Since 9/11, nobody — and I mean nobody — has done more reporting on the government’s attempts to track terrorists through their data trails than the National Journal’s Shane Harris. (The guy ate Spam and knocked back Tequizas with John Poindexter, for chrissake!) So I couldn’t be more psyched to welcome Shane to the Defense Tech family. This is the first of what I hope will be a long string of posts for the site.
Bush administration officials have been lining up to condemn The New York Times for revealing a program to track financial transactions as part of the war on terrorism. But if the Times revelation about a program to monitor international exchanges is so damaging, why has the administration been chattering about efforts to monitor domestic transactions for nearly five years?
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, many journalists including this one were briefed by U.S. Customs officials on Operation Green Quest, an effort to roll up terrorist financiers by monitoring, among other things, “suspicious” bank transfers and ancient money lending programs favored by people of Middle Eastern descent.
I interviewed Marcy Forman, director of Green Quest, at her Washington offices in December 2001, when I was a writer for Government Executive magazine. Our meeting was sanctioned by Customs’ public affairs office, and came at a time when the White House was eager to talk about all the work federal agencies were doing to hunt down terrorists. Forman told me the kinds of people, transactions, even locations that the government was targeting. (These are details, it should be noted, that the recent Times piece did not reveal.) Among the potentially sensitive items Forman told me, which were published:
Operation Green Quest is focusing on the informal, largely paperless form of money exchange known as hawala, which is Arabic for to change.
Few undercover agents can penetrate Middle Eastern communities and money laundering rings because they look like outsiders and don’t speak the language. As a result, Green Quest has to be more clever, by setting traps on the Internet and working to flush currency traffickers out of their hiding places.
Treasury and FBI investigators have identified hawala as a means by which the alleged Sept. 11 terrorists may have received money from overseas.
Green Quest investigators, who’ve spent their careers dismantling money laundering rackets, were blindsided by the existence of the system. Most of us couldn’t spell hawala before Sept. 11, Forman said.
The agencies’ [involved in Green Quest] cooperative efforts have recently culminated in raids of alleged money laundering operations that aid suspected terrorist networks.
Green Quest also wants to lower the threshold at which bank deposits and electronic funds transfers must be documented. Dropping the ceiling from $10,000 to $750, Forman said, may force money traffickers to try to get their cash out of the country by hand. They would then be subject to capture by a beefed-up cadre of Customs Service officers at border crossings, airports and seaports.
Green Quest was only one of the administrations efforts to combat terrorist financing which officials discussed publicly. More than two years after 9/11, federal officials testified before a congressional field hearing in Miami and “detailed efforts to stop the illegal financing of terrorist networks.” A senior adviser for the Treasury Department “named several initiatives, such as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is developing technology to let financial institutions report suspicious transactions more easily and quickly.” The adviser also named the system FinCEN was developing to manage a database built to search financial transactions. And he said the department was working directly with financial institutions to help them “develop software to better identify potential terrorist-financing activities.“
These details, provided by Customs and Treasury officials, undoubtedly gave terrorists some insight into how the U.S. government was tracking them, and what investigators knew about terrorism financing. These officials werent whistleblowersthey were sanctioned by the administration to dispense this information.
In the wake of the latest Times revelation, Rep. Peter King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wants the attorney general to investigate and prosecute reporters and editors of the Times for aiding the cause of our enemies. What King and others critics havent addressed is how the publication of specific details, over the past half decade, about the techniques the government employees to track terrorists money doesnt also aid their cause.
– Shane Harris
UPDATE 06/29/9:34 AM: Intel Dump takes a very different point of view. Meanwhile, Bob Kerrey — and even, to some extent, Peter King — wonder the Times’ disclosure actually helps counterterror efforts.
Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9/11 commission, [said] that if the news reports drive terrorists out of the banking system, that could actually help the counterterrorism cause.
“If we tell people who are potential criminals that we have a lot of police on the beat, that’s a substantial deterrent,” said Mr. Kerrey, now president of New School University. If terrorists decide it is too risky to move money through official channels, “that’s very good, because it’s much, much harder to move money in other ways,” Mr. Kerrey said.
