On a cable news show, David Frum, a conservative journalist and former speechwriter for President Bush, argued that out of the three newspapers that wrote about the secret program to search through thousands of American's bank accounts to find terror ties only the The New York Times should be prosecuted, RAW STORY has found.
On CNN's Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz, Times columnist Frank Rich wondered why the administration wasn't going after the Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times. Frum responded that he could tell from the "grammar" used in all three publications that the news originated at the Times, and that if they hadn't published the story the others wouldn't have either.
"We know from Howard's report that the White House did not ask them to step down from the story the way they asked the other two papers so maybe they thought it was fine in the Wall Street Journal," said Rich.
"I think it's pretty clear that you guys got it first and the other papers would have deferred to your leadership," asserted Frum, a one-time assistant editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
"You really think that our competitors would have deferred to what we did?" Rich incredulously asked.
"The grammar of the story as I see it reported suggests that information came to the Times first," Frum said. "If they could have gone to the other two papers and said 'We went to the Times and they agreed that this would be putting the nation's safety and security at risk that would have been...'"
"As far as I know everything you said is fictional," countered Rich. "I've seen nowhere that said the Times neccessarily had it first."
After Frum talked about "reading the grammar" again, Rich ridiculed him and asked if he meant "code" or "holding it up to the light with lemon juice."
"Frank that's cute," Frum responded.
"Time to go to journalism school, guy," Rich said near the close of the segment.
On a cable news show, David Frum, a conservative journalist and former speechwriter for President Bush, argued that out of the three newspapers that wrote about the secret program to search through thousands of American's bank accounts to find terror ties only the The New York Times should be prosecuted,