Yonivore
07-11-2006, 08:02 PM
...why the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times felt it was in the public interest to reveal the SWIFT program.
From testimony of Stuart Levey, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, U.S. Department of the Treasury before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations: (http://financialservices.house.gov/media/pdf/071106sl.pdf)
In short, the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program has been powerful and successful, grounded in law and bounded by safeguards. It represents exactly what I believe our citizens expect and hope we are doing to prosecute the war on terror.
Much has been said and written about the newspapers’ decision to publish information about this program. As a government official, I must first point out that the newspapers almost certainly would not have known about this program if someone had not violated his or her duty to protect this secret.
At the same time, I do very much regret the newspapers’ decision to publish what they knew. Secretary Snow and I, as well as others both inside and outside the government, made repeated, painstaking efforts to convince them otherwise. We urged that the story be held for one reason only: revealing it would undermine one of our most valuable tools for tracking terrorists’ money trails. We were authorized to set these arguments out for the relevant reporters and editors in an effort to convince them not to publish. In a series of sober and detailed meetings over several weeks, we carefully explained the program’s importance as well as its legal basis and controls. We strongly urged them not to reveal the source of our information and explained that disclosure would unavoidably compromise this vital program.
These were not attempts to keep an embarrassing secret from emerging. As should be clear from my testimony above, I am extremely proud of this program. I am proud of the officials and lawyers in our government whose labors ensured that the program was constructed and maintained in the most careful way possible. And I am proud of the intelligence analysts across our government who have used this information responsibly to advance investigations of terrorist groups and to make our country safer. I asked the press to withhold the story because I believed – and continue to believe – that the public interest would have been best served had this program remained secret and therefore effective.
Some observers have argued that the disclosure of the program did little damage because terrorist facilitators are smart and already knew to avoid the banking system. They correctly point out that there has been an overall trend among terrorists towards cash couriers and other informal mechanisms of money transfer – a trend that I have testified about. They also hold up as public warnings the repeated assertions by government officials that we are actively following the terrorists’ money.
What we had not spoken about publicly, however, is this particular source. And, unfortunately, this revelation is very damaging. Since being asked to oversee this program by then-Secretary Snow and then-Deputy Secretary Bodman almost two years ago, I have received the written output from this program as part of my daily intelligence briefing. For two years, I have been reviewing that output every morning. I cannot remember a day when that briefing did not include at least one terrorism lead from this program. Despite attempts at secrecy, terrorist facilitators have continued to use the international banking system to send money to one another, even after September 11th. This disclosure compromised one of our most valuable programs and will only make our efforts to track terrorist financing --and to prevent terrorist attacks-- harder. Tracking terrorist money trails is difficult enough without having our sources and methods reported on the front page newspapers.
From testimony of Stuart Levey, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, U.S. Department of the Treasury before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations: (http://financialservices.house.gov/media/pdf/071106sl.pdf)
In short, the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program has been powerful and successful, grounded in law and bounded by safeguards. It represents exactly what I believe our citizens expect and hope we are doing to prosecute the war on terror.
Much has been said and written about the newspapers’ decision to publish information about this program. As a government official, I must first point out that the newspapers almost certainly would not have known about this program if someone had not violated his or her duty to protect this secret.
At the same time, I do very much regret the newspapers’ decision to publish what they knew. Secretary Snow and I, as well as others both inside and outside the government, made repeated, painstaking efforts to convince them otherwise. We urged that the story be held for one reason only: revealing it would undermine one of our most valuable tools for tracking terrorists’ money trails. We were authorized to set these arguments out for the relevant reporters and editors in an effort to convince them not to publish. In a series of sober and detailed meetings over several weeks, we carefully explained the program’s importance as well as its legal basis and controls. We strongly urged them not to reveal the source of our information and explained that disclosure would unavoidably compromise this vital program.
These were not attempts to keep an embarrassing secret from emerging. As should be clear from my testimony above, I am extremely proud of this program. I am proud of the officials and lawyers in our government whose labors ensured that the program was constructed and maintained in the most careful way possible. And I am proud of the intelligence analysts across our government who have used this information responsibly to advance investigations of terrorist groups and to make our country safer. I asked the press to withhold the story because I believed – and continue to believe – that the public interest would have been best served had this program remained secret and therefore effective.
Some observers have argued that the disclosure of the program did little damage because terrorist facilitators are smart and already knew to avoid the banking system. They correctly point out that there has been an overall trend among terrorists towards cash couriers and other informal mechanisms of money transfer – a trend that I have testified about. They also hold up as public warnings the repeated assertions by government officials that we are actively following the terrorists’ money.
What we had not spoken about publicly, however, is this particular source. And, unfortunately, this revelation is very damaging. Since being asked to oversee this program by then-Secretary Snow and then-Deputy Secretary Bodman almost two years ago, I have received the written output from this program as part of my daily intelligence briefing. For two years, I have been reviewing that output every morning. I cannot remember a day when that briefing did not include at least one terrorism lead from this program. Despite attempts at secrecy, terrorist facilitators have continued to use the international banking system to send money to one another, even after September 11th. This disclosure compromised one of our most valuable programs and will only make our efforts to track terrorist financing --and to prevent terrorist attacks-- harder. Tracking terrorist money trails is difficult enough without having our sources and methods reported on the front page newspapers.