Fox News Watch national security duel

Blogger Mark Finkelstein at Newsbusters tells us about a verbal dual at Fox News Watch between lefty media writer Neal Gabler and righty National Review editor Rich Lowry.

As Finlelstein reports:

The topic was the recent press leaks that have compromised a number of highly-classified anti-terrorism programs including the secret prisons for Al-Qaeda members, the monitoring of Al-Qaeda related phone calls and the gathering of phone calling patterns.

From the FNW transcript:

Gabler: "There is a political component with Bush's ratings down, intimidating the press they think is good business and whacking the press is good politics but there is also I think importantly an ideological component.

This campaign against the press clearly was launched by Gonzales as another salient in the idea of executive power that is infallible and unassailable and I think that is one thing we are seeing here and Gonzales said before he retracted it, saying sometimes the First Amendment has to give way to security. And that is one of the things we're seeing and that is not just politics, that is more frightening."

Lowry: "As a matter of practice for decades there was a gentlemen's agreement you didn't go after reporters in the federal national security cases and what happened to blow up the gentlemen's agreement? One Patrick Fitzgerald blew it up. And who was cheerleading him on all along? The press."

Continued Lowry: "And this is a story about about partisan hypocrisy which comes back to bite you and it was it on the part of the press saying 'pursue the leak to the ends of the earth because it will hurt the Bush administration' and now the premises are followed to the logical conclusion and you have the press screaming."

You bet the press is screaming.

It wants the Valerie Plame "leakers" in jail and the NSA leaker journalists preening at the Pulitzer awards banquets.

But the press shouldn't get what it wants.

Here's what should happen:

1) Fitzgerald and his many MSM fans should be forced to explain to the American people just how they think you "blow the cover" of a CIA agent whose neighbors say they knew for years she was CIA, and who's been driving to work at CIA headquerters for at least the last six years.

2) They expalin just how "the outing Valarie Plame" did anything but: a) give Fitzgerald and his associates a secure income and some noteriey for years; b) give MSM a chance to repeatedly attack the President: and c) give the American people a huge bill running now I'll bet into the tens of millions.

3) Those involved in disclosing national security secrets should be arrest, tried, and if convicted sentenced to long prison terms.

The NY Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS and the rest of them have no right to enganger the rest of us.

And the sooner that's made clear the better.