Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is criticizing the New York Times for printing the WikiLeaks documents, containing leaked diplomatic cables from the State Department. And while McCain fully admits that the information would be available whether the Times published it or not — such as on The Guardian or the WikiLeaks site itself — he says the Times is still doing damage by printing the stuff.
As Howard Kurtz reports at the Daily Beast:
“I wish The New York Times had chosen not to,” McCain says in an interview. “It’s harmful to the United States of America and our national security interests. Their argument is that it was coming out anyway. But there’s a certain imprimatur of The New York Times that gives it a certain degree of respectability.”
He pauses for a moment. “You know,” he adds with a chuckle, “my relationship with The New York Times is such that anything I say about them will not be taken too seriously.” McCain is referring in part to his denunciation of the paper for a 2008 article that implied, based on unnamed sources, that he had a romantic relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. (The Times, in settling a libel suit by Iseman, said it did not intend such a conclusion.)
