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POLL TO FREEP Do you believe that The New York Times, L.A. Times and The Wall Street Journal SWIFT reports put at risk our national security? Yes 22% No 78%

All the Classified Info That's Fit to Discloseby James LileksIt seems as if The New York Times is revealing all our national security secrets. But relax -- they have their limits. If The Times learned that U.S. troops were force-feeding Gitmo detainees with Coca-Cola, they wouldn't publish Coke's secret formula. They might get sued. If there's a CIA program that uses offensive cartoons of Muhammad to communicate with agents, they'll keep mum, lest they have to publish the images. But secret law-enforcement-type programs as classified as the access code to The Times' top-floor elevator? Fair game. You've got the right...

This is a vanity post. As everyone knows, the NY Times recently published an article describing, in detail, a classified program intended to inhibit terrorist financing. Post your letters to the NY Times (letters@nytimes.com) and Exec. Editor Bill Keller below and we'll get a nice collection going!

Because we don’t know, Jack …* On the Monday, June 26 edition of CNN’s “Situation Room,” hosted by Wolf Blitzer, New York Times editor in chief Bill Keller discussed the newspaper’s decision to publish last week details of a secret U.S. Government program to track terrorist financing. Here’s a part of the exchange: KELLER: To the best of my knowledge, three people outside of the administration were asked by the administration to call us. I spoke to one of them. One of them spoke to our Washington bureau chief. One of them spoke to Jill Abramson, our managing editor. All...

Two prominent former newsman for The New York Times, Max Frankel and Alex Jones, came out in defense of their old employer's recent disclosure of a secret bank monitoring program, saying the continued attacks on the paper are unfair and misplaced. Frankel, who served as executive editor from 1986 to 1994 and held other posts in Washington and Moscow, called the recent criticism an "outburst of Agnewism," while Jones, a onetime press reporter for the paper and current director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, said this was "an important moment for the watchdog press in wartime." <> Today,...

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...

A civil liberties group on Wednesday asked 32 national governments to block the release of confidential financial records to U.S. authorities as part of American anti-terrorist probes. London-based watchdog Privacy International demanded a halt to the "completely unacceptable" monitoring of millions of transactions as part of a CIA-U.S. Treasury program. The Treasury has acknowledged that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks it has tracked millions of financial transactions handled by the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT. Both SWIFT and the U.S. authorities say records were subpoenaed as part of targeted investigations into suspected terrorist activity....

Rights unit challenges U.S. over bank data By Dan Bilefsky International Herald Tribune Published: June 27, 2006 BRUSSELS A human rights group in London said Tuesday that it had lodged complaints in 32 countries against a banking consortium in Brussels, contending that it violated European and Asian data protection rules by providing the United States with confidential information about international money transfers. Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said the organization filed the complaints with the data protection authorities with the aim of halting what it called "illegal transfers" of private information to the United States by the Society for...

Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt has ordered a probe into whether a Brussels-based banking consortium broke the law when it provided US anti-terror authorities with confidential information about international money transfers. The consortium known as SWIFT – society for worldwide inter-bank financial telecommunications – was brought into the limelight when the New York Times last week reported that officials from the CIA, the FBI and other US agencies had since 2001 been allowed to inspect the transfers. Prime minister Guy Verhofstadt asked the Belgian justice ministry on Monday (26 June) to investigate whether SWIFT acted illegally in allowing US...

Over the last year, The New York Times has twice published reports about secret antiterrorism programs being run by the Bush administration. Both times, critics have claimed that the paper was being unpatriotic or even aiding the terrorists. Some have even suggested that it should be indicted under the Espionage Act. There have been a handful of times in American history when the government has indeed tried to prosecute journalists for publishing things it preferred to keep quiet. None of them turned out well — from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the time when the government tried to enjoin...

House Republican leaders are expected to introduce a resolution today condemning The New York Times for publishing a story last week that exposed government monitoring of banking records. The resolution is expected to condemn the leak and publication of classified documents, said one Republican aide with knowledge of the impending legislation. The resolution comes as Republicans from the president on down condemn media organizations for reporting on the secret government program that tracked financial records overseas through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), an international banking cooperative.

Letter to the Editors of The New York Times by Treasury Secretary SnowMr. Bill Keller, Managing EditorThe New York Times229 West 43rd Street New York, NY 10036 Dear Mr. Keller:The New York Times' decision to disclose the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a robust and classified effort to map terrorist networks through the use of financial data, was irresponsible and harmful to the security of Americans and freedom-loving people worldwide. In choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful counter-terrorism program and alerted terrorists...

Attorney General Gonzales: Indict the New York Times June 24th, 2006 Within days of the September 11th attacks, the head of Reuters’ worldwide news division, explaining the agency’s refusal to use the word “terrorist,” made the famous fatuous remark that “one man’s freedom terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Reuters, it seemed, wouldn’t be taking sides in America’s war on Islamic jihad, because as journalists, Reuters didn’t believe the American people and our allies are any “better” than our putrid enemies. Such is the repulsive state of the “moral equivalence” mongers in what passes for news journalism, even among those...

MANY READERS have been sharply critical of our decision to publish an article Friday on the U.S. Treasury Department's program to secretly monitor worldwide money transfers in an effort to track terrorist financing. They have sent me sincere and powerful expressions of their disappointment in our newspaper, and they deserve an equally thoughtful and honest response. The decision to publish this article was not one we took lightly. We considered very seriously the government's assertion that these disclosures could cause difficulties for counterterrorism programs. And we weighed that assertion against the fact that there is an intense and ongoing public...

The New York Times September 24, 2001 Monday Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 30 LENGTH: 545 words HEADLINE: Finances of Terror Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. [snip] Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists. [snip] Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies....

Fox News video The O'Reilly Factor Pres. Bush takes on The NY Times and other committed left-media

Mr. Bill Keller, Managing EditorThe New York Times229 West 43rd StreetNew York, NY 10036 Dear Mr. Keller: The New York Times' decision to disclose the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a robust and classified effort to map terrorist networks through the use of financial data, was irresponsible and harmful to the security of Americans and freedom-loving people worldwide.  In choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful counter-terrorism program and alerted terrorists to the methods and sources used to track their money trails. Your...

Former Attorney General Ed Meese - Times' Intel Revelations Giving "Aid And Comfort To The Enemy" Suggesting Treason June 26, 2006 - Washington, DC - PipeLineNews.org - Interviewed on today's Rush Limbaugh show former AG Meese - who has been contacted by New York Congressman Peter King in his efforts to bring legal action against the New York Times - blasted the liberal newspaper. Meese stated that last thursdays outing by the paper of the "Swift" financial tracking system employed by the CIA and the Treasury Dept. to track financial activity by al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups was its "the...

Mr. Bill Keller, Managing Editor The New York Times 229 West 43rd Street New York, NY 10036 Dear Mr. Keller: The New York Times' decision to disclose the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, a robust and classified effort to map terrorist networks through the use of financial data, was irresponsible and harmful to the security of Americans and freedom-loving people worldwide. In choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful counter-terrorism program and alerted terrorists to the methods and sources used to track their...

FReeper governsleastgovernsbest, AKA Mark Finkelstein, will be on the Lars Larson Show this evening at about 6:30 EDT. Lars and Mark will be discussing the NY Times leak of the government anti-terror program designed to track terrorists' financial transactions. Time permitting they might also get into the amazing ability of Democrats and their MSM friends to switch gears without missing a beat. For months they have demanded a troop reduction. But as soon as there are indications a reduction might be in the offing, they criticize the Bush administration for timing withdrawals for political purposes! Campbell Brown’s interview with Gen....