From this article in the Washington Post, we can conclude that, in the mind of the New York Times, the risk that banks might “stop cooperating” with a program of proven effectiveness was trumped by the assertions of “uncomfortable” officials. And this decision was reached despite there being no clear evidence that the program was illegal.
Keller said he spent more than an hour in late May listening to Treasury Secretary John Snow argue against publication of the story. He said that he also got a call from Negroponte, the national intelligence czar, and that three former officials also made the case to Times editors: Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, chairmen of the 9/11 commission, and Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania—an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq.
“The main argument they made to me, extensively and at length, besides that the program is valuable and legitimate, was that there are a lot of banks that are very sensitive to public opinion, and if this sees the light of day, they may stop cooperating,” Keller said.
He acknowledged, as did the Times article, that there was no clear evidence that the banking program was illegal. But, he said, “there were officials who talked to us who were uncomfortable with the legality of this program, and others who were uncomfortable with the sense that what started as a temporary program had acquired a kind of permanence.”
“”The main argument they made to me, extensively and at length, besides that the program is valuable and legitimate, was that there are a lot of banks that are very sensitive to public opinion, and if this sees the light of day, they may stop cooperating,” Keller said.”
This was no doubt an incentive to publish in Keller’s mind, not a deterrent as it meant a big impact from publication.
The unnamed ” officials” who leaked this program committed a crime and should be prosecuted. Time for a special prosecutor to be appointed and for Mr. Keller to be called before a grand jury.
“a temporary program had acquired a kind of permance”
Haven’t these folks heard of “for the duration”? Or did I sleep through the surrender of AQ?
As to the quote cited by Mark, which bank would want to become the McDonalds of a half-baked NGO campaign? Look at Caterpillar. This in no way implies that banks find the program illegal or wrong. It does imply that they are afraid of being victims of a lynch mob.
I for one would hope Keller would refuse to testify.
He then could get a first hand look of just what Gitmo is like. That is where he belongs.
Security and Secrecy
The New York Times introduces their latest defense of the indefensible with a warning, that prior attempts to prosecute the press for disclosing national security secrets did not “turn out well.” In reminiscing about the Pentagon Papers, the editors …
I have not had time to comment on this NY Times story on SWIFT, and your reaction. To be frank, it seems to me to be overblown. This is particularly true given this post at the Counter-terror blog which places the story in perspective. According to them, the information is not new and has been known for a while, particularly by terrorism finance experts as far back as 2002. In addition, Victor Comras asserts that the “report to the UN Security Council in December 2002” contained said information, and what is more, the report is publicly available through the UN website. He also quotes this particular part of that report.
Comras ends his post by stating The fact is that there is really very little privacy today when it comes to the international transfer of funds. That is why criminal networks, money launderers and terrorist groups have increasingly turned to Hawalas and cash couriers for such transactions.
In other words, the information that the US was doing this has been out there for a while, it was known, or suspected by terrorists and criminals and is a big reason behind their using of the hawala system for their transactions. I did a paper on Hawala a while back, and found that because no real records are kept of transactions and based on trust and honor relationships, the system is completely open for use by terrorists and others, including government officials who are funneling millions of dollars out of their countries for their own personal gain. Some countries have tried to bring hawala under tighter control, and have been somewhat succesful, but overall the system is still pretty open to manipulation. In fact, there are many hawalers operating in the US and are used by many immigrants from East Asia, and the middle east to send remittances back to their families. The system can easily be used for other purposes, and indeed has been.
Hence, put in proper context, what the NY Times did was nothing but report something already known and publicly available. At least, if Comras is to be believed.
nykrindc,
The only reason that I knew of SWIFT before the NYT article is because I had worked on Wall Street for 20 years. My wife, who also has an MBA, had never heard of SWIFT. I’d bet that the percentage of even the educated public that had ever heard of it, much less knew what it did and how it worked, was diminimous.
Particularly in light of the fact that Al Qaeda has morphed into a decentralized organization, why should it be assumed that the NYT article
did not provide some of its operatives with knowledge they did not previously possess? Why should it be assumed that no one in Al Qaeda would ever make a mistake, forgetting or not realizing that a financial transaction would be traced through SWIFT?
It seems to me that those who are most inclined to believe that the terrorist threat is being overhyped are also the most inclined to
believe that Al Qaeda knows everything already. Isn’t this a contradiction? An omniscient enemy that we shouldn’t worry about.
why should it be assumed that the NYT article did not provide some of its operatives with knowledge they did not previously possess? Why should it be assumed that no one in Al Qaeda would ever make a mistake, forgetting or not realizing that a financial transaction would be traced through SWIFT?
Because a lot of this stuff is posted on jihadist websites, jihad instruction manuals and other materials used by jihadists in their training (particularly now that they are decentralized, that is why I’ve worried and posted on their Internet jihad). What makes you assume that if they forgot once, they won’t forget again? My point is simple, that the US has ways of tracking financial transactions is well known, we may not have known as many details as we now know, but it was assumed that the US had a means of doing so. After all, even the 9/11 terrorism report mentioned that they knew that the 9/11 hijackers had returned (via wire transfer) the money left over from the operation they were about to perpetrate. The report is publicly available. Do you not think that al Qaeda, and jihadists (who operate very well in the Internet) know where to find this information and alert other like minded people of their existence? They do, and have posted in various boards about the dangers of using western banking institutions in general. In addition, you seem to imply that just because others disagree with you about the damage the NY Times report caused that we discard the threat posed by al Qaeda. On the contrary, the person I cite is from the counterterrorism blog, a blog you link to as well in your blogroll, and whose sole purpose is to provide expertise and analyses with regard to the terrorist threat we face. In addition, I understand the threat all to well that is why rather than focusing on western financial institutions, I try to focus on hawala and other methods used to transfer money discretely. These methods are used throughout the Muslim world and have been for centuries. They are used by everyone, from immigrants to government officials as denoted above. That is the larger threat. Everyone uses them, and the system has worked for years, hence there is a lot of resistance to reform or change in the manner in which they operate. Due to the nature of these money transfer methods, they are more likely to be used by terrorists, even here in the west where large hawala networks already exist.
I’d bet that the percentage of even the educated public that had ever heard of it, much less knew what it did and how it worked, was diminimous.
Additionally, I never said that for the average American this was not news, and neither did the article I linked to. I merely stated that this was public knowledge, that is knowledge that anyone who was so interested (al Qaeda operatives looking to carry an operation) might be interested to search the internet for. As I mentioned earlier, in many manuals and websites run by these people, there are always warnings about using Western Banking institutions for money transfers.