My hit on Bush’s Illegal Financial Surveillance
9:01 am | Attention Deficit Democracy | Bovard | Bush | Surveillance | Wiretapping
From the Baltimore Sun
Surveillance of financial transactions goes too far
By James Bovard
June 28, 2006
The Bush administration admitted that it was conducting warrantless surveillance of the financial transactions of Americans and others only after newspapers exposed the program. According to some Republicans, the solution is to imprison journalists who blow the whistle on government wrongdoing.
Shortly after 9/11, President Bush invoked the International Economic Emergency Act to authorize the U.S. Treasury and the Central Intelligence Agency to snare vast amounts of international banking data passing through a hub in Brussels, Belgium. The administration issued general subpoenas that vacuumed up the personal financial data of vast numbers of people. The agents were looking for leads on terrorist financing.
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow hailed the warrantless surveillance as “government at its best.” But the Los Angeles Times reported that government officials said, “The effort has been only marginally successful against al-Qaida, which long ago began transferring money through other means, including the highly informal banking system common in Islamic countries.”
The searches almost certainly violate a 1978 federal law, the Right to Financial Privacy Act. Using a vague administrative subpoena to impound hundreds of thousands of people’s financial records is probably also a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which states that search warrants require “probable cause” of criminal conduct and must specify what is to be seized.
Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey said, “We’ve done a large number of searches. … I don’t know the exact number but it’s … at least tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of searches.” If the person running the program isn’t sure whether it’s tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of searches, this is a clue that the federal government is grabbing far too much.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, wrote to top Bush administration officials expressing doubts about the legality of the searches. He is also perturbed that the administration withheld information about the program from almost everyone in Congress until after it learned that The New York Times was going to publish an exposé. Mr. Specter asked, “Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?”
Another massive roundup of financial records will not keep Americans safe. Federal money cops have long been overwhelmed by too many reports from banks. The 9/11 hijackings were preceded by the biggest failure ever by U.S. financial authorities.
A U.N. report on terrorist financing released in May 2002 noted that a “suspicious transaction report” had been filed with the U.S. government over a $69,985 wire transfer that Mohamed Atta, leader of the hijackers, received from the United Arab Emirates. The report noted that “this particular transaction was not noticed quickly enough because the report was just one of a very large number and was not distinguishable from those related to other financial crimes.”
One of the key federal agencies vacuuming the financial information long has snubbed the terrorist threat. As of 2004, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control had 10 times as many agents assigned to track violators of the U.S. embargo on Cuba as it had tracking Osama bin Laden’s money. From 1994 to 2004, this Treasury bureau collected nearly 1,000 times as much in fines for trading with Cuba as for terrorism financing.
The feds’ roundup of financial data may be far greater than what the Bush administration has thus far acknowledged. Forbes.com reported Friday that a Treasury spokeswoman “would neither confirm nor deny” that U.S.-based banking systems were also part of the so-called Terrorist Finances Tracking Program.
There is no reason to assume that the Treasury Department has been more restrained in grabbing banking records than the National Security Agency has been in seizing Americans’ telephone records.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter T. King, a New York Republican, denounced the Times’ exposé as “treasonous” and urged the Bush administration to prosecute the newspaper. But the role of the media in a free society is not to cover up government abuses.
The issue is not whether the federal government should detect and block terrorist financing; almost everyone favors such efforts. Instead, the issue is whether the government can invoke the terrorist threat to exempt itself from all statutory restraints. Keeping Americans in the dark is not the same as keeping them safe.
James Bovard is the author of “Attention Deficit Democracy.” His e-mail is jbovard@his.com.
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Steve
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 5:56 am
May I raise a discussion point?
What would happen if they actually jailed the editors of the NY Times?
I would like to know. I tend to think that would be the breaking point.
Jim
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 7:52 am
Steve - You might be right that it would be a breaking point. I am a bit jaded on ‘breaking points’ - I thought that several had been reached over the last 4 years - and each time, the administration has been able to eventually skip merrily along. And the True Believers still Believe - regardless of what anyone in government said or did.
I think the government may enjoy blustering more than prosecuting.
