“A Good Program…to Make Us Safer…Is Over.”
 

Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, was briefed several weeks ago about the Treasury Department’s terrorist-finance program, and after the session, Kean says, “I came away with the idea that this was a good program, one that was legal, one that was not violating anybody’s civil liberties…and something the U.S. government should be doing to make us safer.”

Kean went so far as to call Times executive editor Bill Keller personally in an attempt to persuade him not to publish — The Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, which the NYT clamored for and fawned over, calls Keller to tell him it is a vital and legal part of anti-terror efforts and that it must remain secret. “It was top, top secret,” Kean says, and Keller decides that he knows better.

Kean stated that the NYT’s decision to expose the terrorist finance effort has done terrible damage to the program.

“I think it’s over,” Kean says. “Terrorists read the newspapers. Once the program became known, then obviously the terrorists were not going to use these methods any more.”

The exposure of the terrorist-finance program was particularly troubling to Kean because the 9/11 Commission had given high marks to the administration’s efforts in the area of terrorist financing. In fact, the only area in which the administration scored an “A” — actually an “A-” — was in its efforts on terrorist financing. “The U.S. has won the support of key countries in tackling terrorism finance,” the commissioners wrote, “though there is still much to do in the Gulf States and in South Asia. The government has made significant strides in using terrorism finance as an intelligence tool.”

Now, a major part of that effort appears to have been compromised. “That’s the way it is in this war,” says Kean. “There are a number of programs we are using to try to disrupt terrorist activities, and you never know which one is going to be successful. We knew that this one already had been.”

Anybody else care to say that the SWIFT program was not critical to our efforts? That it was low-probability, that since the terrorist financiers knew we were tracking money that they "stopped using the 'banking system'", thereby eviscerating the TFTP efficacy? That it's not such a big loss....?

Go ahead. Just make a better case for your point than the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, who knows a weeeee bit more about what was going on and disagrees.

Nail the NYT, nail Keller, nail Lichtblau and Risen and hang the leakers.

This is a clear-cut case (from the info out so far, I'll stipulate, but I can't imagine exonerating circumstances) of disclosure in violation of law that requires prosecution if our secrecy, espionage and treason laws are ever going to mean anything.

Wonder if the NYT (the LAT, et al.) will publish all the "thank you" letters it receives from the families of the victims of the next terrorist-financed attacks...

JP

(EDIT for attribution: quotes excerpted from a Byron York piece on NRO)

Yep. Anything that makes government less powerful and smaller can't be good, right?

Saw a discussion on Hardball last night with a contributor to the New Yorker magazine, forget his name. Anyhow, this guy was one of the smuggest bastards I have ever seen on TV. Matthews asked him about the WH pulling the press passes of the NYT reporters and his response was a smug smile and "Won't happen." Then he proceeded to talk about how GWs White House has been anti-press and that's why the press is all out to get them, etc, etc, etc.

I say file charges against the editor, writers, and publisher on the same day you announce that due to their inability to keep their mouths shut about a highly classified program which is completely legal and vital in the war on terror, no NYT reporters will be allowed in the White House for the duration of the administration.

Done.

I say just let Fox reporters in from now on ... Or hire more government employees that are pretending to be reporters -- we'll get our news from them :(

If you believe that the Times Story damaged this program, you must accept the premise that the terroprists either didn't know or forgot that we were monitoring international banking transactions.

Sorry, but I can't accept that premise.

I certainly hope the NYT damaged the program, what's the use of reporting such heinous crimes if they aren't reduced or stopped?

Oh boy.

Why do you think tracking terrorist financing is a "heinous crime?"

Well, if the co-chair of the 9/11 commission thinks that it has damaged our national security to disclose this information and thought it was important enough to personally contact Keller and ask him to sit on the story, I'll take his word over yours, Rodeo. Respectfully of course.

I'd like just the slightest bit of reasoning.

I save my "faith based" beliefs for spiritual matters.

No one has offered any explanation why this story hurt anything.

Remember, they said the same thing about the warrantless wiretap program, and that was a lie. Terrorists got no advantage knowing we could wiretap without a warrant, as opposed to with a warrant.

Maybe they can start with Karl Rove.

Look, they lied to us that disclosure of the warrantless wiretap program damaged national security. They classify and declassify information so they can either hide it or use it for political purposes. The president and vp make these decisions "on the fly" with no process or procedure in place. They lie about trying to find the "leakers" when they themselves are culpable.

