Flight Pundit

President Bush, September 24 2001:

We know that many of these individuals and groups operate primarily overseas, and they don’t have much money in the United States. So we’ve developed a strategy to deal with that. We’re putting banks and financial institutions around the world on notice, we will work with their governments, ask them to freeze or block terrorist’s ability to access funds in foreign accounts. If they fail to help us by sharing information or freezing accounts, the Department of the Treasury now has the authority to freeze their bank’s assets and transactions in the United States.

We have developed the international financial equivalent of law enforcement’s “Most Wanted” list. And it puts the financial world on notice. If you do business with terrorists, if you support or sponsor them, you will not do business with the United States of America.

And the New York Times, today:

WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

The President has mentioned many times- the US would be seeking information about funding, bank account info for terrorism related issues. This is no secret. But the NYT choses to make it appear so.

The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans’ financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.

Yes and if we follow the old rules, we lose out. Terrorists will have time to do their rotten deeds before we can stop it. We will have one less tool to help us connect those dots…

Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program, saying that what they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization.

The government is full of leakers and attention seekers…watch- every expert and expert of the experts will suddenly be on TV with a lot to say. THESE are probably the leakers. And wait for book promotions- that will be soon as well.

Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine “tens of thousands” of financial transactions, Mr. Levey said.

While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said. A small fraction of Swift’s records involve transactions entirely within this country, but Treasury officials said they were uncertain whether any had been examined.

Read this last paragraph a couple, three times. There isn’t anything to panic about, yet people will be up in arms. The liberals will be knocking themselves over trying to scare monger the American people.

THIS IS VILE:

The Bush administration has made no secret of its campaign to disrupt terrorist financing, and President Bush, Treasury officials and others have spoken publicly about those efforts. Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper’s executive editor, said: “We have listened closely to the administration’s arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. 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.”

Yeah sure- you all listened closely? And gave the issue respectful consideration? I highly doubt that. You’re using this story to bash the Administration- or attempt to do so at least. And once again you’re handing over potentially serious information to the terrorists. NYT- should be ashamed of themselves. But they are not.

Swift’s database provides a rich hunting ground for government investigators. Swift is a crucial gatekeeper, providing electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. The cooperative is owned by more than 2,200 organizations, and virtually every major commercial bank, as well as brokerage houses, fund managers and stock exchanges, uses its services. Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.

The cooperative’s message traffic allows investigators, for example, to track money from the Saudi bank account of a suspected terrorist to a mosque in New York. Starting with tips from intelligence reports about specific targets, agents search the database in what one official described as a “24-7″ operation. Customers’ names, bank account numbers and other identifying information can be retrieved, the officials said.

I have no problem with this. At all. Go ahead and look at my bank account and the stupid transactions I make. This isn’t a BIG deal unless you’re a terrorist. Why is the NYT so concerned with the “rights” of terrorists??

But L. Richard Fischer, a Washington lawyer who wrote a book on banking privacy and is regarded as a leading expert in the field, said he was troubled that the Treasury Department would use broad subpoenas to demand large volumes of financial records for analysis. Such a program, he said, appears to do an end run around bank-privacy laws that generally require the government to show that the records of a particular person or group are relevant to an investigation.

“There has to be some due process,” Mr. Fischer said. “At an absolute minimum, it strikes me as inappropriate.”

I don’t have time but I’m sure someone does- to figure out what political side of the street Mr. Fischer stands on; perhaps he was a government advisor who wasn’t listened to?? Does he have an ax to grind? These people usually do.

Cross Posted @ ARS

2 Comments »