A State Department official, Anthony Wayne, made a parallel point in 2004 before Congress. “As we’ve made it more difficult for them to use the banking system,” Mr. Wayne said, “they’ve been shifting to other less reliable and more cumbersome methods, such as cash couriers…“
Since [9/11], the Treasury Department has produced dozens of news releases and public reports detailing its efforts. Though officials appear never to have mentioned the Swift program, they have repeatedly described their cooperation with financial networks to identify accounts held by people and organizations linked to terrorism…
Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, convened a hearing in 2004 where Treasury officials described at length their efforts, assisted by financial institutions, to trace terrorists’ money. But he has been among the most vehement critics of the disclosures about the Swift program, saying editors and reporters of The New York Times should be imprisoned for publishing government secrets.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. King said he saw no contradiction. “Obviously we wanted the terrorists to know we were trying to track them,” Mr. King said. “But we didn’t want them to know the details.”
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Assuming that details of other secret surveillance programs have been revealed in the past, how does this fact excuse the NYT from publishing new ones? Using your reasoning, since someone committed murder in the past, are we now to accept murder as a normal occurence? Should your answer be yes, would it still be YES if the victim was someone close to you?
Regards,
I agree with MT. What is this politically motivated nonsense that has been posting on this site? Thank you, Shane Harris, thank you so much for mucking up defense tech.
So 2001 government-sanctioned revelations are “morally equivalent” to 2006 non-sanctioned revelations, right?
Any “Investigations” being done by this administration are nothing more than smokescreens to cover for their rich pals in the middle east and all Bush family and friends tied into BCCI. Kerry was investigating the money trails of terrorist financiers decades ago. The big difference between Kerry’s investigations and any so-called investigation by this administration is that Kerry’s team was actually getting convictions and working their way up towards the big fish. The Bush family and the GOP congress threw a fit and very effectively blocked any further investigations. It’s common knowledge, among those with their eyes open anyway, that the biggest funders of terrorism or Saudi and Pakistani. Two groups very chummy with the current group in power.
How about the lives of field operatives lost when a certain CIA agent who worked in the area of Weapons of Mass Destruction Intelligence gathering had her cover blown for political revenge? Is there outrage about that? Will those persons be held accountable?
If people want to be upset about lives lost by the bungling of those that have other agendas outside that of actually protecting The People of the United States of America, there are 2,500 plus new American tombstones being erected now because of their failure of a so-called “war on terror”. That number increases everyday. Anyone, that believes otherwise can visit http://www.goarmy.com for the nearest Army recruiting station and put their boots where their mouths are.
I wonder why outing Valerie Plame, which several former CIA officials said could have compromised contacts overseas and jeopardized lives, barely warranted a whimper from the Bush administration, but boy they come out breathing fire against the NYTimes? And why focus just on the NYT when the LATimes and WSJ also wrote about SWIFT? As folks in other blogs mentioned, it could be a political stunt to reve up the Right Wing base against the mainstream media represented by the NYTimes. But the real problem is the Bush administration has lost credibility with the American people so who’s going to believe them when they’re telling the truth.
It is intersting to see the evolution of this blog. I used to peruse here quite a bit, but then things to seemed to take a turn to the “failure” side of things.
I seen it with the missle defense = pork. “It will never work, waste of time and money, failure, failure, blah blah blah….
Then the F-22
“It’s a cargo van, space shuttle, and magic wish granter, all rolled in to one!” “Failure, failure, new body armor, blah, something else”
This blog has become “defense criticize”
Swill all of it.
I can’t quite figure out why the Bushites are blwoing a gasket about this particular article. It doesn’t make any sense, given what we already know. Everyone with ears knew that international finaancial traansaction were being monitored. I knew it. Everyone I know knew it.
No one is all that shocked by this information, except the wingers, who apparently didn’t know, or are going ballsitic about this for some other reason. I would bet on the latter.
