The New York Times' Fig tree known as public editor Byron Calame revisited the Times revelation of the NSA terrorist surveillance program with his Sunday column, confirming that the Times did in fact know of the program before the 2004 presidential election.

Mr. Keller, who wouldn’t answer any questions for my January column, recently agreed to an interview about the delay, although he saw it as “old business.” But he had some new things to say about the delay and the election.

Internal discussions about drafts of the article had been “dragging on for weeks” before the Nov. 2 election, Mr. Keller acknowledged. That process had included talks with the Bush administration. He said a fresh draft was the subject of internal deliberations “less than a week” before the election.

“The climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of the election,” Mr. Keller said. The pre-election discussions included Jill Abramson, a managing editor; Philip Taubman, the chief of the Washington bureau; Rebecca Corbett, the editor handling the story, and often Mr. Risen. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, was briefed, but Mr. Keller said the final decision to hold the story was his.

Mr. Keller declined to explain in detail his pre-election decision to hold the article, citing obligations to preserve the confidentiality of sources. He has repeatedly indicated that a major reason for the publication delays was the administration’s claim that everyone involved was satisfied with the program’s legality. Later, he has said, it became clear that questions about the program’s legality “loomed larger within the government than we had previously understood.”

Of course, some on the left have argued (in defiance of public opinion polling on the issue) that if only the Times had published this before the election, John Kerry might be president today. This is hogwash. From a purely political standpoint the fact that the Bush administration was being proactive in its efforts to capture terrorists would have put Kerry and most Democrats in a "me too" position. The denunciations of the program that occurred after it was revealed in Dec. 2005 by some on the left, would have utterly destroyed what little national security currency the Democrats still had.

Frankly, the second-best choice (the best choice being not revealing the program at all) would have been for the Times to reveal the it when it first discovered it. Democrats would've been forced to take a responsible position -- not the politically convenient one -- and endorse the program and trash the Times. The year-plus delay served to give the paper, and Democrats, some cover.

On a related note: A ruling last week in the case of two American Israel Publica Affairs Committee staffers who were discovered trafficking classified information to Israel is bad news for the Times, The Washington Post and possibly USA Today -- all papers who have revealed classified programs in recent months.

Judge Ellis dismissed defense arguments that the two men could not be prosecuted because they were not in the government at the time and had no special duty to refrain from handling classified information.

"Their position is that once a government secret has been leaked to the general public and the first line of defense thereby breached, the government has no recourse but to sit back and watch as the threat to the national security caused by the first disclosure multiplies with every subsequent disclosure. This position cannot be sustained," Judge Ellis wrote in his decision released yesterday.

"Both common sense and the relevant precedent point persuasively to the conclusion that the government can punish those outside of the government for the unauthorized receipt and deliberate retransmission of information relating to the national defense," the judge said. "Congress's attempt to provide for the nation's security by extending punishment for the disclosure of national security secrets beyond … persons within its trust to the general populace is a reasonable, and therefore constitutional exercise of its power."

Tossing Bill Keller and his cohorts in a jail cell would be very difficult politically, but there's no question that journalists need to be far more responsible. "The public interest" alone -- the Times' lame justification for revealing the Terrorist Financial Tracking Program -- is insufficient reason for damaging national security.