It's nice that you get all worked up about the Times supposedly damaging national security for reasons that none of us can fathom.

It would be nicer if you turned your attention to the WH, which has created this circus involving classification/declassification by playing national security for political gain.

How about going after the person/people who leaked the info from within the WH staff!!!!? Just a thought. I don't beleive tracking funds was illegal in the sense they needd permission from, I beleive, Belgium gov't and banks to have access to their records and they happily abliged that access. Go after the source, not the people who's job it is to report information good or bad, the trouble starts at home......

The leakers should be gone after, however the fact that someone leaks information does not relieve the press from their responsibility to not publish info that damages national security, especially in a time of war. If someone leaked the Bush trip to Iraq would you also say it was ok to blare that across the headlines of the NYT?

It sounds like Rodeo is offering the "two wrongs make it right" defense, which isn't logical at its base. The fact that the White house has abused leaks in the past really doesn't have any bearing on the current issue. Of course those involved in leaking information in the past should be investigated and prosecuted, just as those involved in this leak should be investigated and prosecuted.

I'm not sure why you think that you, sitting in front of your computer in your Rhode Island home, have more information and can make a more informed opinion than the chairman of the 9/11 commission who has access to multiple information sources as well as classified information. It's not a matter of taking something on faith, it's more like knowing that the Nobel prize winner in chemistry probably is in a better position to opine on chemistry issues than I am.

Warranted it is an issue of national security, I agree, obviously not that secure. WH makes sure his travel plans are unknown, get a better grasp on the other areas. Whether it is right or wrong for the NYT (or anyother paper) to print sensitive material would infringe on their freedom of speech. Information is power, and I agree personally that this info should have remained hush hush, but it should not have been leaked in the first place if it is of such great importance! Selling papers first and foremost is their only concern and it worked.

If Kene speaks to anyone other than Byron York of the National Review about this, and so far he has not, maybe we will find out why he thinks disclosure damaged the program. So far, reporting on his comments is limited to a single publication that supports this administration faithfully. If Kean is outraged like the president, he has had plenty of opportunity to express that outrage, but has not.

This isn't chemistry, or rocket science. If terrorists did not know that we were monitoring international banking transactions, then disclosure has given them a heads-up.

I have a hard time believing they did not know this. I did, and I'm not a terrorist.

What is "the point" that I am incapable of refuting?

That we have to accept on faith that disclosure damaged this program when no one can fathom how or why, and when the WH itself is incapable of pointing to any damage?

Not much of a "point" Mr. Cramer :)

If a party to an argument accuses your ideology of being racist, yet they have 10x the amount of incidents and racist actors within the ideology they defend...is it tu quoque to point this out. What is this called?

To be clearer, for example, if a KKK member were to call a blind person a racist, and the blind person corrected the error by saying, "nu uh, you are," would that be "tu quoque?"

Personally, I think the NYT is a POS for publishing that story. It did nothing to help, and can only harm the security of the country. It is especially hypocritical for them to have supported the very same program in their editorial in late Sept. 2001. Perhaps there was some detail of the program that was divulged, but I don't know. I do have to agree with you, however, that terrorists would not have to look real hard to find information on the Internet about bank monitoring programs. Take a look at this PDF document on the US Treasury web site as an example.

That's a great website John - thanks!

Whole episode is just as stupid as reporters publishing the means that were being used to track bin Laden (sat phones). BTW Rodehard, after that was published (and the terrorists should have known that they could be tracked there, just like the banks tracking transactions) suddenly they stopped using sat phones, hmmm?

No, the press has an obligation to be responsible in what they print. Always have.

It is well known that reporters do not publish troop movements during times of war. They do this because if they did publish troop movements it would likely lead to deaths of American troops. So to say it is all freedom of the press and they can print whatever they want really doesn't take into consideration the reality of the issue.

Rodeo: I have heard you say several times that you knew about this program before the NYT published it. I assume you are basing that on the fact that Bush and others talked about going after terrorist funding years ago. I don't think that is the point. More of the point is that the NYT published exactly HOW we were going after terrorist funds, namely the SWIFT program.

It's the difference between saying "I'm gonna get you" and saying "I'm going to be hiding on 42nd and Main with a gun at 4 PM on Saturday, July 22, 1994."