New York Times Aids Terror Networks

[kickabuck]

The New York Times yesterday outed the monitoring of the financial transactions of the international banking institution called Swift. The administration and two members of the 9/11 commission pleaded with the Times to spike the story, they refused. There have apparently been some successes, including the capture of al Queda operative Riduan Isamussin the mastermind of the Bali bombing. The Times hatred of this administration has gone too far, this is a huge blow to the tracking of terrorist financing. The only people who should be pleased are Al Queda, the only beneficiaries of the information.

[FlFishOn]

My intermitant listening to Err America has convinced me that anything bad for America can be played as good for the Dems and vice versa. I know which side the NYT is on. I regret that I can spend no less on their product.

The LA Times did likewise.

[LadyWrestler]

[ QUOTE ]
The New York Times yesterday outed the monitoring of the financial transactions of the international banking institution called Swift. The administration and two members of the 9/11 commission pleaded with the Times to spike the story, they refused. There have apparently been some successes, including the capture of al Queda operative Riduan Isamussin the mastermind of the Bali bombing. The Times hatred of this administration has gone too far, this is a huge blow to the tracking of terrorist financing. The only people who should be pleased are Al Queda, the only beneficiaries of the information.

[/ QUOTE ]

[img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[kickabuck]

[ QUOTE ]
My intermitant listening to Err America has convinced me that anything bad for America can be played as good for the Dems and vice versa. I know which side the NYT is on. I regret that I can spend no less on their product.

The LA Times did likewise.

[/ QUOTE ]

This isn't the usual lefty perspective, analysis or choice of stories. This is damn dangerous. Their hatred of Bush has clouded their judgement. This is an institution in Belgium voluntarily giving our government specific asked for information. This is not Big Brother and the Times fanaticism can easily be said to have hurt the States and perhaps enabled the murder of some of its citizens.

[Copernicus]

more importantly, whoever is leaking info to the Times should be rooted out, fired, and prosecuted if any of the info was classified.

[Chris Alger]

The big joke is that the NY Times was an important highbrow propaganda source in the run-up to the war. It produced one of the Administration's most successful war-sell weekends, invovling the threat of "mushroom clouds" emanating from Iraq, the result of Judith Miller's scurrilous Pentagon-planted reporting about the phony, as the White House now admits, centrifugal tubes. The Sunday morning shows were filled with it, and it was all crap.

This post is just more evidence that the right-wing blogosphere consists of White House lackeys. The gist of the story is that the White House invaded privacy again, in secret. According to the Times, the program was a "significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records. . . ."

Administration officials were embarrassed by the disclosure and naturally wanted to spike it. When they failed, they pushed buttons to mobilize their network of looney toons robots to spread the fantastic lies above. Of course there is no evidence that the story impeded the tracking of terrorist financing. Of course there is no evidence that any anti-terror program was compromised. Of couse al Qaeda never benefitted from the story (a claim I suspect that the administration has never made, because they know it's such BS).

The facts, as always, are trivial concerns to Republican hoax-mongers. It is much more important to define as Bush-hating any paper that embarrasses the White House with undisputable facts of public concern. In their ideal world, all media who don't hate Bush would print nothing more than what the White House would want the public to read. This is the sort of "freedom and democracy" that the Republicans want to reinforce here and use violence to spread around the world.

Real patriots who take the self-described "patriotism" of these creeps at face value are guilty of a serious failure of judgment.

[kickabuck]

[ QUOTE ]
The big joke is that the NY Times was an important highbrow propaganda source in the run-up to the war. It produced one of the Administration's most successful war-sell weekends, invovling the threat of "mushroom clouds" emanating from Iraq, the result of Judith Miller's scurrilous Pentagon-planted reporting about the phony, as the White House now admits, centrifugal tubes. The Sunday morning shows were filled with it, and it was all crap.

This post is just more evidence that the right-wing blogosphere consists of White House lackeys. The gist of the story is that the White House invaded privacy again, in secret. According to the Times, the program was a "significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records. . . ."

Administration officials were embarrassed by the disclosure and naturally wanted to spike it. When they failed, they pushed buttons to mobilize their network of looney toons robots to spread the fantastic lies above. Of course there is no evidence that the story impeded the tracking of terrorist financing. Of course there is no evidence that any anti-terror program was compromised. Of couse al Qaeda never benefitted from the story (a claim I suspect that the administration has never made, because they know it's such BS).

The facts, as always, are trivial concerns to Republican hoax-mongers. It is much more important to define as Bush-hating any paper that embarrasses the White House with undisputable facts of public concern. In their ideal world, all media who don't hate Bush would print nothing more than what the White House would want the public to read. This is the sort of "freedom and democracy" that the Republicans want to reinforce here and use violence to spread around the world.

Real patriots who take the self-described "patriotism" of these creeps at face value are guilty of a serious failure of judgment.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I have made the assumption that the Bush administration was genuine in their concern this monitoring of international financial transactions program being compromised was dangerous and not simply embarassing for them. You, like the Times, just feel they are covering their butts. Interesting that the only loud voice of dismay was rep. Markey of Mass. I would think that if this was a program of Orwellian dimensions many more would be crying foul.

