NYT and State Secrets

[xrayzebra]

How many of you agree with Rep. King. I wholeheartedly agree with him.
I think the New York Times should be brought to task on their efforts
to undermine our Governments attempts to uncover enemies of our
country. They have done irreparable harm and disclosed state secrets.
What they have done borders on espionage.

This is the second time they have done this sort of thing. They will go to
any lengths to attempt to destroy the Bush administration and further
their own left wing agenda. Freedom of the press my foot. They show
only irresponsible behavior.



Rep. King Seeks Charges Against Papers Over Terror Reporting

Monday , June 26, 2006


WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.

Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.

King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher."

"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.

A message left Sunday with Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis was not immediately returned.

King's action was not endorsed by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

"On the basis of the newspaper article, 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," Specter told "Fox News Sunday."

Stories about the money-monitoring program also appeared last week in The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. King said he thought investigators should examine those publications, but that the greater focus should be on The New York Times because the paper in December also disclosed a secret domestic wiretapping program.

He charged that the paper was "more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people."

When the paper chose to publish the story, it quoted the executive editor, Bill Keller, as saying editors had listened closely to the government's arguments for withholding the information, but "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."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Treasury officials obtained access to a vast database called Swift — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The Belgium-based database handles financial message traffic from thousands of financial ins utions in more than 200 countries.

Democrats and civil libertarians are questioning whether the program violated privacy rights.

The service, which routes more than 11 million messages each day, mostly captures information on wire transfers and other methods of moving money in and out of the United States, but it does not execute those transfers.

The service generally does not detect private, individual transactions in the United States, such as withdrawals from an ATM or bank deposits. It is aimed mostly at international transfers.

Gonzales said last month that he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. He also said the government would not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly.

In recent months, journalists have been called into court to testify as part of investigations into leaks, including the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's name.

He said the First Amendment right of a free press should not be absolute when it comes to national security.


Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2006 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
All market data delayed 20 minutes.

[FromWayDowntown]

This is the FISA story all over again. The Times reports about a program that may invade the civil rights and liberties of American citizens. The White House and it's lapdogs go off screaming about how a program they claim is important to national security has been exposed, without any concern whatsoever of the fact that the program might violate established law or cons utional norms.

It's a complex problem that we face, but I'm rather keen on the notion of government respecting the rights of its subjects. As such, I'll always believe that government surveillance is a good thing so long as it does not violate individual rights. With the wiretapping program, it was clear that the law permitted such efforts, but only with certain safeguards. The government wasn't respecting those safeguards and the Times properly reported on that seeming abuse. There are questions here, too, about whether the program in question is legal. I think the American people have the right to know if their government is again violating the law.

I'm sure that there are many who will vehemently disagree with me about this (and perhaps even call me names), but I'm absolutely convinced that we've lost the War on Terror if the prosecution of that war becomes a means for government to disregard long-established civil rights and liberties. What the are we fighting for if we're willing to blithely throw those protections away?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

These guys disagree with you, Xray.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Also, the administration has pretty much been saying all along that they've used programs to monitor terroist activity.

The NYT isn't publishing anything new or unheard of. All the NYT did was report that this is going on without judicial oversight.

, Swift has a Web site.

http://www.swift.com/

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Nations Cooperate to Stop Terrorist Funding
Fact of the Day

The targeting of terrorist financing continues to play an important role in the war on terror. Freezing assets, terminating cash flows, and following money trails to previously unknown terrorist cells are some of the many weapons used against terrorist networks. The United States has designated 387 individuals and en ies as terrorists or terrorist financiers. The global community has frozen more than $142 million in terrorist-related assets. These steps make it harder for terrorists to build networks, recruit and train new members, and carry out attacks.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of the Treasury

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040910-4.html

[xrayzebra]

Do they also agree that the Cons ution is not a suicide pact. Cant remember
which Justice said that. But by law, in the United States, if you make a
transaction in the amount of $10,000 it automatically reported to the Government.
That is within the U.S. Transactions outside the U.S. are not convered by the
Cons ution, unless there have been some changes I am not aware of.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

The NYT's report (and just in case you hadn't read it... Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror) says the government is using broader administrative subpoenas instead of specific, individually, court-approved subpoenas.

