NYT:

Returning to the White House after the Memorial Day weekend in 1975, the young aide Dick Cheney found himself handling a First Amendment showdown. The New York Times had published an article by Seymour M. Hersh about an espionage program, and the White House chief of staff, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was demanding action.

Out came the yellow legal pad, and in his distinctively neat, deliberate hand, Mr. Cheney laid out the “problem,” “goals” while addressing it, and “options.” These last included “Start FBI investigation — with or w/o public announcement. As targets include NYT, Sy Hersh, potential gov’t sources.” [...]

Among the goals Mr. Cheney methodically listed in considering a response were enforcement of the espionage laws, discouraging “the NYT and other publications from similar action,” locating and prosecuting the people who leaked to The Times and demonstrating “the dangers to nat’l security which develop when investigations exceed the bounds of propriety.”

Mr. Cheney also sensed an opportunity. Congressional investigations of the C.I.A., including one by a select committee led by Senator Frank Church, were under way in the post-Watergate era.

Under the heading “Broader ramifications,” Mr. Cheney wrote: “Can we take advantage of it to bolster our position on the Church committee investigation? To point out the need for limits on the scope of the investigation?”

More immediately, Mr. Cheney considered possible responses to the article. One was to “seek immediate indictments of NYT and Hersh.” A second was to get a search warrant “to go after Hersh papers in his apt.”

In the end, Adam Liptak reports, the Ford administration decided to do nothing. Staggering that we've been here before with the same cast of characters.

Update: I got to introduce Hersh at an event a few months ago and asked him about the administration's threats to prosecute the press. And paraphrased his answer was something like, in an earlier time, he and his editors felt like they had something called the First Amendment, and anyone tried to give them a hard time, you would tell them to screw off. But maybe you'd say it more nicely than that, he added. If it ever got to him, it was hard to detect.

Posted by Laura at February 11, 2007 08:50 AM