I spoke to a former defense attorney a couple days ago - he said that the tapes the FBI informant made talking to the group of nitwit would-be “terrorists” in Miami will never see the light of day. Why? Because they would prove how the government created the entire threat - and because it would show that the government was aware that the so-called conspirators were too stupid to be a threat.
Steve
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 10:34 am
Well regarding the shoe buyers I thought it was the most flimsy and piddling case they have yet put together. There was clear misinformation. For example, CNN’s own reporter admitted the group wasn’t even a Muslim group. They were kind of a Christian splinter group. The Al-Qeada connection sounds to me like the “informant� entrapped the shoe buyers into whatever it was they were supposed to have done.
While I was out walking with my wife this morning she felt that if peter King got his wish and the Times were actually prosecuted there would be “15 minutes� of outrage and then the whole thing would be forgotten about. I just don’t know. Part of me wants to believe that a banana republic like jailing of the free press would finally be the crossing over the line into an uprising against these violations. I am hoping to her from Sunni and some others on this.
We may even get lucky and hear from those two people who love FOX and like to e-mail you. I bet they have some insightful dialogue.
Jim
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 11:02 am
Steve - the Miami bust is a good example of how little it takes to con many Americans these days. I was loitering at the Fox studios on Friday night prior to going on - I was amused to see how pompously the Miami busts were being discussed. Former SEn. Slade Gordon (sp), if memory serves, was bloviating about how the arrests show how the ’system has improved’ since 9/11.
And this dude, a former 9/11 commissioner, is supposed to know his nose from a hole in the ground.
Part of the difficulty with knowing how the public would react to arresting NYTimes editors — the Judith Miller farce muddied many things — the fact that much of the media painted her as Joan of Arc when she was jailed — that was a huge blunder — and will make it easier for demagogs to confuse issues in the future.
Steve
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 11:13 am
Well they kept out 2 would be hijackers and every one of the others was a legal immigrant- yet they now talk about the broken borders with Mexico and bring up 9-11. Very disingenuous.
…and see with Miller there you go- they used her and the Times to get their war. Then when they had no further use for the times, they started talking about prosecuting them for “leaking secrets.� So they don’t have any loyalty to the very people that helped them. Yes, the issue with Miler was confused, though I am not sure by design.
Tony Miller
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 4:36 pm
I answer the phones for the NY Times as part of the customer support program.
Every day people call in complaining about that news article. The sad part is most haven’t read it or understand it. They simply want to say that the paper is un-American, a terrorist sympathiser, and getting Americans killed.
I don’t mind people wanting to express their displeasure with the article I just wish they took the time to read it and try to understand it first.
I really enjoyed the article presented here and I hope more people take the time to read it.
Jim
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 5:07 pm
Tony - Thanks for the feedback.
I had the impression that the talk show hosts have also not read the article. To ask a talk show host to read a 4000 word article is like asking a normal person to read all six volumes of Gibbon’s Decline & Fall of The Roman Empire.
I am working on an article on the response to the NYT piece - pretty amazing stuff out there.
I hope your headset has a reliable volume control.
Jim
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 5:10 pm
Steve - consistency has never been a strong suit of any presidential administration - even, I sadly admit, Thomas Jefferson’s.
But these folks seem to have ratcheted up the rascality a few notches.
The House debate on condemning the media tonight might be a hoot. I’m glad I bought extra beer last night.
Steve
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 5:54 pm
Will that be on C-Span? I will look for Peter King and the whole brigade to fall all over themselves trying to get to the podium.
Mister Speaker i yield to my colleauge so that he/she may condemn a free press!
Jim
Comment on Thursday 29th June 2006 @ 5:58 pm
I think it will be on C SPAN. Muttering a bit here that I disconnected the cable a few weeks ago…
I think it might also be possible to watch it from the C SPAN website - though I’m not sure.
I wish more people would watch House “debates” hour by hour - that is one of the best cures for blind faith in government.
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[...] The Miami bust occurred at the same time that the New York Times revealed the massive warrantless surveillance of bank transactions. [...]
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[...] The Miami bust occurred at the same time that the New York Times revealed the massive warrantless surveillance of bank transactions. [...]
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