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Ann Coulter - never afraid to call a spade a spade - charges that the New York Times is guilty of treason.
She very well may have a point.
She very well may have a point.
Coulter: N.Y. Times Committed 'Treason'
Ann Coulter once said that her "only regret with [Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
Her acid comments about America's most influential newspaper no doubt found new meaning in the wake of the Times' decision to disclose top-secret programs the U.S. government is using to capture terrorists.
"Thanks to The New York Times, the easiest job in the world right now is: 'Head of Counterintelligence -- Al-Qaida.'" Coulter wrote Wednesday in her syndicated column. "You just have to read the New York Times over morning coffee, and you're done by 10 a.m."
Coulter was writing about what she called "the latest of a long list of formerly top-secret government antiterrorism operations that have been revealed by the Times," noting that "last week the paper printed the details of a government program tracking terrorists' financial transactions that has already led to the capture of major terrorists and their handmaidens in the U.S."
To Coulter, a lawyer, that amounted to nothing less than treason, and she wants the newspaper punished for betraying a vital antiterrorism operation meant to prevent future 9/11s.
"Maybe treason ended during the Vietnam War when Jane Fonda sat laughing and clapping on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun used to shoot down American pilots," Ann recalled. "She came home and resumed her work as a big movie star without the slightest fear of facing any sort of legal sanction.
"Fast forward to today, when New York Times publisher 'Pinch' Sulzberger has just been named al-Qaida's 'Employee of the Month' for the 12th straight month.
Observing that prior to the Vietnam War, "this country took treason seriously," she charged that Americans are now being told that newspapers have a right to commit treason because of "freedom of the press."
Liberals, she wrote, invoke 'freedom of the press' like some talismanic formulation that requires us all to fall prostrate in religious ecstasy. On liberals' theory of the First Amendment, the safest place for Osama bin Laden isn't in Afghanistan or Pakistan; it's in the New York Times building."
Freedom of them press, she explained "does not mean the government cannot prosecute reporters and editors for treason -- or for any other crime. The First Amendment does not mean Times editor Bill Keller could kidnap a child and issue his ransom demands from the New York Times editorial page. He could not order a contract killing on the op-ed page. Nor can he take out a contract killing on Americans with a Page One story on a secret government program being used to track terrorists who are trying to kill Americans ...
"The federal statute on treason, 18 USC 2381, provides in relevant part: 'Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States ... adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000.'"
Citing the cases of at Ezra Pound, Mildred Gillars ("Axis Sally") and Iva Toguri D'Aquino ("Tokyo Rose") who were all charged with treason for radio broadcasts intended to demoralize the troops during World War II, Coulter wrote that the first two were were severely punished and Pound committed to a mental hospital.
"There was no evidence that in any of these cases the treasonable broadcasts ever put a single American life in danger. The law on treason doesn't require it," she wrote.