SWIFT Terror Finance Surveillance Program

[al-Canine]

New Furor Erupts as Spying Secret Is Compromised

A fresh barrage of criticism is erupting over the decision of The New York Times to disclose last night another classified surveillance program aimed at gathering information about terrorist plots.

"The president is concerned that, once again, the New York Times has chosen to expose a classified program that is protecting the American people," a White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said last night. "We know that terrorists look for any clue about the weapons we're using to fight them and now, with this exposure, they have more information and it increases the challenge for our law enforcement and intelligence officials."

The Times report, which appears in today's editions and was posted last evening on the paper's Web site, details the federal government's use of subpoenas to gather large troves of data from a Belgium-based consortium that handles international bank transfers, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as Swift.

The Times quoted an unnamed former government official describing Swift as "the mother lode, the Rosetta stone" of data on global banking operations.

The newspaper said the surveillance effort helped lead to the capture in Thailand in 2003 of a top Al Qaeda op erative, Riduan Isamuddin, who also went by the name Hambali.

The Times reported that it decided to report publicly on the program despite requests by administration officials that the newspaper not publish the story. The officials argued that the disclosure could reduce the effort's effectiveness, the newspaper said.

The executive editor of the Times, Bill Keller, said the newspaper was not persuaded. "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration," Mr. Keller said. "We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

The Times was already facing calls for its criminal prosecution in connection with a December report on a classified National Security Agency program for warrantless surveillance of telephone calls between America and abroad that are thought to involve people affiliated with terrorism. In that instance, President Bush reportedly summoned Mr. Keller and the publisher of the Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., to the Oval Office to ask that the story be killed.

The disclosure led to a series of lawsuits by civil liberties advocates. Some lawmakers also have denounced the program as unlawful and an impermissible expansion of executive authority.

A conservative magazine editor who is one of the leading advocates of prosecuting the Times for its December story, Gabriel Schoenfeld, told The New York Sun last night that the newspaper's latest move could increase their legal jeopardy.

"They're courting prosecution. ... They're increasingly behaving like if we were in the middle of World War II and they learned of plans to invade Normandy. Because they decided it's a matter of public interest, they'd publish it," Mr. Schoenfeld said. "I think this is reckless and likely to encourage Attorney General Gonzales to prosecute them, if not for this story, for some of the other things they've done."

Mr. Schoenfeld said that the latest disclosure by the Times about the financial surveillance was less clear cut as a legal violation because it did not appear to involve communications intelligence, which is specially protected under federal law.

Mr. Schoenfeld said the new report would increase anger against the paper. "They really are testing the limits of congressional and executive branch patience. There's a lot of displeasure with what they're doing," said Mr. Schoenfeld, who edits Commentary magazine and writes a weekly column on chess for the Sun.

However, the editor said he still considered a prosecution unlikely, on balance. "I'm not sure the Bush administration has a stomach for a fight with the media of that magnitude, but it's become more and more clear that it's necessary," Mr. Schoenfeld said.

Reports about the financial surveillance program appeared yesterday on the Web sites of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. The latter two seem to have learned of the Times's reporting, which has been under way for some time.

The Treasury Department confirmed the existence of the program.

http://www.nysun.com/article/34950

[NYer]

One wonders exactly whose interests are served by the MSM.

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f218/sono001/fifth_column_stories_194011.jpg

[The 801]

NYer,
Isn't this old news here? I can't find the original board, but I am certain that this banking surveillance operation was discussed here years ago, in more general terms, and the name Swift wasn't mentioned. Anyone else remember this in the wake of 9/11? Its just bothering me that I am sure that this is something the press forgot about and now is making a stink about.

[Casey]

New or not.

I've been reading about this on foreign language political forums for several days now.

There is nothing classified or secret about it any longer.

[al-Canine]

Bush Condemns Terror Finance Report in Times

By ANNE E. KORNBLUT and JOHN O'NEIL

WASHINGTON, June 26 — President Bush today condemned as "disgraceful" the disclosure last week of a secret program that seeks to investigate and block terrorists by tracing financial records through a banking consortium in Brussels.

The existence of the program was reported beginning on Thursday evening by The New York Times and other newspapers.

"We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America," Mr. Bush told reporters today. "For people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America." He added that it "makes it harder to win the war on terrorism."

