Caught in Another Fabrication

King just likes to make things up. This time it's about the NYTimes story.
From Media Matters....
"When asked by Matthews whether the program is "illegal," King claimed that "[e]ven The New York Times, in this story last Friday [June 23], has never suggested this was illegal anyway." He later added: "I don't believe The New York Times very often, but in this case, they are the ones who are the critics of the Bush administration, and even they are acknowledging that it's legal."

Yet in a June 25 letter sent to readers who responded to the June 23 Times story, Keller stated that "[i]t's not our [the Times'] job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the [June 23] story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case." He also stated that "some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and ... some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence," adding that the Times has not "identified any serious abuses of privacy so far." Further, in a June 28 weblog post describing an interview with Keller, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wrote:

He [Keller] acknowledged, as did the Times article, that there was no clear evidence that the banking program was illegal. But, he said, "there were officials who talked to us who were uncomfortable with the legality of this program, and others who were uncomfortable with the sense that what started as a temporary program had acquired a kind of permanence.["]

Additionally, as Media Matters noted, the June 23 Times article reported that L. Richard Fischer, "a Washington lawyer who wrote a book on banking privacy and is regarded as a leading expert in the field," expressed concerns about the program:

Such a program, he [Fischer] said, appears to do an end run around bank-privacy laws that generally require the government to show that the records of a particular person or group are relevant to an investigation.

''There has to be some due process,'' Mr. Fischer said. ''At an absolute minimum, it strikes me as inappropriate.'"

There's more at www.mediamatters.org