Hammer's gonna fall. Leaker(s) are going down.
Posted on 07/04/2006 10:46:28 PM PDT by neverdem
According to Treasury and Justice Department officials familiar with the briefings their senior leadership undertook with editors and reporters from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, the media outlets were told that their reports on the SWIFT financial tracking system presented risks for three ongoing terrorism financing investigations. Despite this information, both papers chose to move forward with their stories.
"We didn't give them specifics, just general information about regions where the investigations were ongoing, terrorist organizations that we believed were being assisted. These were off the record meetings set up to dissuade them from reporting on SWIFT, and we thought the pressing nature of the investigations might sway them, but they didn't," says a Treasury official.
In fact, according to a Justice Department official, one of the reporters involved with the story was caught attempting to gain more details about one of the investigations through different sources. "We believe it was to include it in their story," says the official.
In the briefings, Treasury and Justice Department officials laid out the challenges law enforcement and intelligence agencies have had with the traditional and still popular hawala Muslim "banking" system, which is dependent more on interpersonal dealings than on institutions and has...
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Hammer's gonna fall. Leaker(s) are going down.
Well .. this smells like Clinton doings! They have enough former govt workers who were in the know or behind the scenes and knew information which could damage America.
I do slightly disagree with you that it couldn't be someone currently employed by the govt. So far, people like the Wilsons have had a great time revealing classified information all over the place. And .. Rockefeller - in his memo to other dems - clearly stated he was planning on using his position on the Senate Intel Committee to take down the Bush admin. I see that admission from Rockefeller as an act of "high crimes and misdemeanors" - pure and simple - and he should have been impeached and removed from office!!
For my money .. the person leaking this might not be currently employed .. but the information HAD TO COME FROM SOMEBODY CURRENTLY EMPLOYED [making Rockefeller a likely candidate because of his position where he would have access to all this classified info]. This program was not in place during the Clinton years - so my money is on Rockefeller, or a Clinton-holdover who is feeding info to someone outside the govt who in turn is leaking it to the NYT.
I sure hope they find out who it is - I'd love to see the dems eating a bunch of crow. This would put a nail in the coffin of any dems running for office in the next few years.
Richard Clarke ?
In fact, according to a Justice Department official, one of the reporters involved with the story was caught attempting to gain more details about one of the investigations through different sources. "We believe it was to include it in their story," says the official.
In the briefings, Treasury and Justice Department officials laid out the challenges law enforcement and intelligence agencies have had with the traditional and still popular hawala Muslim "banking" system, which is dependent more on interpersonal dealings than on institutions and has been prevalent in parts of the world that doesn't understand the Islamic rules.
"Since 9/11 we've gotten a lot better at monitoring hawalas," says a Justice Department official. "That success has forced a lot of the money into the institutional or more traditional banking systems. And that's where SWIFT has been particularly helpful."
This is especially true in the regions of the world that cater to large Muslim communities that require banking rules in line with their faith. Increasingly in countries like Malaysia, large, international banks are attracting billions in Muslim funds, trades and transfers of which could be monitored by SWIFT.
According to the Treasury and Justice Department sources, the reporters and editors appeared to have been told that the SWIFT financial monitoring was somehow being undertaken without warrants and without legal supervision.
But from the initial briefings, the Times papers were shown information that clearly outlined the search warrant procedures undertaken by the federal government to track some financial transactions.
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"They (Rats) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war," ... Richard Miniter, respected OBL author
Paul O'Neill?
We think we're looking at fairly high-ranking, former officials who want to make life difficult for us and what we do for whatever reasons."
@@@@@
That is a workable target of names. Godspeed, Justice Department.
This release of secret work is totally beyond rationality. If the NYT thinks they can sell "Americans have a right to know" about this case, they are woefully mistaken. Maybe some people could be hoodwinked by "wiretapping" or "secret prisons" but not tracking money that is going to terrorists.
Treason done in plain sight. Bill Clinton was a traitor who gave military secrets to the Chinese. He did it indirectly but it's traceable back to him. The New York Times is cut from the same cloth. Yet neither will be prosecuted while individual spies are.
"This release of secret work is totally beyond rationality......"hmmmm...maybe NOT mash here for an interesting network of relationships http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1660323/posts....a FINANCIAL overlay would, I'm sure be much MORE interesting and revealing.
Treason within treason..
Thanks for working on exposing these subversives.
Are you familiar with the book: Covert Cadre: Inside the Institute for Policy Studies, S Steven Powell, 1987?
It has an introduction by David Horowitz, and is hair-raising reading.
These people are pro-communism and the fall of the Soviet Union has not dampened their devotion to their cause.
From the chapter titled LOBBYING:
The Center for International Policy (CIP) was formed in 1975 by Lindsay Mattison, with Orlando Letelier's help, as another "human rights" research/lobbying organization. Like the IPA spinoff Center for National Security Studies, which focused on the intelligence agencies, CIP operates under the aegis of the Fund for Peace, with support from the Rubin Foundation, the Ruth Mott Fund, and the Stern Fund. Donald Ranard, a disaffected State Department official and friend of Orlando Letelier, is CIP's director and William Goodfellow its deputy director. Susan Weber, an early staff member, was previously registered under the Foreign Agents Registtration Act as an employee of the Soviet embassy to copyedit Soviet Life.
CIP has focused much of its effort on stopping financial institutions, like the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, from aiding Latin American countries friendly to the United States.
Although CIP's energies are not exclusively spent on Latin America, it is an important part of the Latin network. CIP's prospectus says that "the Center has been informing the press, the public, and members of Congress about the implication of U S foreign policy towards developing countries with special emphasis on the relationship of U S economic and military assistance to the status of human rights...."
A theme CIP frequently plays is that Latin America's problems are really the fault of the United States. For instance, the introduction to William Biddle's CIP paper on Nicaragua states that "basic U S interests are more threatened by the customary American response to radical governments than by the governments themselves." Likewise, on the Grenadan crisis, CIP fellow W Frick Curry wrote, "In the final analysis, the greatest threat to American citizens was caused by violence precipitated by the [U S] invasion itself." Despite its overt bias, CIP avers that"the press corps and Congressional leaders and staffs have found the Center's bimonthly International Policy Report useful in getting a fresh look at the problems of aid and repression." pp 236-237
*****
All punctuation is in the book, and all quotes are endnoted.
The tentacles of these organizations have had thirty years to entwine themselves firmly in every government agency. Every time they fail to cripple President Bush, they do something even more radical. We have to train ourselves to prepare for more "asymmetric warfare" from the Left.
We think we're looking at fairly high-ranking, former officials who want to make life difficult for us and what we do for whatever reasons."
Thanks for the ping Dog
Well, DOH!
Demonizing or prosecuting the paper or reporters is shooting the messenger.
The problem is the person who is leaking the information, NOT the person who is printing it.
The leakers need to be found and prosecuted.
Very good! This will be interesting, and we can all speculate on which former officials those might be.
Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke...
Thanks for the link. Outstanding research by Fedora. Names-words-deeds.
Also sounds like they have indea of who the leaker may be
"Well .. this smells like Clinton doings! They have enough former govt workers who were in the know or behind the scenes and knew information which could damage America. "
The biggest mistake that Bush has made in his 6 years is not asking for the resignation of every Clinton appointee and those appointees deputies( which would include their office Gopher), the day he took office in 2001. The new tone stuff raises it's ugly head again.
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