How exactly is that a "clear and present danger" (as defined by the SCOTUS in Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47)?

"The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such cir stances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any cons utional right."

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Do they also agree that the Cons ution is not a suicide pact. Cant remember
which Justice said that. But by law, in the United States, if you make a
transaction in the amount of $10,000 it automatically reported to the Government.
That is within the U.S. Transactions outside the U.S. are not convered by the
Cons ution, unless there have been some changes I am not aware of.

True, but had the NYT reported that...you could call them lazy (since it's already public knowledge), but you couldn't call it treason and restrict a liberty specifically granted to the people in the First Amendment to the U.S. Cons ution.

[FromWayDowntown]

Do they also agree that the Cons ution is not a suicide pact. Cant remember
which Justice said that. But by law, in the United States, if you make a
transaction in the amount of $10,000 it automatically reported to the Government.
That is within the U.S. Transactions outside the U.S. are not convered by the
Cons ution, unless there have been some changes I am not aware of.

Those are cash transactions that must be reported to the government by Currency Transaction Reports. It would certainly seem that this program goes beyond CTR's and seeks to dig out details concerning transactions that wouldn't normally be reported. That, to me, raises some pretty significant 4th and 5th Amendment questions.

The Cons ution may not be a suicide pact, but it's also not some do ent that should be disregarded at any purported justification for invading individual rights. Again, what good is our War if we're so willing to subvert our own way of life to fight it?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Re: "Suicide Pact"

The Genesis and History of the "Suicide Pact" Slogan

Justice Robert Jackson was the first to use the phrase "suicide pact" - in his dissent in the 1949 case of Terminiello v. Chicago. His initial usage was also, to my knowledge, the first and only anti-civil liberties judicial usage of the maxim.

In Terminiello, the Supreme Court upheld the free speech rights of a right-wing hatemonger. In Jackson's dissent, he suggested that the inflammatory speech was likely to produce a violent reaction from the mob outside. Jackson had just been a prosecutor in Nuremberg. And he was fearful that the kind of fascistic acts he had just prosecuted might become commonplace in the United States. He worried about an American version of the Weimar complex: If we do not crack down on Hitlerian types, he thought, our fate may be like that of Germany in 1933.

In the 1960's Justice Arthur Goldberg revived the "suicide pact" maxim in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez and Aptheker v. Secretary of State, but for a very different purpose. Goldberg protected the rights of Communists to travel, and of wartime military deserters against loss of their citizenship, at the same time that he gave verbal deference to the tough-minded view that we would never commit national suicide. The result was pro-civil liberties, and the idea was that the initial Cons utional design was wise, and should be followed.

Even since then, the standard usage of the phrase has been to guard the judge's flank against critics anxious about the stability of American democracy - not to kowtow to such critics by sacrificing liberty for security. The phrase is used to explain that Cons utional rights can be upheld without having security catastrophically suffer.

Recent Judicial Uses of the "Suicide Pact" Slogan Are Also Pro-Civil Liberties

Column continues below ↓ This pattern of decrying-suicide-pacts-while-protecting-liberty was recently confirmed again. Late last year, federal district judge Harold Baer used the slogan when he declared uncons utional a New York prohibition against wearing masks in public places, in the case of Church of the American Knights of the KKK v. Kerik.

The statute at issue was aimed at suppressing demonstrations by the Ku Klux Klan. (Indeed, it was a successor organization to the Klan that objected to the restriction.) Judge Baer held that the statute violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

He bowed in ritual obeisance to the "suicide-pact" slogan. But he also added this graceful conclusion: "[T]he rational and measured exercise of jurisprudence must be zealously sustained even in time of war, including the war on terrorism."

Compromises for the sake of security might resonate favorably with pundits in the media, but they will not get the same hearing in Judge Baer's courtroom. And his decision shows just how far the suicide pact slogan has come - and how neatly its use has been inverted - since Terminiello. One can imagine Justice Jackson dissenting to Baer's decision too, had he had the opportunity.

