Update on the NYT Bank Monitoring Story Backlash

The debate surrounding the recent publication in the New York Times of a story about a Bush administration program using the European SWIFT bank records service continues to evolve in strange ways. Once again, Republican voices in the media have succeeded in completely dominating the terms of the debate, effectively muting any questions about the program itself and centering the debate around whether the NYT should have published the story. The Republican talking points have been so successfully pitched that many irrational allegations are accepted as completely factual, such as these:

1) The story revealed important details of the Bush administration's counter-terror efforts.
2) The New York Times helped terrorists by publishing the story.
3) The New York Times did so out of either contempt for the Bush administration or complete disregard for the national security of the United States.
4) Those who published the story could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act, or even for treason.

Lets look at how these assertions are completely untrue, and how the GOP has convinced most Americans of their truth.

1) The story did not actually reveal any important operational details of the program, or any other information that had not already been revealed to the public by the Bush administration or others. Former State Department Official Victor Comraes said this about the SWIFT program's "secrecy":

Yesterday’s New York Times Story on US monitoring of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) transactions certainly hit the street with a splash. It awoke the general public to the practice. In that sense, it was truly new news.

But reports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group , on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries.

The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website. Paragraph 31 of the report states:

"The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries."

Suggestions that SWIFT and other similar transactions should be monitored by investigative agencies dealing with terrorism, money laundering and other criminal activity have been out there for some time. An MIT paper discussed the pros and cons of such practices back in 1995. Canada’s Financial Intelligence Unit, FINTRAC,, for one, has acknowledged receiving information on Canadian origin SWIFT transactions since 2002. Of course, this info is provided by the banks themselves.

The Times thus did not reveal any secret information that was not publicly known. (go here for my original source for this, with more analysis and info)

2) The New York Times could not have possibly helped terrorists by publishing the story. Since the information presented in the story was already well known among counter-terrorism experts, it is fair to assume that terrorists themselves had accessed this publicly available information. It is highly unlikely that the publishing of the story led to terrorists changing their methods -- they had almost certainly already adapted to this information as early as 2002, when it became well known among experts.

3) The New York Times published the story out of concern for the potential for abuse in the program, and because of important questions of legality that still have not been addressed sufficiently. Despite the complex system of "checks" within the program, the program is nowhere subject to judicial oversight, which could be a violation of the 4th Amendment. The hiring of a private firm to monitor use of the program is a joke, and would do little if anything to protect against abuse. Furthermore, the program is so shrouded in secrecy that any abuses that might have occurred are likely to have been covered up. Possible future abuses would also likely go undetected for the same reason.

4) If the story did not reveal any secret information that was not already publicly available (as was shown in 1), and thus couldn't have helped terrorists to adapt their methods (as was shown in 2), there is no legitimate grounds for claiming any violation of the Espionage Act or any act of treason.

The GOP has succeeded in pushing these talking points largely because the story superficially seems to reveal a secret program, and to an extent does insofar as it brings the program into public debate. However these actions cannot be criminal or harmful to the national security interests of the U.S. because the existence of the program was already public knowledge. What the Times article did was raise questions as to the legality of the program and the potential for abuse in a program whose operations are kept so secret.

The GOP has ignored all the pertinent evidence, and has constantly repeated shallow arguments that are easily refuted by any investigation. In doing so, Republicans have exploited the fact that most Americans have neither the time nor inclination to look into the details of these issues. Americans rely on pundits and journalists to do the investigation for them, and the media and talking heads have failed to present Americans with the relevant facts.