Read the post from Will Bunch on this subject. He asks and gives some good answers to that question.
Okay, we'll never know for sure whether the NY Times helped Bush during the 2004 by holding back the story that he allowed spying on US citizens without warrants -- an action that is illegal. This looks like another situation where the Bush team cowed the media by playing the politics of national security. Bunch nails it:
And there lies the real story behind the story. Because it appears it may have been possible for the Times to publish at least some of the details of the Bush-ordered domestic spying before Nov. 2, 2004, the day that the president nailed down four more years. Although Bush won by 2 percent nationally, a switch of just 59,302 Ohio voters from Bush to John Kerry would would have put the Democrats back in the White House.We do know that Bush and his campaign played the national security card over and over during the election. The media played right in to that canard over and over. Meanwhile, many members of the MSM knew that White House staffers had betrayed an undercover CIA agent. Now, we know the Times had explosive information about a domestic spying operation. And, they call it a liberal media.
Would Bush won the election if the extent of his seemingly unconstitutional domestic spying had been known? We'll never know. For roughly a year, the White House successfully leaned on the Times to keep the story under wraps. It's not known when the Bush lobbying of the Times began. But it is clear that the warning signs about the program -- the alarm bells that likely triggered the Times investigation in the first place -- were going off by mid-2004, months before the vote.
