NYT Ombudsman Admits They Were Wrong to Leak Classified Information

Byron Calame, the reader Ombudsman for the New York Times, has reversed his earlier support for the NYT's decision to publish classified details of a secret government program to trace international terrorist financial transactions. It only took a few months and a Congressional Resolution condemning the Gray Lady's betrayal of the public trust for Calame to see the error of his ways.

The admission is buried on the second page of an article called, "Can ‘Magazines’ of The Times Subsidize News Coverage?" As noted by Michelle Malkin, the mea culpa is loaded with weasel words, but eventually it emerges that Calame thinks the New York Times should not have published details of the secret, and highly successful, program:

I haven’t found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal under United States laws. Although data-protection authorities in Europe have complained that the formerly secret program violated their rules on privacy, there have been no Times reports of legal action being taken. Data-protection rules are often stricter in Europe than in America, and have been a frequent source of friction.

Expect massive coverage of the New York Times' hideous gaffe by their colleagues in the mainstream press, not.