Eric Lichtblau and James Risen strike again with a huge scoop.
Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.
It’s a long article and it’s a complicated legal matter. Some initial thoughts on the legality are at Intel Dump and on the wisdom at HLS Watch. I’ve read the article once, and it is definitely a very partial picture of the program and laced with administration counterspin and pushback. What’s clear is that the New York Times has talked to at least 20 sources, that many sources doubt the program’s legality and/or propriety, and that the cooperating executives have felt very uneasy about the ongoing nature of the program and have sought to restrict its scope (apparently successfully).
The administration claims the program was instrumental in capturing Hambali, accused of masterminding the Bali bombing, and helped capture a Brooklyn man that was laundering money for al-Qaeda. That’s standard fare from the government. Take it or leave it.
If the Democrats take power I think one of our first orders of business should be to go over these types of programs and put them on a more legal footing. We definitely need increased safeguards against unwarranted intrusions into our privacy. We also need to be able to track bad guys. We can do both, but not the way the Bush administration is proceeding.
Naturally, the right wing is howling that the New York Times is exposing important tools in our effort to stop terrorists from striking, but they typically ignore the moral questions, the potentials for abuse, and the fact that concerned officials felt there was a need to expose this program. People don’t expose classified programs if they think they are acting within the law and serving a vital purpose. Michelle Malkin should think about that.
In the meantime, this is just one more example of how the administration used 9/11 to take us back to a pre-Watergate situation where the intelligence agencies do whatever they want and Congress need not know boo about it.
Because inquiring minds want to know: Why are wingnuts so f*cking paranoid about terrorist attacks that they’re willing to give up any amount of freedom? To all lurking wingnuts, does this really make you feel safer? Living in the shadow of the city that is the biggest potential target doesn’t make me any more nervous than it would to live in Nowhere, USA.
Wow. That IS a scoop. And yeah, right they’re only going to limit this to looking for al Qaeda funding. This program gives the CIA access to financial data that could be used to blackmail members of Congress and the Senate.
Shades of 1974. This is what comes of not really punishing the wrongdoers the first time such shenanigans came to light. Instead, the end result of the Church and Pike Committee hearings was to legalize and institutionalize snooping. Dare we take that path again? What next?
Wow – there’s a lot of important news on the Booman Tribune front page today. Upsetting, but important.
This quote, from the article, states my fears exactly:
Some of us have figured that this type of leverage has been possible in keeping Congress less confrontational against the admin.
You think this might have been going on for a while now?
In his very interesting book “Spooks”, author Jim Hougan wrote of an apparent bugging operation on Capitol Hill during the Nixon era, and likely before. Long story – maybe I’ll post about it sometime. And James Angleton used to have taps on members of Congress, justifying that by saying, if we can’t figure out what’s going on at home, where our fortunes are being decided, what good are we abroad? His exact words are more chilling – no time to look up right now..!
I assume that I am being watched, listened to, and my finanial affairs examined by the feds.
I consult internationally in the chemical trade; Europe, the Mid-East and China are the places my customers reside, and I am paid by wire transfers.
There is no way that I believe that my international (and domestic) calls, emails and money transfers are not subject to US government agency scrutiny.
When my Europen and Mid East friends call or email me I am quite clear to them that thy should assume the Bush Gestapo is going to read or listen to our conversation.
The Right Wingers do not care about America and freedom, they care about convenience. To them, America is a land to be plundered and freedom is merely a convenience used for arguments, not a set of principles to be adhered to as a philosophy.
If you are unfamiliar with SWIFT the following press release (via LAT) is worth reading and the first paragraph, at least, is accurate: