are it generally means you have to at times fight for it.

Similarly convoluted and gutless, Democrats on Capital Hill are proposing yet another toothless withdraw bill that will only undercut our troops fighting there and embolden our enemies.

Michael Goldfarb explains that the proposed "Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act" (H.r. 2956) demands that the US Secretary of Defense reduce troops in Iraq 120 days after the bill is passed and "complete the reduction and transition to a limited presence of the Armed Forces in Iraq" by April 1, 2008.

What constitutes a 'limited presence' is up to the discretion of the White House. So if President Bush believes we should 'draw down' to 125,000 men, that's what will happen... It's clear that Congressional Democrats want American troops out of Iraq--yesterday, if possible. But why then, do they refuse to consider legislation specifically do to that? Despite all the bluster and inflammatory rhetoric that will accompany it, the plain language of this bill still leaves Iraq in the president's hands. As such, it doesn't represent the 'change of course' that Democrats are promising. And given that they ultimately gave the president the Iraq funding bill he wanted, that shouldn't be a surprise.

But rest assured, that's not how House Democratic leaders will pitch it to MoveOn and DailyKos. According to Speaker Pelosi, the measure would 'begin the responsible redeployment of U.S. troops within 120 days and complete redeployment by April 1, 2008.' While true on its face, there's one major caveat: the president will define all the terms.

If Democrats are being truthful, they will acknowledge that this amounts to little more than a 'sense of the Congress,' designed to state (loudly) what the majority Democrats think about Iraq, without forcing any action. To the extent that we don't know what the Democrats think, I suppose it's instructive--but I already got the message.
Republican leaders, Goldfarb reports, are justifiably attacking the move.

Meanwhile, General David Petraeus is begging for the time he was promised to conduct his surge (phase one of the surge - positioning the troops like chessboard pieces - is over, and phase two of the surge - conducting offensive operations against insurgents - has only just begun).

[Ralph Peters] Q: Now that the surge is fully in place, what's your sense of the positives and negatives thus far? If you could have more of any one item, what would it be? Troops? Time? Iraqi unity?

[Gen. Petraeus] A: I can think of few commanders in history who wouldn't have wanted more troops, more time or more unity among their partners; however, if I could only have one at this point in Iraq, it would be more time. This is an exceedingly tough endeavor that faces countless challenges.
Given, neither Petraeus nor any other proponent expects the surge to be a panacea to our problems in Iraq. But it's already showing success. Should Petraeus report in September that we're succeeding he'll no doubt propose the next steps. He's a straight up commander. Should it not be working he'll report just that too.

But that's why those who oppose the war are fighting to undermine Petraeus before September - they fear his report will be positive.

Labels: democrats, Iraq, NYT, Petraeus

This is a great commentary by New York Times columnist Judith Miller, writing in the Wall Street Journal, defending the behavior of NYPD cops who conducted reasonable surveillance on activists during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

She makes compelling arguments and notes how many activist groups were threatening violence and civil disobedience in the weeks prior. She also points out that the only incident of violence came when a protester(s) attacked a police officer, beating him unconscious.

The real shame, of course, is that Judith Miller could publish such a piece in her employer's paper, but had to go across the street to the competition.

Did the New York Police Department spy on peaceful groups and citizens trying to exercise their constitutional right to protest the renomination of President Bush at the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2004? This is what civil liberties groups allege, and what the NYPD denies. Who is right?

The issue is at the heart of several interrelated suits being adjudicated in federal district courts in New York, many of them filed on behalf of the 1,800 protesters who were arrested during the largest protest at a political convention in American history. In its complaints, the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represents seven of those arrested, accuses the department of having violated the law by its mass arrests, holding people in protracted custody for minor violations, and fingerprinting those detained.

While the complaints themselves do not accuse the police of monitoring citizens for their political views, Christopher Dunn, the civil liberties group's associate legal director, said that there were "many indications" that the police had investigated people who posed no threat either to the city or the convention. The allegation was echoed in a front-page, 2,500-word article that led the New York Times in late March. Based partly on his review of more than 600 pages of the NYPD's still-secret "raw intelligence documents" and "summary digests of observations from both the field and the department's cyberintelligence unit," reporter Jim Dwyer concluded that the NYPD's " R.N.C. Intelligence Squad" had chronicled the views and plans of people who had "no apparent intention of breaking the law."

Stung by the criticism, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, David Cohen, the deputy police commissioner for intelligence, and Paul J. Browne, the NYPD press spokesman, outlined in interviews last week the nature of the police's concerns, its conduct, and the goals of its intelligence surveillance effort that they told the Times and still argue enabled some 800,000 people to protest peacefully and helped keep New York safe. "The department was indifferent to the political views of the attendees," said Mr. Cohen, a former senior official at the Central Intelligence Agency. "The pre-convention surveillance was aimed solely at maintaining civil order."

The outcome of these disputes has important ramifications, and not just for New York's efforts to identify and prevent terrorist and other threats to the city. It also risks tarnishing what the NYPD thinks should be regarded as a tremendous achievement.

