Terrorist funds-tracking no secret, some say

Terrorist funds-tracking no secret, some say
Cite White House boasts of tighter monitoring system

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | June 28, 2006

WASHINGTON -- News reports disclosing the Bush administration's use of a special bank
surveillance program to track terrorist financing spurred outrage in the White House
and on Capitol Hill, but some specialists pointed out yesterday that the government
itself has publicly discussed its stepped-up efforts to monitor terrorist finances
since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

On Monday, President Bush said it was "disgraceful" that The New York Times and other
media outlets reported last week that the US government was quietly monitoring
international financial transactions handled by an industry-owned cooperative in Belgium
called the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Communication, or SWIFT, which is
controlled by nearly 8,000 institutions in 20 countries. The Washington Post, the Los
Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal also reported about the program.

The controversy continued to simmer yesterday when Senator Jim Bunning, a Republican
of Kentucky, accused the Times of "treason," telling reporters in a conference call
that it "scares the devil out of me" that the media would reveal such sensitive information.
Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, requested US intelligence agencies to assess
whether the reports have damaged anti terrorism operations. And Representative Peter King,
the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has urged Attorney General Alberto
Gonzalez to pursue "possible criminal prosecution" of the Times, which has reported on other
secret government surveillance programs. The New York Times Co. owns The Boston Globe.

But a search of public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional
testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed
in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track
terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist-
linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT.

...

Victor D. Comras , a former US diplomat who oversaw efforts at the United Nations to improve international measures to combat terror financing, said it was common knowledge that worldwide financial transactions were being closely monitored for links to terrorists. ``A lot of people were aware that this was going on," said Comras, one of a half-dozen financial experts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recruited for the task.

"Unless they were pretty dumb, they had to assume" their transactions were being monitored, Comras said of terrorist groups. ``We have spent the last four years bragging how effective we have been in tracking terrorist financing."