Consider, also, the 1999 opinion in Edmond v. Goldsmith by Richard Posner - the prolific author who doubles as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago. There, Judge Posner declared an Indiana "routine roadblock" provision uncons utional. As he explained, it violated the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The case was simple: The precedents forbade routine searches aimed at producing evidence of criminal activity, and the "routine roadblock" statute plainly fit the bill. However efficient or reasonable it might be for the Indiana police to conduct their routine roadblock searches, past decisions held that this tactic, under the Cons ution, was off limits.

Posner was quick to add that in a real emergency, public safety might require the opposite decision: "The Cons ution is not a suicide pact," he emphasized. But he also added, "no such urgency has been shown here." Like Judge Baer, Posner subscribes to the judicial inversion of the phrase - using it as a sop to those with security fears, rather than as a reason to curtail liberty.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/comment..._fletcher.html

George P. Fletcher is Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at the Columbia Law School and the author, most recently, of Romantics at War: Glory and Guilt in the Age of Terrorism.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

And how do you define "national security?"

The problem has been that the government has been using the term rather loosely instead of a more strict basis.

And if the NYT was so deadset on exposing "State Secrets," why would they consult the administration prior to not one, but two stories, eventual publication?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

And since we're talking leaks and prosecution of journalists...

How is it that the two reporters from the SF Chronicle might face longer jail times than those charged (and pled out) in the BALCO case?

If the admin was so concerned about preventing leaks to journalists, they wouldn't have published a PDF copy of the case with information about the possible leak in the case, redact it, but leave the redacting open for anybody with that computer program fighting the fight for the terrorists: Microsoft Word.

[boutons_]

June 25, 2006

Letter From Bill Keller on The Times's Banking Records Report

The following is a letter Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, has sent to readers who have written to him about The Times's publication of information about the government's examination of international banking records:

I don't always have time to answer my mail as fully as etiquette demands, but our story about the government's surveillance of international banking records has generated some questions and concerns that I take very seriously. As the editor responsible for the difficult decision to publish that story, I'd like to offer a personal response.

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting the threat of terror.

It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.

The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly. The responsibility of it weighs most heavily on us when an issue involves national security, and especially national security in times of war. I've only participated in a few such cases, but they are among the most agonizing decisions I've faced as an editor.

The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy. Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration's claims about the Iraqi threat. The question we start with as journalists is not "why publish?" but "why would we withhold information of significance?" We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so.

Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff — but it's the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements.

Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress. 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. 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.

Our decision to publish the story of the Administration's penetration of the international banking system followed weeks of discussion between Administration officials and The Times, not only the reporters who wrote the story but senior editors, including me. We listened patiently and attentively. We discussed the matter extensively within the paper. We spoke to others — national security experts not serving in the Administration — for their counsel. It's worth mentioning that the reporters and editors responsible for this story live in two places — New York and the Washington area — that are tragically established targets for terrorist violence. The question of preventing terror is not abstract to us.

The Administration case for holding the story had two parts, roughly speaking: first that the program is good — that it is legal, that there are safeguards against abuse of privacy, and that it has been valuable in deterring and prosecuting terrorists. And, second, that exposing this program would put its usefulness at risk.

It's not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective, but the story cites strong arguments from proponents that this is the case. While some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality, which has never been tested in the courts, and while some bank officials worry that a temporary program has taken on an air of permanence, we cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror, and we have not identified any serious abuses of privacy so far. A reasonable person, informed about this program, might well decide to applaud it. That said, we hesitate to preempt the role of legislators and courts, and ultimately the electorate, which cannot consider a program if they don't know about it.

We weighed most heavily the Administration's concern that describing this program would endanger it. The central argument we heard from officials at senior levels was that international bankers would stop cooperating, would resist, if this program saw the light of day. We don't know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling. First, the bankers provide this information under the authority of a subpoena, which imposes a legal obligation. Second, if, as the Administration says, the program is legal, highly effective, and well protected against invasion of privacy, the bankers should have little trouble defending it. The Bush Administration and America itself may be unpopular in Europe these days, but policing the byways of international terror seems to have pretty strong support everywhere. And while it is too early to tell, the initial signs are that our article is not generating a banker backlash against the program.

