Bill Keller
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Bill Keller (born January 18, 1949) is executive editor of The New York Times.
Bill Keller attended the Roman Catholic Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, California. After graduating from Pomona College in 1970 where he began his journalistic career by founding an independent newspaper called The Collage, he was a reporter in Portland with The Oregonian, the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, and at The Dallas Times Herald.
He joined The New York Times in 1984 and served in the following capacities:
- Reporter in the Washington, D.C. bureau (1984 - 1986)
- Reporter in the Moscow bureau (1986 - 1988)
- Bureau chief in the Moscow bureau (1988- 1991)
- Bureau chief in the Johannesburg bureau (1992 -1995)
- Foreign editor in the New York City bureau (1995- 1997)
- Managing editor in the New York City bureau (1997 - 2001)
- Op-ed columnist and senior writer in the New York City bureau (2001 - 2003)
- Executive editor in the New York City bureau from July 2003 to the present.
Keller spoke on July 6, 2005 in defense of Judith Miller and her refusal to give up documents relating to the Valerie Plame case.
Keller is reported to have refused to answer questions from the Times Public Editor, Byron Calame, on the timing of the December 16, 2005 article on the classified National Security Agency (NSA) Terrorist Surveillance Program. The source of the disclosure of this NSA program is being investigated by the United States Justice Department. The NSA program itself is being reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as to whether it sidesteps the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Despite this controversy, Keller decided to go forward with publishing a story on another classified program to monitor terrorist-related financial transactions through the Brussels, Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) on June 23, 2006. Keller's decision to publish additional classified information on the front page of The New York Times has caused a considerable uproar and may result in further investigation by the US Justice Department. Many commentators, [link] as well as some elected officials such as U.S. Congressman Peter T. King, [link] called for the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute The New York Times and the confidential sources who leaked the existence of this counter-terrorism program despite relevant statutes that forbid revealing classified information that may threaten national security, especially in a time of war.
In an attempt to respond to criticism stemming from the disclosure of the classified Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, the NSA program's official name, Keller stated in a published [letter] that President Bush himself had acknowledged as early as September 2001 that efforts were underway to "to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks" and "to follow the money as a trail to the terrorists." Keller's critics, including U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, responded to Keller's letter by pointing out that there is a vast difference between stating general intentions to track terrorist finances and the exact means employed to achieve those goals. Certain commentators [link] have made the analogy to the difference between the World War II Western Allies' stated intention to liberate Nazi-occupied Western Europe and revealing the exact plan to invade Normandy in June 1944. Moreover, Secretary Snow noted in his own published [letter] addressed to Keller that terrorists "have continued to [use] the formal financial system, which has made this program incredibly valuable."
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