Re: OT: My New Bumper Sticker

Bob Wheatley wrote:
"Ed Jay" <edMbj@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

Bob, I just read and re-read the NYT articles. I can find no place where
it says it was legal. Help? >


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Furthermore, officials said the SWIFT operation does not violate domestic
privacy protections".

"As a general matter, (SWIFT's database) does not contain the type of
information on ordinary transactions that would be made by individuals in
the United States, such as deposits, withdrawals, checks, electronic bill
payments and the like," the Treasury Department's Levey said.

"Under various bank secrecy laws passed by Congress over the past 35 years,
U.S. banks are forbidden to hand over information about individual
customers' accounts, unless government agents obtain a court-authorized
subpoena in the course of an investigation".

-----------------------------------------------------------------------




UPDATE: Keller and Baquet Respond to Criticism of Bank Records Scoop

By E&P Staff

Published: June 26, 2006 8:45 PM ET updated Tuesday

NEW YORK Treasury Secretary John Snow late Monday added his two cents to
criticism of The New York Times for publishing last Friday revelations about
the bank records surveillance program -- following in the wake of President
Bush, Vice President Cheney, White House Press Secretary Snow, and numerous
other Republicans. He did a little differently, penning a note to the Times
itself.

Snow said in the letter that over the past two months he and other
administration officials had engaged in a "vigorous dialogue" with reporters
and editors at the newspaper trying to persuade them to refrain from
revealing the program.

He said the effort to persuade the paper not to publish also included former
Gov. Thomas Kean of New Jersey and former Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the
co-chairmen of the 9-11 commission, as well as a number of members of
Congress and top government officials.

"In choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level
officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined
a highly successful counterterrorism program and alerted terrorists to the
methods and sources used to track their money trail," Snow wrote.

The Times' executive editor, Bill Keller, posted a lengthy letter on the
newspaper's Web site Sunday, defending the article, but the paper was silent
to all of the fresh criticism until late Monday, when the Times published an
e-mail statement that he penned.

Keller called the decision to publish been "a hard call," but observed that
since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has "embarked on a
number of broad, secret programs aimed at combating terrorism, often without
seeking new legal authority or submitting to the usual oversight."

He added, "I think it would be arrogant for us to pre-empt the work of
Congress and the courts by deciding these programs are perfectly legal and
abuse-proof, based entirely on the word of the government."

On Tuesday, Dean Baquet, editor of the Los Angeles Times, also defended his
paper's decision to go with an article on this subject. Here is an excerpt
from his published response, followed by the text of Treasury Secretary
Snow's letter.

*
Dean Baquet:

The decision to publish this article was not one we took lightly. We
considered very seriously the government's assertion that these disclosures
could cause difficulties for counterterrorism programs. And we weighed that
assertion against the fact that there is an intense and ongoing public
debate about whether surveillance programs like these pose a serious threat
to civil liberties.

We sometimes withhold information when we believe that reporting it would
threaten a life. In this case, we believed, based on our talks with many
people in the government and on our own reporting, that the information on
the Treasury Department's program did not pose that threat. Nor did the
government give us any strong evidence that the information would thwart
true terrorism inquiries. In fact, a close read of the article shows that
some in the government believe that the program is ineffective in fighting
terrorism.

In the end, we felt that the legitimate public interest in this program
outweighed the potential cost to counterterrorism efforts.

Some readers have seen our decision to publish this story as an attack on
the Bush administration and an attempt to undermine the war on terror.

We are not out to get the president. This newspaper has done much
hard-hitting reporting on terrorism, from around the world, often at
substantial risk to our reporters. We have exposed terrorist cells and led
the way in exposing the work of terrorists. We devoted a reporter to
covering Al Qaeda's role in world terrorism in the months before 9/11. I
know, because I made the assignment.

But we also have an obligation to cover the government, with its tremendous
power, and to offer information about its activities so citizens can make
their own decisions. That's the role of the press in our democracy.

The founders of the nation actually gave us that role, and instructed us to
follow it, no matter the cost or how much we are criticized. Thomas
Jefferson said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted
with their own government." That's the edict we followed.

This was a tough call for me, as I'm sure it was for the editors of other
papers that chose to publish articles on the subject. But history tells us
over and over that the nation's founders were right in pushing the press
into this role. President Kennedy persuaded the press not to report the Bay
of Pigs planning. He later said he regretted this, that he might have called
it off had someone exposed it.

