WASHINGTON, 28 June 2006 — The Bush Administration likes to keep secrets, so it came as no real surprise when it chastised a newspaper that has frustrated past presidents for its disclosures of secrets. On Monday, President Bush attacked the New York Times for publishing a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorist suspects, which the president branded as “disgraceful.”
“What we did was fully authorized under the law, and the disclosure of this program is disgraceful,” Bush told reporters, jabbing a finger for emphasis. “We’re at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America,” he said, “and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America.”
The Times reported Friday that the US government had secretly monitored thousands of international banking transactions since the attacks on New York and Washington in order to track suspected terrorists. The searches involved millions of records held by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a Belgium-based international cooperative that serves as a clearing house for transactions.
The cooperative serves 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries. Its database, officials say, has provided valuable information about ties between suspected terrorists and groups financing them, and directly led to the capture of Al-Qaeda operative Riduan Isamuddin, believed to have masterminded the 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia.
The controversy sparked renewed debate about whether the government has gone too far in tracking terrorists, and whether news organizations are obstructing the terrorist-tracking effort by exposing the government’s methods.
Bush made his remarks during a White House meeting with organizations that support the war in Iraq, echoing comments Friday from Vice President Dick Cheney and from conservative commentators. While other printed details of the program, Bush singled out the New York Times for censure, arguing that the newspaper’s disclosure makes it harder for the administration to fight terrorism. “If the New York Times decides that it is going to try to assume responsibility for determining which classified secrets remain classified and which don’t, it ought to accept some of the obligations of that responsibility; it ought to be able to take the heat, as well,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
Snow said the effort to persuade the paper not to publish also included former Republican Gov. Thomas Kean of New Jersey and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., the co-chairmen of the Sept. 11 commission, as well as a number of members of Congress and top government officials.
In an interview Monday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who has been a vocal critic of the Iraq war, also urged the Times not to print the information. The Times’ executive editor, Bill Keller, defended publication of the program’s details. “Nobody should think that we made this decision casually, with any animus toward the current administration, or without fully weighing the issues,” he wrote in an editorial.
