Bad Taste or Illegal?

[XtremeJibber2001]

White House defends legality of bank records queries

Snow declines to comment on investigation into leak

Monday, June 26, 2006; Posted: 4:36 p.m. EDT (20:36 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House spokesman said Monday a Treasury Department program that obtained international financial records aimed at tracking terrorist money was legitimate, but declined to say whether a leak investigation would be launched.

"I will refer any questions about leak investigations to the Department of Justice, as well as any questions about how one may proceed in terms of legal options," said Tony Snow.

"Here you have a program that was demonstrated as legal and effective, that had demonstrated its worth in terms of helping apprehend Hambali, the mastermind of the Bali bombing, of finding a man in Brooklyn who had contributed $200,000 in terror financing, had broken up a number of terror cells."

According to newspaper reports Friday, the Treasury Department obtained data from an international cooperative that transmits information between financial institutions worldwide, the department and the cooperative said. (Full Story)

Treasury Department officials unsuccessfully lobbied the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times not to run stories about the collection of financial data from SWIFT, a clearinghouse based in Belgium that exchanges transactional information between banks, handling about $6 trillion in transactions each day.

"This administration really went the extra mile with the Times," Snow said Monday. "It cited legal justification: the International Emergency Powers Act of 1997, the United Nations Participation Act, Executive Order 13224. It talked about the safeguards that have been put in place, before subpoenaing SWIFT, somebody in the United States of America had to cite specific authorizing intelligence.

"That request was then reviewed by an outside auditing board. Data was not provided on a real time basis, but after a delay, sometimes of several months," Snow said.

The program could not be used on American citizens who were engaged in "law abiding activities," he said.

"The whole idea was to track networks, not simply to chase people around," Snow said.

Late Thursday, after the story began appearing on the newspapers' Web sites, the Treasury Department confirmed that it issued subpoenas for financial data from SWIFT after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

SWIFT said it cooperated with the subpoena after receiving "significant protections and assurances as to the purpose, confidentiality, oversight and control of the limited sets of data produced."

IMHO it's just in bad taste. The Bush admin has no case. I think it's overly obvious that wires and banking is monitored by the Feds, no news here. I just think it's not in the NYT best tastes to run the story.

[ski_adk]

Worst thing about this case is that GWB said in press conferences that he was going to go after terrorists' financials. The Times article simple affirmed that Bush was actually doing what he said he was going to do.

Now what the NeoCons really want here is to build a case that will essentially allow governmental oversight of what stories are published by our media. Even though I doubt they'll actually get that far, just the threat of litigation is enough to intimidate other journalists and their employers to self-censor their stories -- which is almost as effective as legislation.

The NeoCons sh*t is really getting old. I'm so tired of their talking points, their twisting of history, and their ex-post-facto justifications. I'd say they've become boring if what they were doing wasn't so God damned detrimental to America.

[XtremeJibber2001]

Worst thing about this case is that GWB said in press conferences that he was going to go after terrorists' financials. The Times article simple affirmed that Bush was actually doing what he said he was going to do.

Now what the NeoCons really want here is to build a case that will essentially allow governmental oversight of what stories are published by our media. Even though I doubt they'll actually get that far, just the threat of litigation is enough to intimidate other journalists and their employers to self-censor their stories -- which is almost as effective as legislation.

The NeoCons sh*t is really getting old. I'm so tired of their talking points, their twisting of history, and their ex-post-facto justifications. I'd say they've become boring if what they were doing wasn't so God damned detrimental to America.

Yup....best part is....the WSJ ran a similar (if not the same) story as the NYT. Of course, no republicans are going after the WSJ!