Bill Keller: Turn Off Leak 'Hysteria'

In his Monday column for the NYT (not yet on their site but here), Bill Keller, who partnered with WikiLeaks two years ago key leakage but then feuded with Julian Assange, hits the new anti-leak "hysteria" in Washington, right from the White House on down:  "The hysteria. Republicans are accusing the F.B.I. of insufficient zeal and demanding a special prosecutor. Democrats, typically worried about being perceived as soft on national security, have tried to out-deplore the Republicans."

Still he can't resist one more shot at Assange and friends:  "The notion of an establishment press is, to say the least, under siege. News comes from a dizzying number of directions. We know from the WikiLeaks case that among the legions of Internet aggregators and disseminators are at least a few who would feel no compunction about disclosing life-threatening information if they got their hands on it."

And check out the opening of the column in which he admits that his paper bought the early hype about Saddam's WMDs but:  "Later, The Times also published some excellent work on how an administration eager to justify its decision to go to war cherry-picked the intelligence to make its case."  What he leaves out, of course, is that the "Later" came "much" later,  well after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, cheered on by self-professed "hawk" Keller, resulting in so much carnage and other costs, to this day.