I can only know what I'm told and nothing more. From the information I have it appears a foreign conduit for financial transactions VOLUNTARILY gave the U.S. information it requested on specific individuals. I am in the dark as to how we would coerce this major Belgian banking company into giving up records of transactions.

You want evidence that an anti-terror program was compromised? How about common sense Chris. You reveal that the transactions are being monitored, Voila! the terrorist no longer uses that method of moving around money. Surely that's not too hard to figure. You say 'of course al Queda never benefited from the story'. See the aforementioned. They won't use this method of transaction, therefore we cannot monitor them if they did.

Moving large amounts of money clandestinely over borders is not that easy. I assume financial transactions are one of the best ways of getting information on secretive groups like al Queda. The Times just made it more likely terrorist organizations succeed in this endeavor and therefore succeed in their goal of death in the West.

You assume that the pre-War information was deliberately false and all part of the Bush propaganda machine to get us into Iraq. No doubt the Times feels the same. That's why they ran with the story. That's a major reason why they hate Bush. Unfortunately for the rest of us we now have to deal with yet another uncovering of clandestine operations, this one seemingly benign, and have to hope our security was not compromised. So do you. Keep the faith.

[evil twin]

[ QUOTE ]
Real patriots who take the self-described "patriotism" of these creeps at face value are guilty of a serious failure of judgment.

[/ QUOTE ]
What an awesome post.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
"You reveal that the transactions are being monitored, Voila! the terrorist no longer uses that method of moving around money."

[/ QUOTE ]
I thought that was the point: making it hard for terrorists to move money.

Nearly every financial transaction has some sort of readable record. The administration made no secret that it was making strenuous efforts to discover and scrutinize financial transactions associated with terrorism. It's hard to imagine that a story about privacy intrusion somehow blew the cover of any antiterror effort. Your source probably hinted that terrrorists thought there was a safe haven, but now realize there isn't because of the Times. Read it again and try finding evidence instead of innuendo.

[ QUOTE ]
You assume that the pre-War information was deliberately false and all part of the Bush propaganda machine to get us into Iraq.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not assuming anything. If the government wants me to support mass violence to accomplish its political goals, I might do so, but I require some minimal proof of justification. Proof of a war-justifying threat from Iraq never surfaced for the obvious and now undeniable reason that it never existed. At the same time, proof that the administration lied, exaggerated and distorted at every turn on this issue is overwhelming: the eyewitness insider accounts of Bush's long-standing determination to invade Iraq regardless of any threat, the Downing Stree memos (the White House admitting its intention to "fix the intelligence around the policy"), the forged Niger uranium documents and the undisclosed skepticism about "Curveball", the metting in Prague, the al-Libi confession and a whole host of Chalabi-related "intelligence." Not to mention to outright falsehoods about long-range drones, AIEA predictions of Iraq being nuclear in three years and Cheney's famous line about it having "reconstituted nuclear weapons." And of course the instant about-face from threat-justification to liberation-justification.

All anyone who cares whether their country and their troops are responsible for mass murder is type "Bush lied Iraq" into the Google search box and spend half an hour reading. Too many find this modest effort too much work because, I IMO, they're afraid that it will suggest that our political culture is dominated by sociopaths. It isn't just Bush, of course, it's the entire leadership and particularly the mass media.

BTW, the Times was opposed to the war but only on the grounds that the Security Council failed to authrorize it (as it must by law). The Times essentially endorsed Bush's claims about Iraqi "depection" about WMD. It also took the mainstream "good German" line that the war, that it should be encouraged and supported once it began regardless of justification. To my knowledge, it has yet to endorse a deadline for complete withdrawal. Still, it has been one of the better sources of stories about the occupation and has resoundly criticized Bush.

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought that was the point: making it hard for terrorists to move money.


[/ QUOTE ]

Only partially correct. The point was to make it hard for them to move money undetected.

[ QUOTE ]
Nearly every financial transaction has some sort of readable record. The administration made no secret that it was making strenuous efforts to discover and scrutinize financial transactions associated with terrorism. It's hard to imagine that a story about privacy intrusion somehow blew the cover of any antiterror effort.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps it is hard to imagine..for someone who has little imagination. Let me help you.

Here is a not so far fetched analogy. Homeland Security develops technology that is extremely sensitive and successful at identifying briefcase size chemical weapons. Every terrorist already knows we are trying to do this. We thwart several bombing attempts using this technology.

Now the NYT receives classified information that this technology is in use, but that condom gel effectively masks the chemical weapons from detection, and therefore a secondary system is in use that also detects condom gel, but it isnt as accurate as the primary system...some chemical weapons masked with condom gel can get through. The NYT decides its in the public interest to know that Homeland Security is scanning their briefcases for condoms on the subways of NY. Now the terrorists know they can greatly increase their chances of a successful attack by throwing some condoms in with the weapons.

Has the NYT done a great service to the people as great watchdogs, or potentially enabled the death of thousands of people for something the ordinary citizen shouldnt care about?

I only half-heard it this morning, but a New York Congressman (my guess is Peter King since he's Chairman of the HS committee?) is pushing for prosecution of the NYT under the Espionage Act and another law I didnt catch the name of. Hang em high.