With all of the focus on the Snowden revelations from the past few months, it's put new attention on the big story from 2005, in which the NY Times revealed President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, run by then NSA boss Michael Hayden. The NYT story, famously, was held for thirteen months as the government tried to do everything to block it from being published - especially during the 2004 election season. The claims were always the same: publishing the story would be a massive threat to national security - just like you hear today with the Snowden revelations.

The NY Times public editor, Margaret Sullivan, decided to revisit that decision to delay the publication for over a year with various parties involved in the decision, and see how they feel about it now. There are a few interesting tidbits, but the one that struck me most is actually buried in a parenthetical. It's Michael Hayden admitting that, despite all his whining about the harm of revealing this stuff, there's no evidence it actually did any harm:

And even Mr. Hayden told me that he can't prove any harm to national security from the publication of the eavesdropping stories - then or now.

The "then or now" seems rather important. First of all, with the older story, nearly a decade forward and no proof of harm? That seems rather revealing, since they insisted so strongly that publication would be horrific and would ruin their chances to spy on people (sound familiar?) Furthermore, he's now admitting that he can't prove harm from the recent stories either - even though he seems to have no trouble going around fear mongering, claiming such damage has been done, at every other opportunity.

The article claims that the NY Times learned its lesson from this, and that it's much less inclined to take the government's word on claims that publishing a story will cause national security harm anymore.

"I think our story broke the fever," Mr. Risen said. "We're much better now" about pushing back against government pressure. Jill Abramson, the executive editor (then managing editor), has not only defended the Snowden-related stories as squarely in the public interest but has had Times reporters and editors collaborating with The Guardian and ProPublica on Snowden-sourced stories.

Hopefully, that remains true. It's easy for the government to fear monger over these things, but every time they do, it's difficult to think of a single example where the claims of harm to national security have ever been accurate.