What Mr. Cohen called the "co-mingled threat" of "terrorism, anarchist violence and unlawful civil disobedience" drove both the surveillance program and the policies of mass arrests and blanket fingerprinting. He said that there was no special "squad" to provide political intelligence for the convention, as the Times reported.

The 600-plus pages of still-secret intelligence documents that this reporter has also reviewed do list numerous peaceful organizations and individuals planning to attend the protests, including as the Times accurately noted, three New York City elected officials, street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, environmentalists, and people opposed to the death penalty and other Republican policies. The documents also chronicle some seemingly innocuous planning for the protests -- such as the concerts being held in several cities by the satirical performance troop, Billionaires for Bush -- as well as legal training and other services that similar groups and individuals were providing, or planning to provide, protesters.

But the material this reporter read does not show that the police monitored such peaceful groups and individuals because they opposed their political views, and the police say groups like "Billionaires for Bush" were never infiltrated. Rather, the intelligence documents appear focused mainly on estimating the number and motivations of people who were planning to attend the convention, as well as potential threats to the gathering, its delegates and the police.

The raw intelligence files also focus on often innovative nonviolent and violent disruption techniques that were discussed at public meetings and on the Internet by more than 18 groups and coalitions planning protests at the convention, several of which have histories of violent activity at earlier demonstrations.

The courts will eventually decide whether such surveillance and policies derived from it were legal and appropriate. But my reading of the 600 pages of intelligence reports, coupled with interviews of senior police officials, a review of speeches, and documents involving the law suits, suggests that the department's surveillance effort was largely threat-driven. It was prompted by legitimate concerns about how to assure the safety of both New Yorkers and protestors, 65% of whom came from outside the state.

While the line between appropriate and illegal surveillance of political groups is not always obvious or as a matter of law clearly drawn, the police complain that the department's actions have not been framed in the context of the threat New York was facing.

In an interview, Mr. Cohen argued, for instance, that a balanced appraisal of the city's surveillance effort should have emphasized the "ongoing and continuous threat" confronting the police. Since 9/11, he said, the city has experienced or prevented 11 separate terrorist plots, roughly two a year -- beginning with the still-unsolved anthrax letter attacks of October, 2001, in which five people died (one in Manhattan), to the thwarting of a plot in July 2006 to destroy the PATH subway linking New Jersey to Lower Manhattan and blow up the retaining wall at Ground Zero to flood lower Manhattan.

The 18-month period between the selection of New York and the convention itself was "the most intense threat period of the post September 11 era to date," Mr. Cohen said. Six terrorist attacks by al Qaeda-related or inspired groups in far-flung Casablanca, Jakarta, Istanbul, Moscow and Madrid killed nearly 300 people and wounded more than 3,000 during that period.

The police also had to expect and prepare for the worst because of the violence surrounding earlier large protests since 1999. "Inadequate advance understanding, or knowledge of the plans and intentions of those prepared to commit violence, undermined earlier efforts to contain disruptions, Mr. Cohen said. At Seattle's WTO protest in 1999, for instance, a relatively small group of activists among crowds of at least 50,000 people triggered grotesque mayhem -- violent confrontations with the police, $3 million in property damage, and numerous injuries and arrests.

Mr. Cohen said, and his intelligence files suggest, that the police were concerned about four categories of protestors: anarchists and others openly committed to violently shutting down the city; a second, far-larger group intent on acts of civil disobedience to disrupt proceedings through peaceful if illegal means; individuals with criminal histories embedded in both these groups; and people who had previously tried to hide or alter their identities when arrested. It was the need to ascertain true identities, he said, that led to the decision to fingerprint those arrested. This, in turn, required the police to arrest demonstrators who were violating the law, rather than give them summonses, since people are fingerprinted only after an arrest.

Eight weeks before the convention, activists designated Aug. 31, 2004, in online postings as a day for civil disorder, the "Day of Chaos," or "A-31." Groups of anarchists began identifying protest targets in public advisories, press releases and on Web sites.

For many, Madison Square Garden, the convention site, was "ground zero," which activists discussed entering with false identification. Others planned to prevent delegates from reaching the convention by blinding bus driver windows or disabling charter buses, lying under vehicles, and using rented cabs and flotillas of bicycles to clog bus routes.

A least 24 hotels throughout the city hosting state delegations were identified on Web sites as delegation hosts at which protestors could converge to harass delegates and disrupt normal hotel business. Reinforced police presence at the Warwick, the Westin and Roosevelt, Commissioner Kelly said in a 2004 speech, prevented demonstrators from "rushing" the delegates' hotels.

The intelligence files show that activists had also planned, and later attempted unsuccessfully, to close down Wall Street, disrupt traffic at Herald Square and elsewhere, crash delegate parties, stage sit-ins in hotel and office lobbies, seal off subway stations with arrest tape and switch subway signs to disorient delegates. There were plans to vandalize retail stores like Starbucks and McDonalds with what Mr. Cohen called "brick and bomb tactics"; activists were also urged to disrupt Broadway performances attended by delegates on Aug. 31, designated as "Chaos on Broadway."