That the NSA was spying on a large scale, domestically, I do find shocking. But not this. Various members of this insane administration have told us this countless times.
This is political as hell and that is all it is.
But why are all the wingers wanting to put journalists in front of a firing squad about this, in particular?
Some one needs to state the obvious here: We damn well expect our newsources to investigate everything this administration does and says. They have earned the privilege of having their every action and word scrutinized, because they lied this country into war, against warnings from advisors and a tremendous amount of dissent in this country and around the world.
The have lied about so many things, over and over.
The sad truthis, we cannot trust the people who are running this country, over a cliff, if you ask me, and no one did.
What I can’t figure out is exactly whom does BuCheny think are stupid, the terrorists or us?
The Bush administration has been at best sloppy and at worst truly malicious and damaging to our national security with the torrent of leaks out of the Whitehouse and the executive agencies.
The classic in my book was the President’s divulging that we had worked out a vaccine for weaponized Ebola. In order to do that you have to weaponize the virus first. This was done in the 2005 or 2004 state of the union message to a joint session of Congress. That would of course mean we were in violation of a number of agreements and protocols.
Recall they leaked “lies” to Judith Miller (formally of the Times) so they could take us to war for no reason.
Now they’re against the Times printing the truth because it may harm national security. Good grief, are there still people in this country stupid enough to believe what they say?
It’s ok to print lies, but not ok to print the truth?
ASW:
I’m not sure there’s been an “evolution” here. But your point is well taken. Partially, it’s in the nature of the news to highlight unusual shortcomings, rather than trumpet everyday success. Man-bites-dog instead of dog-bites-man. Partially, I’m trying to counter the slack-jawed, gee-whiz attitude towards military tech that I see in too many mainstream publications.
Anyway, you can always send examples of gear you see working well to me at defense-AT-defensetech-DOT-org.
nms
Folks who follow the link to the Times story will also see this:
But Mr. Wechsler said the disclosure might nonetheless hamper intelligence collection by making financial institutions resistant to requests for access to records.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if these recent articles have made it more difficult to get cooperation from our friends in Europe, since it may make their cooperation with the U.S. less politically palatable,” Mr. Wechsler said.
If the Europeans respond to public pressure by ending their cooperation, will Bob Kerrey’s point about cops on the beat still hold, or will the cops have been pulled from the beat?
Kevin Drum summarizes a Henry Farrell look at the law in Europe thusly:
In other words, although the Treasury Department (probably) didn’t break any U.S. laws, it’s quite possible that SWIFT did break some European laws
“I seen it with the missle defense = pork. ‘It will never work, waste of time and money, failure, failure, blah blah blah….
Then the F-22
‘It’s a cargo van, space shuttle, and magic wish granter, all rolled in to one!” “Failure, failure, new body armor, blah, something else’
This blog has become ‘defense criticize’
Swill all of it.”
Awwww….. How boring, that anybody would actually discuss the effectiveness and necessity of the gadgets that you want to gawk at.
Maybe you should stick to the web sites with the nice pictures. Or you can always stare at the cheesy “Military channel” on cable. I promise you that if you do that, you’ll never have to exert a neuron on these issues ever again.
Hastert & “Loose Lips”?
http://gaelicstarover.blogspot.com/2006/06/hastert-vs-loose-lips.html
Hastert & “Loose Lips”?
http://gaelicstarover.blogspot.com/2006/06/hastert-vs-loose-lips.html
TM, to follow your logic, bank executives in Europe might be breaking THEIR laws, so we shouldn’t talk about it? hmmmmm.
Wouldn’t it be better to do things legally, even in Europe? Isn’t that kind of an obligation of a just government? Or is that not us?
Jake
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011107-4.html
indy675, they’re blowing a gasket because the administration really just wants blood from the NY Times…either for the Plame affair or for any one of a few other things (the NY Times has certainly been blunt about them on more than 100 occasions), including the Times not bowing to their every wish and whim as most other, controlled papers do. But I’m sure that once he finds the culprit who “leaked” this story, Bush will fire that person as quickly as he did Karl Rove or whoever leaked the Plame story.
