Posted on 06/28/2006 4:26:59 PM PDT by Enchante
Congress authorized the program. Whereas the defense of other recently disclosed surveillance programs may depend in part on the president's authority to act in the face of congressional silence or disapproval, defense of the TFTP is simplified by Congress's express statutory authorization of the president to conduct this program. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) expressly affords the president power to investigate international financial transactions, including those of non-foreign persons, pursuant to a declared state of emergency. Section 1702(a)(2) empowers the president to compel production of such financial transactions, via administrative subpoenas.
The president certainly has satisfied the requirement that such investigations be undertaken pursuant to a declared national emergency. On September 23, 2001, the President Bush notified Congress and the general public that he would utilize the powers authorized under IEEPA in combating terrorism. He has announced the continuance of that emergency repeatedly--in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. (A comparable state of emergency with respect to terrorists threatening Middle East peace has been re-announced annually since 1995.) These announcements cited, first and foremost, the IEEPA among the powers that the president intended to utilize; the use of his IEEPA powers was by no stretch of imagination "secret."
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In the weeks following 9/11, Congress acknowledged that bank records could be searched pursuant to the Global War on Terror. In enacting Section 357 of the PATRIOT Act, Congress amended the Financial Right to Privacy Act (RFPA) to waive otherwise applicable procedural requirements regarding searches of bank records pursuant to counterterrorism investigations and analyses. While RFPA is not immediately applicable to the TFTP--by the RFPA's definition, Swift does not appear to be a "financial institution"--Congress's approval of such inspection of bank records for counterterrorism purposes underscores the federal government's unified position that financial records are "fair game"....
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Not only was it legal, it was exacltly the type of thing you'd want your government to be doing, to track and stop terrorists from doing what they do.
It would be very fitting that if the United States is hit again by terrorists, that the NYT was the next target.
| June 28, 2006 2:44 PM
The 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean eulogizes the intelligence program designed to track terror funding. Kean: “‘Terrorists read the newspapers. Once the program became known, then obviously the terrorists were not going to use these methods any more…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.’” Kean had asked the publishers of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times not to published information on the program.
Related: Privacy International, a human rights group, has filed complaints in 32 countries against SWIFT, the organization which provided the guts of the US surveillance program. (HT: Captain’s Quarters)
That's not the point. The problem (and the real story) is members of congress leaked it and the NYT ran with it. The NYT should list on the front page each and every congressman who put America at risk.
Isn't it ironic that the NYTimes demands transparency from government; except when those government officials give them leaks of national security information, and then they demand privacy for them? Of coure, all this is only true for democrats.....if its a republican, they the NYTimes wants to hang them for leaking -- like they tried to do to LIbby/Rove. I think Keller should be jailed NOW until he identifies the source and the leak. Fitzy did it to Miller, the precedent has been set. Put Keller, Lichtblau and Risen in jail until they identify the leaker(s) on the front page of the Times.
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