By the way, we heard similar arguments against publishing last year's reporting on the NSA eavesdropping program. We were told then that our article would mean the death of that program. We were told that telecommunications companies would — if the public knew what they were doing — withdraw their cooperation. To the best of my knowledge, that has not happened. While our coverage has led to much public debate and new congressional oversight, to the best of our knowledge the eavesdropping program continues to operate much as it did before. Members of Congress have proposed to amend the law to put the eavesdropping program on a firm legal footing. And the man who presided over it and defended it was handily confirmed for promotion as the head of the CIA.

A secondary argument against publishing the banking story was that publication would lead terrorists to change tactics. But that argument was made in a half-hearted way. It has been widely reported — indeed, trumpeted by the Treasury Department — that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash.

I can appreciate that other conscientious people could have gone through the process I've outlined above and come to a different conclusion. But nobody should think that we made this decision casually, with any animus toward the current Administration, or without fully weighing the issues.

Thanks for writing.

Regards,
Bill Keller

=======================

The Cons ution itself is a paranoid do ent that doesn't trust unchecked government. Knowing lies and incompetence of this Repug administration, the partisan viciousness of a Karl Rove (anybody doubt he and the NRC are getting phone data and banking data from these Repug "national security" programs?), why would anyone ever trust, above all, these mother ers.

NEVER EVER trust any government, esp now that govt politics is vicisouly partisan and cut-throat and Congress is corrupted to the core.

btw, let's not forget that the Repug administration is 100% responsible for not stopping the WTC attack, in spite of warnings all through the summer of 2001.

==============

btw, DHS says today's alert level is ELEVATED, so please defend yourself accordingly.

http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme=29

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

So is the program ending since the NYT published or has the gov't informed countries that it will continue?

End? Continue? It can't be both.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/A...rtner=homepage

Bush Condemns Terror Finance Report in Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:37 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday sharply condemned the disclosure of a program to secretly monitor the financial transactions of suspected terrorists. ''The disclosure of this program is disgraceful,'' he said.

''For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America,'' Bush said, jabbing his finger for emphasis. He said the disclosure of the program ''makes it harder to win this war on terror.''

The program has been going on since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It was disclosed last week by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.

Using broad government subpoenas, the program allows U.S. counterterrorism analysts to obtain financial information from a vast database maintained by a company based in Belgium. It routes about 11 million financial transactions daily among 7,800 banks and other financial ins utions in 200 countries.

''Congress was briefed and what we did was fully authorized under the law,'' Bush said, talking with reporters in the Roosevelt Room after meeting with groups that support U.S. troops in Iraq.

''We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America,'' the president said. ''What we were doing was the right thing.''

''The American people expect this government to protect our cons utional liberties and at the same time make sure we understand what the terrorists are trying to do,'' Bush said. He said that to figure out what terrorists plan to do, ''You try to follow their money. And that's exactly what we're doing and the fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror.''

Meanwhile, the administration said it has informed major allies that the secret program has adequate privacy safeguards and will continue.

Tony Fratto, chief spokesman for the Treasury Department, said the contacts were made following the disclosure. ''We have made a point of reaching out to our partners in the international community to make sure they understand our views and the safeguards we have in place,'' he said. ''We want to make sure it was clear to our partners that we value this program.''

In advance of Bush's remarks, the New York Times defended itself against criticism for disclosing the program.

In a note on the paper's Web site Sunday, Executive Editor Bill Keller said the Times spent weeks discussing with Bush administration officials whether to publish the report.

He said part of the government's argument was that the anti-terror program would no longer be effective if it became known, because international bankers would be unwilling to cooperate and terrorists would find other ways to move money.

''We don't know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling,'' Keller said, pointing out that the banks were under subpoena to provide the information. ''The Bush Administration and America itself may be unpopular in Europe these days, but policing the byways of international terror seems to have pretty strong support everywhere.''

The note to readers was published the same day Rep. Peter King urged the Bush administration to prosecute the paper.

''We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous,'' the New York Republican told The Associated Press.

Keller said the administration also argued ''in a halfhearted way'' that disclosure of the program ''would lead terrorists to change tactics.''

But Keller wrote that the Treasury Department has ''trumpeted ... that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash.''

