It seems that all the Republicans are up in arms about the NYT story with regards to monitoring SWIFT for terrorist related activities.
Michelle Malkin has weighed in:
The New York Times (proudly publishing all the secrets unfit to spill since 9/11) and their reckless anonymous sources (come out, come out, you cowards) tipped off terrorists to America’s efforts to track their financial activities.Guess what? It isn’t the first time blabbermouth journalists have jeopardized terror financing investigations since September 11, according to the government.
I guess if we don’t want the terrorists to know we’re tracking them financially then we shouldn’t tell them we have programs that:
- Targets all individuals and institutions linked to global terrorism.
- Allows the Treasury Department to freeze U.S. assets and block U.S. transactions of any person or institution associated with terrorists or terrorist organizations.
- Identifies charitable organizations that secretly funnel money to al-Qaeda.
- States the President’s intent to punish those financial institutions at home and abroad that continue to provide resources and/or services to terrorist organizations.
Now, that’s not what the NYT published. That’s just a subset of the fancy new stuff we were doing and was published by the Whitehouse on September 24, 2001!
Of course, the NYT did tipoff the terrorists that we were monitoring the SWIFT network. Oh, did you think SWIFT was some secret agency? Hell no! They’ve got a freaking website. They publish their own magazine!
Apparently anybody that knows anything about international banking also knows that all that data goes over the SWIFT network.
Further, SWIFT provides a handy little page about what they do to combat illegal activities. It’s pretty easy to find, because they’ve got this button icon right on their front page:
Behind that icon you’ll find this:
2. Cooperation – SWIFT has a history of cooperating in good faith with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and appropriate international organizations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF*), in their efforts to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities.
The FATF is an international body, created by the G8, devoted to stopping money laundering and funding of terrorist groups!
So, the Whitehouse says we’re going to monitor finances to catch terrorists on September 24, 2001 and on top of that the financial institution responsible for international wire transfers puts right on their front page a link to something that says they cooperate with law enforcement agencies but the NYT is responsible for endangering the program.
Nothing like a good two minute hate to excite the party members I guess.
Worrying about what Michelle Malkin thinks is like worrying about what (instert random pro-wrester’s name here). She’s a clown.
A lot of these neo-con (and liberal)”pundits” are doing nothing more than what pro-wrestlers do when they get in front of a microphone and scream about this and that. Fake hot-air to entertain the masses who want to see a fight.
If anyone from an opposite side showed the well laid out facts you put on your page, they would call them “fact” with quotation marks and do a character attack on the messenger.
Michelle Malkin is a jackass. I know you don’t actuall “worry” about what the likes of Malkin has to say, but the wrestling analogy just came to me, and I had to put it somewhere.
The problem with some of these pundits (on the left and on the right) is that their spew is poisoning the minds of the those who are too lazy to find information like you have, and while being otherwise intelligent, don’t feel like thinking too hard about society and politics and circumstances that affect each other.
Enough of me and my silly comment.
Thanks for the site!
dan
a7db8ecssgz887ra