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July 11, 2006 Edition > Section: New York
Protesters Call On Government To Prosecute the New York Times
By SHALIN PUNN - Special to the Sun
July 11, 2006
At a rally outside the New York Times's office last night, protesters called on the government to "prosecute" the newspaper for its recent publication of government security secrets.
Led by a radio talk show host and Caucus for America president, Rabbi Aryeh Spero, almost 100 people gathered on 43rd Street to voice their outrage at the Times's decision to publish "national security secrets relating to our government's financial monitoring programs to track down terrorists."
Rabbi Spero said that publishing the secrets was an act of "treason and betrayal that put the public safety of the country in jeopardy.
"It is directly in violation of Article 18 of the Espionage Act," Rabbi Spero said. "I ask the government to prosecute the Times and the people to boycott it."
He added that the patriotic image of the Times had disappeared, saying that it was now only read by the "snobs on the Upper West Side" and "trans-nationalists and cosmopolitans," who called themselves "citizens of the world, not Americans."
"They think that they have had graduated from America and see themselves more as Parisians or something like that," he said.
Protesters stood facing the Times's office carrying signs displaying angry messages, such as "Osama's Favorite Paper." Men dressed as Osama bin Laden clutched copies of the newspaper, and held up signs declaring, "I Love the New York Times" and "It Makes Me Feel Like I'm In the Know!"
Speeches were given from political organizations, human-rights groups, the press, and family members of victims of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
A spokeswoman for Action Alliance, sponsors of the event alongside the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, said that the Times had "fully informed the Jihadists and creeps over in Europe" of American security efforts. "They might as well have just sent an e-mail to bin Laden," she said.
On the other side of the street, opposition came from a small group of people calling the protesters "fascists and racists."
The executive editor of the Times, Bill Keller, has defended his paper's decision to publish the information. "Our job as news organizations is to tell the people how well their elected representatives are doing in the war on terror," he said in an interview on PBS's "NewHour" on July 5. "That doesn't mean that we just tell them what they're doing wrong. It means we also try to take the measure of what they're doing that works."
He added that the first amendment gave the press the right to decide to what is and is not dangerous to publish. "What gives us that right is the guys who wrote the Constitution," he said. Police officers prevented violence from escalating by creating a barrier between the two sides of the street. The barrier was breached, however, by one of the bin Laden impersonators and a heated verbal exchange between him and two of the opposition ensued. The exchange was easily separated and no arrests were made.
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