Apologists
David Frum's Diary
Frank Rich in the New York Times today springs to the defense of his employer:
[I]t was no cause for a national-security alarm for the simple reason that since 9/11, our government has repeatedly advertised that it is following the terrorists' money trail, a tactic enhanced by the broad new powers over financial institutions that Mr. Bush sought and received. In November 2002, he and the Treasury secretary at the time, Paul O'Neill, even held a televised event promoting their Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, established expressly, in the president's words, to "investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks." As for Swift, Dan Froomkin of washingtonpost.com points out that it can't resist bragging on its own Web site that it "has a history of cooperating in good faith with authorities," including treasury departments and law enforcement agencies, in trying "to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities."
Only a terrorist who couldn't shoot straight would assume that Swift was not part of the American effort to stalk terrorist transactions ....
This is the emerging line of defense: The financial surveillance program was not much of a secret anyway, so national security was not compromised by the decision to reveal it. If true, that raises the question: if the program was not much of a secret, why was it considered worthy of 2000+ words on the front page?
This latest defense sounds to my ears rather like excusing the publication of the departure time of a troopship with the excuse: Well, everybody knew that the US was moving troops by water. There's a big difference between knowledge of the general outline of a program and knowledge of its specific operational details. Here are some details from the June 23 story that you have to wonder whether the terrorists knew before:
i) The US and its allies are tracking not only bank accounts, but also information from stock exchanges and mutual fund managers.
ii) The US does not however have easy access to individual ATM transactions on American soil.
iii) Wire transfer information is not available in real time, but only after a lag of several weeks.
iv) Nor is it logistically possible to get real-time information on credit-card purchases - of, for example, fertilizer or timing devices.
v) The United Arab Emirates fully cooperates with the program.
vi) Individual member banks are growing unhappy with the program and want it to end.
Doesn't that strike you as potentially useful information - especially points iii and vi?
The Times should have the courage of its convictions. Instead of pretending that the information revealed was useless, it should forthrightly admit: Yes we may possibly have helped the terrorists - but we believe that any risks to security were more than worth it. Then we could argue that latter point. Their current line of defense is disingenuous and cowardly.
frum.nationalreview.com |