Mr. Bush did not single out a particular newspaper. But on Sunday, Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said he was outraged that such a sensitive program had been exposed, and called for a criminal investigation of The Times.

Mr. King said on "Fox News Sunday" that the disclosure was "absolutely disgraceful."

In a telephone interview Sunday night, Mr. King said he singled out The Times because he considered the paper "more of a recidivist," since it published an article last year reporting the existence of a secret wiretapping program by the National Security Agency.

Mr. King added, however, that he thought the actions of other news organizations, including The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, should also be examined.

Also on Sunday, in a letter to readers posted on The Times's Web site, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the newspaper, wrote about the decisions to report about secret programs to monitor terrorism.

"Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to The Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight," Mr. Keller said. "We believe The Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them."

The financial records program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, has allowed counterterrorism authorities to gain access to data on millions of transactions routed from one bank or institution to another through an international consortium called the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or Swift. The data is obtained using broad administrative subpoenas, not warrants issued by a court.

Investigators have used the data to do "at least tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of searches" of people and institutions suspected of having ties to terrorists, according to Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, who briefed reporters on Friday. Officials say the program has proven valuable in a number of investigations, and led to the 2003 capture of the most wanted Qaeda fugitive in Southeast Asia, a man known as Hambali.

President Bush today said that "what we were doing is the right thing."

"Congress is aware of it, and we were within the law to do so," he said.

On Sunday, Senator Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that he wanted to "learn more" about the program, but indicated that he did not see a need for hearings. Mr. Specter, a Republican of Pennsylvania, said he found the financial-data program less troubling than the N.S.A.'s secret program for warrantless wiretaps of calls between people in America and suspected terrorists overseas.

Responding to the remarks Mr. King made on television, Mr. Specter said: "I think it's premature to call for a prosecution of The New York Times, just like I think it's premature to say that the administration is entirely correct. I think you start with the proposition that there is not the privacy interest in bank records that there is in a telephone conversation. And let's find out more before we try to make a judgment here."

The White House press secretary, Tony Snow, declined to comment today on Mr. King's call for prosecution, but did point out that "there is a process for doing this." He said that the agency in charge of a particular classified program can make a formal request to the Justice Department for an investigation, as was done in the case of the leaking of the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency cover operative, Valerie Plame.

Mr. Specter also said on Sunday that the White House and Congress were close to reaching a resolution on submitting the National Security Agency's wiretap program to judicial review.

"I think there is an inclination to have it submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and that would be a big step forward for protection of constitutional rights and civil liberties," Mr. Specter said on "Fox News Sunday."

President Bush and his top advisers have resisted calls for formal legal oversight of the program, which involves the N.S.A. listening in on phone calls and reading e-mail messages to and from Americans and others in the United States who the agency believes may be linked to terrorists. Only those communications into and out of the country are monitored, administration officials say.

Mr. Snow today called the negotiations with Senator Specter "vigorous" and "constructive," but declined to give further details.

Until late 2001, the security agency focused only on the foreign end of such conversations; if the agency decided that someone in the United States was of intelligence interest, it was supposed to get a warrant from the intelligence surveillance court. Now such warrants are sought only for communications between two people who are both within the United States.

Revelations about that program have incited debate in Congress and beyond about the president's constitutional authority to order the wiretaps, and lawsuits have been filed against the government and phone companies.

The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/washington/26cnd-bank.html?hp&ex=1151380800&en=d024adbdd1841811&ei=5094&partner=homepage)

[al-Canine]

'Breathtaking Arrogance' Of the Times

The following text of a letter to the executive editor of the New York Times from Secretary Snow was made public by the Treasury Department in Washington:

Mr. Bill Keller, Managing Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Dear Mr. Keller:

The New York Times' decision to disclose the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a robust and classified effort to map terrorist networks through the use of financial data, was irresponsible and harmful to the security of Americans and freedom loving people worldwide. In choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful counter-terrorism program and alerted terrorists to the methods and sources used to track their money trails.

Your charge that our efforts to convince The New York Times not to publish were "half-hearted" is incorrect and offensive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the past two months, Treasury has engaged in a vigorous dialogue with the Times - from the reporters writing the story to the D.C. Bureau Chief and all the way up to you. It should also be noted that the co-chairmen of the bipartisan 9-11 Commission, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton, met in person or placed calls to the very highest levels of the Times urging the paper not to publish the story. Members of Congress, senior U.S. Government officials and well-respected legal authorities from both sides of the aisle also asked the paper not to publish or supported the legality and validity of the program.

