Bill Keller

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This article is about the New York Times editor. For the basketball player, see Billy Keller.

Bill Keller (born January 18, 1949) is executive editor of The New York Times.

Bill Keller attended the Roman Catholic Junípero 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 won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his reporting on the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

Keller was one of the leading liberal supporters of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, explaining his backing for military action in his article 'The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-A-Hawk Club'. Two days after the invasion, Keller wrote the column 'Why Colin Powell Should Go' arguing for US Secretary of State's resignation because his strategy of diplomacy at the UN had failed. In contrast, Keller was much more sympathetic to Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, describing him as the 'Sunshine Warrior'.

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 Times series of articles on this topic won a Pulitzer Prize. The source of the disclosure of this NSA program has been 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, and after The Times articles, the Administration changed its procedures, allowing for more safeguards and more Congressional and judicial oversight.

Keller and The Times also published 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. Many commentators, [1] as well as some elected officials such as U.S. Congressman Peter T. King, [2] 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 could 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." In an Op-ed column in The times, Keller, together with Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet wrote that "Our job, especially in times like these, is to bring our readers information that will enable them to judge how well their elected leaders are fighting on their behalf and at what price." 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. But, as Keller wrote, this was the same Secretary Snow who invited a group of reporters to a 6-day trip on a military aircraft "to show off the department's efforts to track terrorist financing."