evil incompetence enables incompetent evil

The Washington Post reports this morning:

A classified document that an Islamic charity says is evidence of illegal government eavesdropping on its phone calls and e-mails was provided in 2004 to a Washington Post reporter, who returned it when the FBI demanded it back a few months later.

Two points quickly come to mind:

1) The first party to let the cat out of the bag about illegal domestic NSA spying was, as the story reveals, the United States Treasury Department. Not some rogue NSA geek, not the New York Times, but the Federal Government, itself.

2) The WaPo reporter returned the letter to the FBI “a few months later,” in November of 2004. This means that the Washington Post had evidence that the Bush Administration had engaged in illegal activity several months before the presidential election, and they sat on it. Said nothing. Kept mum.

Congratulations Len Downie (executive editor of the Post), we now have two examples of how you helped re-elect George Bush. (The other being colluding with Bob Woodward to conceal the source of the Plame-Wilson leak).