History has taught us that the government is not always being honest when it
cites secrecy as a reason not to publish. No one believes, in retrospect,
that there was any true reason to withhold the Pentagon Papers, although the
government fought vigorously to keep them from being published by the New
York Times and the Washington Post. As Justice Hugo Black put it in that
case: "The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of
informed representative government provides no real security for our
Republic."

I don't expect all of our readers to agree with my call. But understand that
it was one taken with serious reflection and supported by much history.
*

Treasury Secretary Snow's letter:

Dear Mr. Keller:

The New York Times' decision to disclose the Terrorist Finance Tracking
Program, a robust and classified effort to map terrorist networks through
the use of financial data, was irresponsible and harmful to the security of
Americans and freedom-loving people worldwide. In choosing to expose this
program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of
the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful
counter-terrorism program and alerted terrorists to the methods and sources
used to track their money trails.

Your charge that our efforts to convince The New York Times not to publish
were "half-hearted" is incorrect and offensive. Nothing could be further
from the truth.

Over the past two months, Treasury has engaged in a vigorous dialogue with
the Times - from the reporters writing the story to the D.C. Bureau Chief
and all the way up to you. It should also be noted that the co-chairmen of
the bipartisan 9-11 Commission, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee
Hamilton, met in person or placed calls to the very highest levels of the
Times urging the paper not to publish the story. Members of Congress, senior
U.S. Government officials and well-respected legal authorities from both
sides of the aisle also asked the paper not to publish or supported the
legality and validity of the program.

Indeed, I invited you to my office for the explicit purpose of talking you
out of publishing this story. And there was nothing "half-hearted" about
that effort. I told you about the true value of the program in defeating
terrorism and sought to impress upon you the harm that would occur from its
disclosure. I stressed that the program is grounded on solid legal footing,
had many built-in safeguards, and has been extremely valuable in the war
against terror.

Additionally, Treasury Under Secretary Stuart Levey met with the reporters
and your senior editors to answer countless questions, laying out the legal
framework and diligently outlining the multiple safeguards and protections
that are in place.

You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that
"terror financiers know" our methods for tracking their funds and have
already moved to other methods to send money. The fact that your editors
believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money
betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program
and how it works. While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on
cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued
to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this
particular program incredibly valuable.

Lastly, justifying this disclosure by citing the "public interest" in
knowing information about this program means the paper has given itself free
license to expose any covert activity that it happens to learn of - even
those that are legally grounded, responsibly administered, independently
overseen, and highly effective. Indeed, you have done so here.

What you've seemed to overlook is that it is also a matter of public
interest that we use all means available - lawfully and responsibly - to
help protect the American people from the deadly threats of terrorists. I am
deeply disappointed in the New York Times.

Sincerely,

John W. Snow, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Treasury

Bob - I thank you....I heard about but had not read John Snow's
eloquent letter.....qfter reading this letter, I now think all the
newspapers involved should be prosecuted and/or held accountable in
some way -- canceled subscriptions and pulled advertising would be a
start......I recognize the dangers of taking a newspaper to court, but
in this case they abused their first amendment rights by aiding and
giving comfort to the enemy while forgetting about our own safety and
security .

The Supreme Court allowed The Times their first amendment rights in the
Pentagon Papers and the New York Times v Sullivan in 1964 cases, but
methinks this current situation is far more critical.......they did not
have a 9-11 back then.


Miki

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: My New Bumper Sticker
    ... officials said the SWIFT operation does not violate domestic ... Congress and top government officials. ... substantial risk to our reporters. ... the way in exposing the work of terrorists. ...
    (rec.arts.dance)
  • OT: Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones
    ... Passports will be needed to buy mobile phones ... latest government move to create a surveillance society. ... The pay-as-you-go phones are popular with criminals and terrorists because ... YES, I.D.card, passport and possibly a MICROCHIP is going to be needed to buy ...
    (rec.games.go)
  • White House Not Forthcoming (Lies?) About Warrantless Searches
    ... their search for terrorists among digital communications. ... Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report ... The current and former government officials who discussed the program ...
    (alt.religion.islam)
  • Religious Extremism
    ... What would you do to stop wasteful government spending in Washington? ... a big spender and assembler in the name of police-America, ... leave now, the terrorists will come, and they did say it. ... or with the country. ...
    (sci.astro)
  • Re: BaBoon Slips On Banana Peel, Executes Picture-Perfect Reverse Somersault Faceplant
    ... If the federal government labels you as a racist or anti-Semite, ... Leading this assault on valid dissent, by concerned Americans, is ... of the foremost hate groups in the world: the Southern Poverty Law Center ... as being so filled with hate that they've become terrorists. ...
    (rec.audio.opinion)