Indeed, I invited you to my office for the explicit purpose of talking you out of publishing this story. And there was nothing "half-hearted" about that effort. I told you about the true value of the program in defeating terrorism and sought to impress upon you the harm that would occur from its disclosure. I stressed that the program is grounded on solid legal footing, had many built-in safeguards, and has been extremely valuable in the war against terror. Additionally, Treasury Under Secretary Stuart Levey met with the reporters and your senior editors to answer countless questions, laying out the legal framework and diligently outlining the multiple safeguards and protections that are in place

You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that "terror financiers know" our methods for tracking their funds and have already moved to other methods to send money. The fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works. While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this particular program incredibly valuable.

Lastly, justifying this disclosure by citing the "public interest" in knowing information about this program means the paper has given itself free license to expose any covert activity that it happens to learn of - even those that are legally grounded, responsibly administered, independently overseen, and highly effective. Indeed, you have done so here.

What you've seemed to overlook is that it is also a matter of public interest that we use all means available - lawfully and responsibly - to help protect the American people from the deadly threats of terrorists. I am deeply disappointed in the New York Times.

Sincerely,

John W. Snow, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Treasury

http://www.nysun.com/article/35152

[NYer]

"...New York Times and other news organizations ought to think long and hard about whether a public’s right to know in some cases might override somebody’s right to live..."

Tony Snow
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002728197

[NYer]

Fit and Unfit to Print. (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008585)

In all of this, Mr. Sulzberger and the Times are reminiscent of a publisher from an earlier era, Colonel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. In the 1930s and into World War II, the Tribune was implacable in its opposition to FDR and his conduct of the war. During the war itself, his newspaper also exposed secrets, including one story after the victory at Midway in 1942 that essentially disclosed that the U.S. had broken Japanese codes. The government considered, but decided against, prosecuting McCormick's paper under the Espionage Act of 1917.

That was a wise decision, and not only because it would have drawn more attention to the Tribune "scoop." Once a government starts indicting reporters for publishing stories, there will be no drawing any lines against such prosecutions, and we will be well down the road to an Official Secrets Act that will let government dictate coverage.

The current political clamor is nonetheless a warning to the press about the path the Times is walking. Already, its partisan demand for a special counsel in the Plame case has led to a reporter going to jail and to defeats in court over protecting sources. Now the politicians are talking about Espionage Act prosecutions. All of which is cause for the rest of us in the media to recognize, heeding Alexander Bickel, that sometimes all the news is not fit to print.


Ouch ...

[Alli]

Interesting commentary.. (http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15818)
by Deroy Murdock:


Despite 16 years of thwarted and successful mass murder by Muslim fanatics in New York, the Times spurned pleas by the White House, Treasury, and even Democrats Lee Hamilton (9/11 Commission co-chair) and Iraq War critic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania to stay quiet about the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP). The Times’ June 23 story identified the Belgian Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, where the CIA selectively scrutinizes international bank transfers among suspected terrorists. Besides educating terrorists on U.S. surveillance techniques, the Times has painted a giant target on SWIFT’s offices.


Conversely, the CIA, FBI, and NSA work tirelessly to connect the dots, which President Bush’s critics (including the Times) slammed Bush for not doing before 9/11. Now that Washington connects the dots, the Times disconnects them.


Like its unilateral “declassification” of the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program last December, the Times spilled the beans on TFTP even though this initiative is considered legal, congressional Democrats and Republicans were briefed on it, and no American claims to be its victim.

[Alli]

A word from Lt Cotton: (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014515.php)

Dear Messrs. Keller, Lichtblau & Risen:

Congratulations on disclosing our government's highly classified anti-terrorist-financing program (June 23). I apologize for not writing sooner. But I am a lieutenant in the United States Army and I spent the last four days patrolling one of the more dangerous areas in Iraq. (Alas, operational security and common sense prevent me from even revealing this unclassified location in a private medium like email.)

