Intimidating the Press

Keller: "I would say no. It wasn't so much a matter of the popularity of the president or his war on terror. But one thing that did change between 2004 and 2005 was . . . the concentration of executive power in the hands of the president. There had been a whole series of stories that had made that one of the fundamental questions of our time, and that added to the sense that the story that we published was important."

The Oval Office Meeting

In his NPR interview, Lichtblau recounted how the White House pressure not to publish the story culminated in a December 2005 Oval Office meeting with Bush, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Keller and several top Bush aides.

"[I]t was made clear in several meetings that, again, this was a program that was vital to national security and that if The New York Times outed this program we would be as responsible as anyone for the next terrorist attack. And I was not in on the meeting that President Bush held with our publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, but there have been published reports about that. And I've certainly heard about that from our own people, and that message was made crystal clear from Bush himself that The New York Times would be responsible. The metaphor that was used at one point to me was that The New York Times would be there at the table across from Congress next to the White House explaining how the next attack had happened."

Joe Hagan also wrote about the meeting in New York magazine in late 2006; and Keller described it in his Frontline interview.

Another Anecdote

In his NPR interview, Lichtblau also describes the White House's efforts to get him and the Times to spike another story -- this one in June 2006, disclosing that counterterrorism officials were using a vast international database to examine banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others.

Gross: "And the Bush administration sent Lee Hamilton from the 9/11 Commission to talk the Times out of running the story, and what happened?"

Lichtblau: "Well, what happened there was that Lee Hamilton made--I wouldn't even call it a half-hearted effort to stop publication because it was not really an effort at all. He proceeded to tell us that the White House had asked him to come talk to us, that from the limited amount he knew of the program he considered it valuable, but that he was concerned about some of the broader ramifications on executive power and at that the same time he was concerned about the secrecy with which this operated. And when we asked Lee Hamilton at this meeting, at which I was present, why the Times should not run the story about this financial surveillance program, he said, quite bluntly, `I'm not telling you not to run the story.' And I know that we were all quite stunned to hear him say that because this was the person the White House had sent for the very reason of getting us to not run the story.

"And what, for me made this even more remarkable was once the Times did decide to run that story, for the next several days we heard from the White House press people and also from some of its allies in the talking head circuit how even Lee Hamilton, even a Democrat had urged the Times not to publish this story and we defied the pleas of Lee Hamilton and others, which was just simply not true."

Those Internal Arguments

In another excerpt from his book, published in the New York Times on Sunday, Lichtblau wrote about the internal arguments that the White House so vehemently denied had taken place.

"The National Security Agency's eavesdropping program sparked heated legal concerns and silent protests inside the Bush administration within hours of its adoption in October 2001, according to current and former government officials.

"In making its case to Congress for broadened spy powers, the White House has emphasized the firm legal foundations of the program conducted after the Sept. 11 attacks."

Yet Another Outrageous Memo

Pamela Hess and Lara Jakes Jordan write for the Associated Press: "For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.