Good for The New York Times

What a difference a few years and 50 or 60 points in approval ratings makes.

In 2002, the New York Times was all too willing to be the royal stenographer, and simply report White House spin as fact. And they would agonize over, and delay any, attempts to print something with which the White House didn't agree. The 2005 article about warrantless wiretapping was put on the back burner for over a year, until it was safely away from election season.

Look to me like the Times has had it. Had it with the compromising, had it with the claims of treason, had it with kneeling to power, had it with the federal government trying to control what they write. Today they printed the redacted version of an op-ed written by Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council employee. Leverett claimed that the White House was trying to classify public information solely to get his voice off the op-ed page. Not only did the Times run it, redactions and all, but they added a second editorial by Leverett and his co-author Hillary Mann.

HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins [...]

National security must be above politics. In a democracy, transparency in government has to be honored and protected. To classify information for reasons other than the safety and security of the United States and its interests is a violation of these principles. It is for this reason that we will continue to press for the release of the article without the material deleted.

It goes on from there. This just makes the White House look idiotic, as well as petty and vindictive. And it's a good thing for America when journalists aren't suck-ups to power, but fulfilling the duty of the Fourth Estate to question and doubt, as well as standing up for the right of a free and unhindered press.