[boutons_]

dubya says whatever head and rove tell him to say. The man's alcohol/drug-addled brain hasn't had an original idea his entire life, especially not a creative idea.

[xrayzebra]

Money transferred from Lison to London to Germany is protected by the
Cons ution. How is that?

You bunch of left leaning wingnuts need to get a life. You want you families
to be carried out in body bags. Well okay, you protected your privacy. Check
you damn credit report and see how much privacy you have. Its free to check,
once a year. Just go to:

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

Now come back and tell me all about your privacy.

[ChumpDumper]

Can I check yours?

[xrayzebra]

^^It would take much to. Just have certain information and pay a fee.

[ChumpDumper]

"certain information"

Go head and check mine since it's so easy.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Money transferred from Lison to London to Germany is protected by the
Cons ution. How is that?

You bunch of left leaning wingnuts need to get a life. You want you families
to be carried out in body bags. Well okay, you protected your privacy. Check
you damn credit report and see how much privacy you have. Its free to check,
once a year. Just go to:

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

Now come back and tell me all about your privacy.

In keeping with check on my credit, I'm already well-aware of that.

Xray, I'm not going to toss out bait at you trying to get you to start ripping me and you shouldn't either, it brings your points down.

Civilized debate is all I'm asking for.

You say you agree with the thought that the NYT and other journalists who publish things like this are treasonous. You are believing that I am a traitor to my country, to the country which my grandfather fought for, my step-dad fought for and his dad and brother fought for.

The newspaper that currently employs me is a member of The Associated Press, which picked up the story from the NYT.

I don't believe I, nor FWD, nor the NYT/LA Times/Washington Post said that the gov't/administration shouldn't attempt to track down terrorists and prevent attacks.

What we are asking for is that our country and its elected representatives follow the law.

"The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

What has the NYT done other than say that the gov't is running this program with broad subpoenas rather than individual ones approved by the court?

This program was known about before the report. People in the gov't said they were doing this prior to the report.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are ins uted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to ins ute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

The government has FISA, the gov't has the PATRIOT Act. Go to a judge, go to FISA and get individual search warrants for the info they'd like to see. Don't subvert the law.

[Crookshanks]

This is an editorial from the National Review - and I agree 100%!!

Stop the Leaks

By The Editors

Every passing week, it becomes more apparent that disgruntled leftists in the intelligence community and antiwar crusaders in the mainstream media, annealed in their disdain for the Bush administration, are undermining our ability to win the War on Terror. Their latest body blow to the war effort is the exposure, principally by the New York Times, of the Treasury Department’s top-secret program to monitor terror funding.

President Bush, who said on Monday morning that the exposure “does great harm to the United States of America,” must demand that the New York Times pay a price for its costly, arrogant defiance. The administration should withdraw the newspaper’s White House press credentials because this privilege has been so egregiously abused, and an aggressive investigation should be undertaken to identify and prosecute, at a minimum, the government officials who have leaked national-defense information.

The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) was initiated soon after the 9/11 attacks. It ingeniously focuses on the hub of interlocking systems that facilitate global money transfers. The steward of that hub, centered in Brussels, is the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or “SWIFT.” SWIFT is an organization of the world’s financial giants, including the national banks of Belgium, England, and Japan, the European Central Bank, and the U.S. Federal Reserve. SWIFT, however, is not a bank. It’s a clearinghouse that manages message traffic pursuant to international transfers of funds.

Intelligence about those communications implicates no legally recognized privacy interests. To begin with, they are predominantly foreign, and international. To the extent the U.S. Cons ution might be thought to apply, the Supreme Court held nearly 30 years ago that records in the hands of third parties — including financial records maintained by banks — are not private, and thus not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, to the extent Congress later supplemented privacy protections by statute, those laws regulated disclosures by financial ins utions. SWIFT is not a financial ins ution.

Despite this legal daylight, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to defer to privacy concerns. Assuming that American law applied, it obtained SWIFT information by administrative subpoena. It carefully narrowed its scrutiny to those transacting with suspected terrorists. It concurred with its international partners that the resulting intelligence should be used only for counterterrorism and security purposes—not for prosecutions of ordinary crimes (even though such prosecutions would be legal under American law). And it agreed to subject the TFTP to independent auditing to ensure that the effort was trained on terrorists.

