Bush Admin Previously Told Reporters FAR MORE Than NYT Reported Last Week! [View All]

[kpete]

Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Bush administration previously told reporters FAR MORE about US efforts to track terrorist finances than the NYT reported last week

by John in DC - 6/28/2006 03:27:00 PM

This is what we call explosive stuff. Reporters are coming forward to document just how much the Bush administration already told journalists about their supposedly super secret spying they do on financial records in order to catch terrorists. We now know that the Bush administration already told reporters FAR MORE about this program than anything the New York Times reported last week. Yet Bush and his surrogates are accusing the NYT of treason.

Well, get in line. It appears the Bush White House is once again at the head of the line when it comes to making classified leaks.

From DefenseTech:

Bush administration officials have been lining up to condemn The New York Times for revealing a program to track financial transactions as part of the war on terrorism. But if the Times’ revelation about a program to monitor international exchanges is so damaging, why has the administration been chattering about efforts to monitor domestic transactions for nearly five years?

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, many journalists — including this one — were briefed by U.S. Customs officials on Operation Green Quest, an effort to roll up terrorist financiers by monitoring, among other things, "suspicious" bank transfers and ancient money lending programs favored by people of Middle Eastern descent.

I interviewed Marcy Forman, director of Green Quest, at her Washington offices in December 2001, when I was a writer for Government Executive magazine. Our meeting was sanctioned by Customs' public affairs office, and came at a time when the White House was eager to talk about all the work federal agencies were doing to hunt down terrorists. Forman told me the kinds of people, transactions, even locations that the government was targeting. (These are details, it should be noted, that the recent Times piece did not reveal.) Among the potentially sensitive items Forman told me, which were published:

.........................

Green Quest was only one of the administration’s efforts to combat terrorist financing which officials discussed publicly. More than two years after 9/11, federal officials testified before a congressional field hearing in Miami and "detailed efforts to stop the illegal financing of terrorist networks." A senior adviser for the Treasury Department "named several initiatives, such as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is developing technology to let financial institutions report suspicious transactions more easily and quickly." The adviser also named the system FinCEN was developing to manage a database built to search financial transactions. And he said the department was working directly with financial institutions to help them "develop software to better identify potential terrorist-financing activities."

much more at:
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002546.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/06/bush-administration-previously-told.html