On Wednesday, some reporters from The New York Times issued identical tweets decrying the Times publishing an opinion piece from Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) in which he argued that the Trump administration should send in the military to deal with violent riots and looting throughout the nation.
As Politico’s Alex Thompson pointed out, the four reporters, Taylor Lorenz, Caity Weaver, Sheera Frankel, and Jacey Fortin, all tweeted, “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”
NYT reporters in a rare open revolt over the opinion side running Tom Cotton’s op-Ed calling to deploy the military to “restore order.” pic.twitter.com/MgLuR8EunJ
— Alex Thompson (@AlxThomp) June 3, 2020
Thompson also noted that Cotton and The New York Times “have a weird history going back to 2006 when they didn’t publish a letter to the editor he wrote while a lieutenant serving in Iraq.”
Also, Cotton and the NYT have a weird history going back to 2006 when they didn’t publish a letter to the editor he wrote while a lieutenant serving in Iraq. https://t.co/lYZjDS37xo
— Alex Thompson (@AlxThomp) June 4, 2020
The reporters’ opinions were echoed by contributing op-ed writer Roxane Gay, who tweeted, “Running this puts black @nytimes writers, editors, and other staff in danger.”
Running this puts black @nytimes writers, editors and other staff in danger. pic.twitter.com/wCy4LMov5x
— roxane gay (@rgay) June 3, 2020
Gay also tweeted, “As a NYT writer I absolutely stand in opposition to that Tom Cotton editorial. We are well served by robust and ideologically diverse public discourse that includes radical, liberal, and conservative voices. This is not that. His piece was inflammatory and endorsing military occupation as if the constitution doesn’t exist.”
This is not that. His piece was inflammatory and endorsing military occupation as if the constitution doesn’t exist.
— roxane gay (@rgay) June 3, 2020
In Cotton’s op-ed, he urged President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 in order to protect communities from “nihilist criminals.” He wrote:
These rioters, if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives. Many poor communities that still bear scars from past upheavals will be set back still further. One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. …
This venerable law, nearly as old as our republic itself, doesn’t amount to “martial law” or the end of democracy, as some excitable critics, ignorant of both the law and our history, have comically suggested. In fact, the federal government has a constitutional duty to the states to “protect each of them from domestic violence.” Throughout our history, presidents have exercised this authority on dozens of occasions to protect law-abiding citizens from disorder.
As Scott Johnson of Powerline reported in 2015, in 2006 Cotton was a lieutenant serving in Baghdad when he wrote the letter to the Times, which declined to publish it. It revolved around the alleged repeated violations of the Espionage Act by New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.
Johnson wrote that in 2006, “Risen and Lichtblau blew the highly classified SWIFT terrorist finance tracking program in their Times story ‘Bank data is sifted by U.S. in secret to block terror.’ In addition to its illegality under the Espionage Act, in my opinion, the story was an act of wanton destruction with no arguable public purpose.”
Below is the full text of Cotton’s letter to then-executive editor of the Times Bill Keller and the two Times reporters that the paper refused to publish:
Dear Messrs. Keller, Lichtblau & Risen:
Congratulations on disclosing our government’s highly classified anti-terrorist-financing program (June 23). I apologize for not writing sooner. But I am a lieutenant in the United States Army and I spent the last four days patrolling one of the more dangerous areas in Iraq. (Alas, operational security and common sense prevent me from even revealing this unclassified location in a private medium like email.)
Unfortunately, as I supervised my soldiers late one night, I heard a booming explosion several miles away. I learned a few hours later that a powerful roadside bomb killed one soldier and severely injured another from my 130-man company. I deeply hope that we can find and kill or capture the terrorists responsible for that bomb. But, of course, these terrorists do not spring from the soil like Plato’s guardians. No, they require financing to obtain mortars and artillery shells, priming explosives, wiring and circuitry, not to mention for training and payments to locals willing to emplace bombs in exchange for a few months’ salary. As your story states, the program was legal, briefed to Congress, supported in the government and financial industry, and very successful.
Not anymore. You may think you have done a public service, but you have gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis here. Next time I hear that familiar explosion — or next time I feel it — I will wonder whether we could have stopped that bomb had you not instructed terrorists how to evade our financial surveillance.
And, by the way, having graduated from Harvard Law and practiced with a federal appellate judge and two Washington law firms before becoming an infantry officer, I am well-versed in the espionage laws relevant to this story and others — laws you have plainly violated. I hope that my colleagues at the Department of Justice match the courage of my soldiers here and prosecute you and your newspaper to the fullest extent of the law. By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.
Very truly yours,
Tom Cotton
Baghdad, Iraq
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