Bank Data Mined in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror

NY Times ^ | 6/22/2006 | ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

[Norman Rogers]

WASHINGTON, June 22 - 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.

[Norman Rogers]

This is unbelievable! If the NYT got wind of Enigma in 1939, would they feel obliged to publish it "because of public interest"? This is insane

[marron]

Who is releasing this information? Why are they not in handcuffs?

[ark_girl]

Why are we not freaking prosecuting these people?

[RDTF]

I thought this was another attack against the Swiftvets

[bitt]

hang 'em high.

[Jet Jaguar]

Agreed.

[paul in cape]

"A thousand thanks for giving me this information. May Allah look kindly on your assistance in our Fatwa against the infadels!"

Your friend and ally,

Osama bin Laden

[kanawa]

Who is releasing this information?

"Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified."

Nearly ??

[The Red Zone]

The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an undersecretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview Thursday.

I take it that the President no longer wanted it to be secret. Maybe to head off more scandal from unplanned leaks.

[james500]

So how many classified programs has NYT compromised?
I've lost count.

[GOPJ]

"Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified."

Jail time might be appropriate for these 20 current and former...

[Just mythoughts]

Well now wasn't there something called "Able Danger", it is not as though government has never ever collected data.

[Paperdoll]

Jerome Corsi says that the Bilderbergers are running the world, so what else is new?

[steve-b]

Also, the higher-ups may have decided to let some disinfecting sunshine in before the inevitable arrival of corruption (a crooked bureaucrat using the program to facilitate an identity-theft scam or something). Something like that would severely, perhaps fatally, undermine the government's credibility.

[A CA Guy]

Right on, if I was in the government in a position to do so, I would march over and arrest a bunch of them on this story.

[Ben Mugged]

Under a secret Bush administration program

What is the definition of sedition? Look in the dictionary under New Your Times.....

[NutCrackerBoy]

Memo to the New York Times: don't expose and thereby compromise secret national defense programs. I know this is counterintuitive for you when everyone you respect has orgasms everytime you harm the USA this way.

[The Red Zone]

As though the stealing of ALL veterans' social security numbers though some nebbish at the VA who took his work home and lost his laptop to a burglar, didn't do that. We might as well file all the SSA's data at the Library of Congress.

[The Red Zone]

rEAD tHE bLEEPIN aRTICLE

[A CA Guy]

I did read it. IMO we are in war time and IMO this kind of stuff should not be out there for public and terrorist consumption.