Follow the Money

When the New York Times first reported on the SWIFT program, this administration called it treasonous. Our media must follow the money, and our government must follow the rules, if America is going to continue to be America. Monitoring the flow of money to and from suspected terrorists must be done under a clear and coherent set of rules. And Americans’ civil liberties must not be suspended in the process!

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How SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) follows the money

WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counter-terrorism 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.

Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted al Qaeda figures in Southeast Asia, the officials said.

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 under secretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview on Thursday.

"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're sitting, troubling," said one former senior counter-terrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, "the potential for abuse is enormous."

The program is separate from the National Security Agency's efforts to eavesdrop without warrants and collect domestic phone records, operations that have provoked fierce public debate and spurred lawsuits against the government and telecommunications companies.

Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. Much more limited agreements with other companies have provided access to ATM transactions, credit card purchases and Western Union wire payments, the officials said.

Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the CIA, the FBI and other agencies to examine tens of thousands of financial transactions.

Swift executives have been uneasy at times about their secret role, the government and industry officials said. By 2003, the executives told American officials they were considering pulling out of the arrangement, which began as an emergency response to the Sept. 11 attacks, say officials. Worried about potential legal liability, Swift executives agreed to continue providing the data only after top officials, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve, intervened. At that time, new controls were introduced.

NYT reporter, Barclay Walsh, contributed to this article.