Unfortunately, as I supervised my soldiers late one night, I heard a booming explosion several miles away. I learned a few hours later that a powerful roadside bomb killed one soldier and severely injured another from my 130-man company. I deeply hope that we can find and kill or capture the terrorists responsible for that bomb. But, of course, these terrorists do not spring from the soil like Plato's guardians. No, they require financing to obtain mortars and artillery shells, priming explosives, wiring and circuitry, not to mention for training and payments to locals willing to emplace bombs in exchange for a few months' salary. As your story states, the program was legal, briefed to Congress, supported in the government and financial industry, and very successful.

Not anymore. You may think you have done a public service, but you have gravely endangered the lives of my soldiers and all other soldiers and innocent Iraqis here. Next time I hear that familiar explosion -- or next time I feel it -- I will wonder whether we could have stopped that bomb had you not instructed terrorists how to evade our financial surveillance.

And, by the way, having graduated from Harvard Law and practiced with a federal appellate judge and two Washington law firms before becoming an infantry officer, I am well-versed in the espionage laws relevant to this story and others -- laws you have plainly violated. I hope that my colleagues at the Department of Justice match the courage of my soldiers here and prosecute you and your newspaper to the fullest extent of the law. By the time we return home, maybe you will be in your rightful place: not at the Pulitzer announcements, but behind bars.

Very truly yours,

Tom Cotton
Baghdad, Iraq

[NYer]

Stephen Bainbridge opines: (http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2006/07/althouse_nails_.html) ...

With great power comes great responsibility. Unfortunately, Baquet and Keller have given us no reason to believe that they exercise their power responsibly. Oh well. Given the trend of market forces, Baquet and Keller will be out of business soon enough. And they'll probably still be wondering why.

http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/2y/n/nyt

[NYer]

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer recently featured both Eric Lichtblau and Rep. Curt Weldon speaking to the NY Times SWIFT article. The discussion included this:

ERIC LICHTBLAU: Well, I'm obviously not going to get into details about the sources of the story, particularly when their leak investigations are under way in a number of other areas.

And the one thing I can say we said in the story that we did last Friday was that there was concern among some of the nearly 20 people that we talked to that what had started out as a temporary emergency response to 9/11 had become permanent, now nearly five years after 9/11, without really specific congressional authorization, without even knowledge by most members of Congress or the relevant committees, and that we are now in a semi-permanent emergency state.

This was, you know, obviously a public policy issue that seemed, again, worth a public airing. And this was not a concern just shared by the New York Times. We didn't create the nervousness here.

There was nervousness by SWIFT itself, the consortium in Belgium, which, as we pointed out in the story, threatened to pull out of this program in 2003 and stayed on only after very high-level meetings with Alan Greenspan and with Bob Mueller at the FBI, because the company itself was asking how long what was seen as an emergency program would be allowed to continue. So I think it's in that context.

REP. CURT WELDON: This is outrageous.

JEFFREY BROWN: Go ahead, Mr. Weldon. How...

REP. CURT WELDON: This is outrageous! The New York Times, a profit-making entity, designed to improve their bottom line to make a profit, has decided that they can supersede members of Congress from both parties who are briefed on these important programs for our national security.

So the New York Times has decided they know more than Nancy Pelosi, or they know more than Carl Levin, or they know more than Pete Hoekstra. They've decided that they know best, in terms of what should be questioned...

Weldons offered the alternative the NYT and the "leakers" chose NOT to use ...

If members of Congress who are briefed and who are elected by the people determine that an administration has overstepped its bounds, then we have the ability and we have in a process to bring it back under control.

If the New York Times really wanted to do that, then they would have gone to members of Congress and said, "What are you going to do about this?" instead of broadcasting it all over the world. They didn't do that.


More Here. (http://www.abledangerblog.com/2006/06/curt-weldon-vs-eric-lichtblau.html)

[al-Canine]

ANTHRAX SCARE AT TIMES

Post Wire Services

July 15, 2006 -- The New York Times yesterday received a letter containing a suspicious white powder and a copy of a recent editorial in which the paper defended its coverage of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism programs.

Tests found the powder to be harmless, but not before the incident raised fears of a possible recurrence of anthrax-tainted letters sent to newsrooms and other offices in 2001.

The handwritten envelope was addressed to the paper, not to any individual, with a Philadelphia postmark and no return address.

The envelope included a copy of a June 28 editorial entitled "Patriotism and the Press" with an "X" marked through it.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/anthrax_scare_at_times_regionalnews_.htm