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| What Treasury Told the NY/LA Times About SWIFT |
| 2006-07-05 |
| According to Treasury and Justice Department officials familiar with the briefings their senior leadership undertook with editors and reporters from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the media outlets were told that their reports on the SWIFT financial tracking system presented risks for three ongoing terrorism financing investigations. Despite this information, both papers chose to move forward with their stories. "We didn't give them specifics, just general information about regions where the investigations were ongoing, terrorist organizations that we believed were being assisted. These were off the record meetings set up to dissuade them from reporting on SWIFT, and we thought the pressing nature of the investigations might sway them, but they didn't," says a Treasury official. In fact, according to a Justice Department official, one of the reporters involved with the story was caught attempting to gain more details about one of the investigations through different sources. "We believe it was to include it in their story," says the official. In the briefings, Treasury and Justice Department officials laid out the challenges law enforcement and intelligence agencies have had with the traditional and still popular hawala Muslim "banking" system, which is dependent more on interpersonal dealings than on institutions and has been prevalent in parts of the world that doesn't understand the Islamic rules. "Since 9/11 we've gotten a lot better at monitoring hawalas," says a Justice Department official. "That success has forced a lot of the money into the institutional or more traditional banking systems. And that's where SWIFT has been particularly helpful." This is especially true in the regions of the world that cater to large Muslim communities that require banking rules in line with their faith. Increasingly in countries like Malaysia, large, international banks are attracting billions in Muslim funds, trades and transfers of which could be monitored by SWIFT. According to the Treasury and Justice Department sources, the reporters and editors appeared to have been told that the SWIFT financial monitoring was somehow being undertaken without warrants and without legal supervision. But from the initial briefings, the Times papers were shown information that clearly outlined the search warrant procedures undertaken by the federal government to track some financial transactions. |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #8 As Rudyard Kipling said, hangin's too good for them. The leakers and the journalists that published what was leaked need to be dragged through the Mojave Desert behind a deuce and a half for a week or three. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-07-05 16:11 |
| #7 The media is the enemy. Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-07-05 09:18 |
| #6 Second order effects are DOD and other agencies will lock Treasury and DOJ out of any information loop. They will try to protect their program, and rightly so. This give the terrorists a second minor victory now that we have an information seam between agencies. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-07-05 05:40 |
| #5 SWIFT viewed the data requests as legal. BTW SWIFT is headquartered in Belgium and I'm fairly sure all international transfers are processed there (I've work with SWIFT systems in the past). |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-07-05 03:58 |
| #4 There's an opportunity here; set up a website with all the contact details etc of all the advertisers in the NYT and LAT. Then, have several form letters available; "Dear Sir, ... NYT treacherous action ... withdraw support for your company ... yours sincerely" Send message to info@bigcompany.com, customer_relations@...com, CEO@... as well as to their FAX numbers Advertise said website on as many blogs and websites as you can find, and pass the word around. I originally wrote "non-liberal websites" but on reflection, there will be a large number of liberals who will see this as a treasonous action too. Thoughts? |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2006-07-05 01:41 |
| #3 BTW, heard on Fox today that the Congressional breifings for this program were expanded only recently (March?). Hell of a coincidence, eh? |
| Posted by: PBMcL 2006-07-05 01:34 |
| #2 And the leakers are goddamn traitors who should be shot. Today. |
| Posted by: PBMcL 2006-07-05 01:27 |
| #1 "We thought that once the reporters and editors understood that one, these were not warrantless searches, and two, that this was a successful program that had netted real bad guys, and three, that it was a program that was helping us with current, ongoing cases, they would agree to hold off or just not do a story," says the U.S. Treasury official. "But it became clear that nothing we said was going sway them. Whomever they were talking to, whoever was leaking the stuff, had them sold on this story." The more I read about this, the more angry I get. As far as I'm concerned, Keller and his ilk should all be doing perp walks. Today. |
| Posted by: PBMcL 2006-07-05 01:25 |