It makes you wonder if any of these people on Capital Hill read the Patriot Act they voted for, there is a program in the Patriot Act that is almost identical to the SWIFT program in the Patriot Act, except it is domestic.
Which is why the outrage over SWIFT by people is just as bogus, the Patriot Act has something almost identical. If you didn’t know about it, you simply don’t pay attention.
We call it FINCEN, I have no idea what it is called in the Patriot Act, but someone in the press is likely to notice at some point.
Especially the opinions that are legal, rational, constitutional and regard awol as the law breaker that he truly is. According to the Nuremburg Charter which covered WW2 criminals Bush is a war criminal and should be prosecuted immediately. Wars expressly started based upon lies and fabrication indicate war criminal status on those that started them. Bush should be taken out back of the White House immediately and hung after a full war tribunal, of course.
The NY Times story didn’t scare anyone away from using the legal banking system to fund terrorism. They ALREADY knew it was being monitored and were using alternative methods directly AFTER the attacks on the WTC & Pentagon in 2001. The specifics are inconsequential to the bad guys, but just as importantly, they probably knew enough of the specifics to find other ways to get the cash they need. Despite the need to believe otherwise, they may be crazy but they’re not THAT dumb.
The “screed” now being hurled at the NYT is simply more political posturing on the part of a desperate administration that is adept at deflecting criticism by going on the attack.
It seems only natural that the conversations here have taken a political turn against Bush. His credibility and approval are at a very low point and people have a crazy desire to express themselves sometimes.
Look up Osama Bin Laden in the FBI’s 10 most wanted Terror list and see he is not NOT charged with 9-11, WTF?
“The NY Times story didn’t scare anyone away from using the legal banking system to fund terrorism. They ALREADY knew it was being monitored and were using alternative methods directly AFTER the attacks on the WTC & Pentagon in 2001.”
If they already knew it was being monitored-why have they been using it at times since then?
“The specifics are inconsequential to the bad guys, but just as importantly, they probably knew enough of the specifics to find other ways to get the cash they need. Despite the need to believe otherwise, they may be crazy but they’re not THAT dumb.”
Apparently the specifics are consequential to the good guys-because there is now less of a chance that they’ll work with us. Apparently some of the bad guys used the monitored banking systems at times, no matter what you’d like to believe this story has hurt the United States and impaired American security.
If you can’t get that thru your head you’re nuts. It’s like saying – “We know drug dealers in our neighborhood are aware that we are trying to cultivate informants-let’s have the Times print a list of those informants. It can’t hurt our efforts.”
You guys at DefenseTech have been reading Kos too much.
“It makes you wonder if any of these people on Capital Hill read the Patriot Act they voted for, there is a program in the Patriot Act that is almost identical to the SWIFT program in the Patriot Act, except it is domestic.”
No one read the PATRIOT act before they voted for it. If you think I’m kidding, do a little research. In fact, the odd thing is that such a voluminous a piece of legislation seems to have been draw up prior to 9/11 and just ready to go. And you vote as ill-informed as you are? that’s damn scary.
When I was on the university, I played the Rappelz game under my classmates introduced. At first, I heard Rappelz from my classmate; I did not feel the game is fun. Until one day, I went on the line, because I had nothing to do, so I think I can look at the Rappelz game. When I looked the screen, I was attracted. Then I applied an account and I spent a little to buy rupees. And I began my Rappelz trip.
I was scared when I was told that it needs 100 millionhero coins !
I would establish a strongest gang! I decide to buy hero coins on line.
I remembered that at the beginning of playing this Shaiya gold game I was attracted by its name, charactera and menu. Especially the story of Shaiya.
Because I busy with the upgrade, nothing let me take attention, since in the large account I already had more than 1 million flyff gold, this simple idea has attracted her, I already forget is she add me become friends or I add her become friend
I remember that in the Cronous, I had a good friend, because he did not have enough money to buy cronous gold, so his level was lower, but after when I met him, I often help him, he was very thank me