Other businesses seen as hostile to the activists' agenda -- the Carlyle Group, Chevron, the Rand Corporation and Hummer of Manhattan -- were designated for "direct actions" ranging from blocking entrances to breaking windows and setting fires. The files showed that activists with previous arrests for violent conduct were monitored by NYPD plain-clothes detectives, and that information about their convention plans was shared with police departments in other states and counties.

Activists discussed the use of disruptive tactics that had worked so well in Seattle -- Molotov cocktails, ammonium-nitrate bombs with nails, live CS canisters, Tiki Torches (soup cans filled with flammable substances attached to the end of a stick) water guns filled with flammable liquids and chemical irritants, urine or paint, and mobile infrared transmitters to change traffic signals.

The files document at least eight training sessions in New York and outside that were organized by anarchists and other experienced activists. Techniques for evading or countering the police were taught. The New York City Anarchist Tribes, for example, held martial-arts training in Manhattan in January, 2004. The Syracuse Peace Council, in Ithaca, N.Y., which planned to block traffic in New York, held weekend training aimed at "building our own radical activist infrastructure."

The "Constitutional Rights Enforcement and Support Team," an Internet-based group, stated on its Web site that "many people who join this group will die, be wounded, or jailed" in its efforts to counter "police brutality." Ashira Affinity, a Colorado-based anarchist group, urged members to join protests that were "strategic, ruthless, efficient, as well as chaotic."

In addition to the usual crackpot threats posted in Internet chat rooms, such as the one by a writer who vowed to "fly a 767 into the convention and take care of the American problem on Thursday" -- which the police nevertheless could ill afford to ignore -- came vaguer if still troubling counsel from would-be protestors: "Give them the New York they are afraid of," urged one listing.

In Queens, police arrested three "Black bloc" anarchists who had three imitation handguns, a butterfly knife, pellets and a map of New York City. A man arrested on Aug. 20 for criminal trespass and possession of burglary tools in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, had been arrested more than 25 times in California for various offenses.

Critics of the police complain that never had so many protestors at a political convention been arrested. But Mr. Cohen notes that the arrest of some 1,807 out of nearly 800,000 protestors is the lowest arrest-to-crowd ratio of any major political gathering. Had the arrest-to-crowd ratio at a Miami protest in November 2003 been repeated in New York, 10,000 people would have been arrested.

The convention's only serious injury, Mr. Kelly said, was sustained by a detective who was pulled from his scooter and kicked unconscious by a demonstrator. He called the police's handling of the event one of his department's "finest hours," sentiments that were incidentally shared by the Times, which editorialized soon after the convention that the "intense planning" and "well-disciplined use of force" by the police had shown how disruptive tactics could be countered.

New York's fractious history over political surveillance has enhanced distrust between the city's police and civil libertarians. Though the Supreme Court has ruled that undercover surveillance of political groups is generally legal, the NYPD's abuses of political monitoring of anti-Vietnam war activists in the late 1960s led the courts to impose restrictions in 1985 on the department's monitoring of political protests. After the 9/11 attacks, however, the police sought and secured from the courts a loosening of those restrictions to prevent terrorism -- the so-called Handschu guidelines. But as a result, what kind of political surveillance the police can conduct is once again before the courts, and in the press.

Last February, the judge who had loosened the Handschu restrictions in 2003 harshly criticized the police in a separate but related political surveillance case involving the videotaping of protests, ruling that there must be an "indication of unlawful activity" before a political group or a person's political activity can be investigated. The police have challenged that ruling on grounds that this would effectively restore the pre-9/11 limits. They fear it might also dissuade other law enforcement agencies from adopting a similar approach. In fact, the controversy is already having that effect.

That would be a pity. For although I am devoted to the First Amendment and privacy rights, and believe that effective judicial and administrative oversight is critical to preventing police abuses, I also want the NYPD to have the tools and programs to protect the city from terrorist attacks. If that means scanning the Internet and sending plainclothes officers to public meetings to learn about planned actions that might turn violent, or be infiltrated and taken over by violent dissidents, so be it. Unfortunately, the current controversy is already making other police departments wary of following the NYPD's effective tactics.

Some law enforcement officials in the Twin Cities fear there may be many arrests during the 2008 Republican convention there. But Tim Lynaugh, a police officer assigned to convention planning, said his department hopes there will be almost none. But with fewer than than 600 police officers (New York has 37,000 in uniform), they will probably need outside assistance to assure public safety.

While the NYPD's advice was helpful when officers from both departments met in January to discuss preparations, police in the Twin Cities would probably not emulate New York's surveillance program prior to its own convention, even if it had the manpower to do so. "If what we've read about their program is true," Mr. Lynaugh said, "That is just not how we operate."

Labels: NYT, police, RNC, surveillance