By all accounts, the program has been a ringing success. The administration maintains that the TFTP has been central to mapping terror cells and their tentacles, and to shutting off their funding spigot. It has resulted in at least one major domestic prosecution for providing material support to al Qaeda. It has also led to the apprehension of one of the jihad’s most insulated and ruthless operatives, Jemaah Islamiya’s Riduan Isamuddin, who is tied to the 2002 Bali bombing.

But as has happened with other crucial counterterrorism tools — such as the NSA’s program to monitor the enemy’s international communications, which the New York Times exposed, and the CIA’s arrangements for our allies to detain high-level Qaeda operatives, which the Washington Post compromised — the TFTP’s existence was disclosed to the Times and other newspapers by anonymous government officials, in violation of their legal obligation to maintain secrecy. The Bush administration pleaded with the newspapers not to publish what they had learned. But these requests, rooted in the national-security interests of the United States, were rebuffed. The Times, along with the Los Angeles Times (which also rejected a government request not to publish) and the Wall Street Journal, ran stories exposing the program. Yes, the public was being protected. Yes, terrorists trying to kill Americans were being brought to heel. Yes, it appears the program is legal. And yes, it appears the Bush administration made various accommodations out of respect for international opinion and privacy concerns. Despite all that, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller concluded 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.”

It is a matter of interest mainly to al Qaeda. The terrorists will now adapt. They will find new ways of transferring funds, and precious lines of intelligence will be lost. Murderers will get the resources they need to carry out their grisly business. As for the real public interest, it lies primarily in safety — and what the Times has ensured is that the public today is less safe.

Success in defeating the terrorists at war with us is dependent on good intelligence. Without obtaining it and keeping it secret, the government can’t even find the dots, much less connect them. If the compromising of our national-security secrets continues, terrorists will thrive and Americans will die. It has to be stopped.
The New York Times is a recidivist offender in what has become a relentless effort to undermine the intelligence-gathering without which a war against embedded terrorists cannot be won. And it is an unrepentant offender. In a letter published over the weekend, Keller once again defended the newspaper’s editorial decision to run its TFTP story. Without any trace of perceiving the danger inherent in public officials’ compromising of national-security information (a matter that the Times frothed over when it came to the comparative trifle of Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA employee), Keller indicated that the Times would continue revealing such matters whenever it unilaterally decided that doing so was in the public interest.

The president should match this morning’s tough talk with concrete action. Publications such as the Times, which act irresponsibly when given access to secrets on which national security depends, should have their access to government reduced. Their press credentials should be withdrawn. Reporting is surely a right, but press credentials are a privilege. This kind of conduct ought not be rewarded with privileged access.

Moreover, the Justice Department must be more aggressive than it has been in investigating national-security leaks. While prosecution of the press for publishing information helpful to the enemy in wartime would be controversial, pursuit of the government officials who leak it is not. At the very least, members of the media who report such information must be made to understand that the government will no longer regard them as immune from questioning when it investigates the leakers. They should be compelled to reveal their sources, on pain of contempt.

[FromWayDowntown]

I don't believe I, nor FWD, nor the NYT/LA Times/Washington Post said that the gov't/administration shouldn't attempt to track down terrorists and prevent attacks.

What we are asking for is that our country and its elected representatives follow the law.

You're absolutely right, JB. I think what we're also both saying, though, is that this is precisely why the Cons ution provides a guarantee against governmental interference with the press. We must have a free and aggressive press that is willing to do more than sit by as a governmental lap dog. If the government is violating the law, the People have a right to know and the press is the most likely conduit for presenting that information. If the People find no problem with governmental indulgence upon civil rights, that will be made known at the ballot box.

If the press isn't to report on this, what on Earth are they to report? Should the press be there to just regurgitate whatever the White House wishes it to say?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

and an aggressive investigation should be undertaken to identify and prosecute, at a minimum, the government officials who have leaked national-defense information.

Works for me.

Start here.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Again, what secrets have been revealed by the NYT?

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Xray,

What irreperable harm?

President Bush said today that the program will continue.