Rep. Peter King R-NY Wants To Procecute NY Times For Releasing Classified Documents
FoxNews Is Reporting:
Rep. King Seeks Charges Against Papers Over Terror Reporting
Monday, June 26, 2006
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.
Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.
........Peter King, R-N.Y.
said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher."
"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.
A message left Sunday with Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis was not immediately returned.
King's action was not endorsed by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
"On the basis of the newspaper article, I think it's premature to call for a prosecution of the New York Times, just like I think it's premature to say that the administration is entirely correct," Specter told "Fox News Sunday"
Stories about the money-monitoring program also appeared last week in The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. King said he thought investigators should examine those publications, but that the greater focus should be on The New York Times because the paper in December also disclosed a secret domestic wiretapping program.
He charged that the paper was "more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people."
When the paper chose to publish the story, it quoted the executive editor, Bill Keller, as saying editors had listened closely to the government's arguments for withholding the information, but "remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Treasury officials obtained access to a vast database called Swift — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The Belgium-based database handles financial message traffic from thousands of financial institutions in more than 200 countries.
Democrats and civil libertarians are questioning whether the program violated privacy rights.
The service, which routes more than 11 million messages each day, mostly captures information on wire transfers and other methods of moving money in and out of the United States, but it does not execute those transfers.
The service generally does not detect private, individual transactions in the United States, such as withdrawals from an ATM or bank deposits. It is aimed mostly at international transfers.
Gonzales said last month that he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. He also said the government would not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly.
In recent months, journalists have been called into court to testify as part of investigations into leaks, including the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's name.
He said the First Amendment right of a free press should not be absolute when it comes to national security.
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I'm with them 100%..! We are at WAR! I think Public's Saftey outweighs the Public's need to know about these secret programs that have been thwarting terrorist attacks and operations. The Times Needs to be investigated and tried for Treason. But it shouldnt stop there. They need to FIND THE LEAKER and charge he/she with TREASON also. And SPECTOR sit the hell down and SHUT THE HELL UP! Now the PUBLIC has a right to know who leaked classified documents to the reporters and why the Times decided it had to run this story knowing full well it was going to jeprodise National Security! Find out who is reporting this stuff to the Media, then get the Media that reported Classified information, AND LOCK THEM ALL UP FOR TREASON!!
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UPDATE:
Panelists on Fox News Sunday and on Friday's Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC denounced the New York Times for its Friday article, quickly picked up by other newspapers and published over the objection of the Bush administration and 9/11 commissioners, about how the CIA and Treasury Department are tracking international banking transactions by terrorist operatives. On Sunday, Brit Hume mocked New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller's "matter of public interest" reasoning: "Well, that can apply to almost anything," such as "ball scores." Hume contended the Times is "rapidly spending" its "credit" with the public and so "eventually it won't be there anymore. And at the rate it's going, it doesn't deserve to be." Bill Kristol argued: "I think the Attorney General has an absolute obligation to consider prosecution here." Friday night on FNC, columnist Charles Krauthammer lit into the judgment of the Times: "The idea of having it published out there, in a sense disarming us by letting the bad guys know how we're tracing their wire transfers, I think, is a disgrace." Krauthammer added: "I think this is the 21st century equivalent of publishing the Enigma program in the Second World War in which we listened in on secret German communications in submarines." Morton Kondracke suggested the New York Times assumes "we've got more to fear from our own government than we do from terrorist attacks."
Rep. King Seeks Charges Against Papers Over Terror Reporting
Monday, June 26, 2006
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.
Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.
........Peter King, R-N.Y.
said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher."
"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.
A message left Sunday with Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis was not immediately returned.
King's action was not endorsed by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
"On the basis of the newspaper article, I think it's premature to call for a prosecution of the New York Times, just like I think it's premature to say that the administration is entirely correct," Specter told "Fox News Sunday"
Stories about the money-monitoring program also appeared last week in The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. King said he thought investigators should examine those publications, but that the greater focus should be on The New York Times because the paper in December also disclosed a secret domestic wiretapping program.
He charged that the paper was "more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people."
When the paper chose to publish the story, it quoted the executive editor, Bill Keller, as saying editors had listened closely to the government's arguments for withholding the information, but "remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Treasury officials obtained access to a vast database called Swift — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The Belgium-based database handles financial message traffic from thousands of financial institutions in more than 200 countries.
Democrats and civil libertarians are questioning whether the program violated privacy rights.
The service, which routes more than 11 million messages each day, mostly captures information on wire transfers and other methods of moving money in and out of the United States, but it does not execute those transfers.
The service generally does not detect private, individual transactions in the United States, such as withdrawals from an ATM or bank deposits. It is aimed mostly at international transfers.
Gonzales said last month that he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. He also said the government would not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly.
In recent months, journalists have been called into court to testify as part of investigations into leaks, including the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's name.
He said the First Amendment right of a free press should not be absolute when it comes to national security.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm with them 100%..! We are at WAR! I think Public's Saftey outweighs the Public's need to know about these secret programs that have been thwarting terrorist attacks and operations. The Times Needs to be investigated and tried for Treason. But it shouldnt stop there. They need to FIND THE LEAKER and charge he/she with TREASON also. And SPECTOR sit the hell down and SHUT THE HELL UP! Now the PUBLIC has a right to know who leaked classified documents to the reporters and why the Times decided it had to run this story knowing full well it was going to jeprodise National Security! Find out who is reporting this stuff to the Media, then get the Media that reported Classified information, AND LOCK THEM ALL UP FOR TREASON!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE:
Panelists on Fox News Sunday and on Friday's Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC denounced the New York Times for its Friday article, quickly picked up by other newspapers and published over the objection of the Bush administration and 9/11 commissioners, about how the CIA and Treasury Department are tracking international banking transactions by terrorist operatives. On Sunday, Brit Hume mocked New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller's "matter of public interest" reasoning: "Well, that can apply to almost anything," such as "ball scores." Hume contended the Times is "rapidly spending" its "credit" with the public and so "eventually it won't be there anymore. And at the rate it's going, it doesn't deserve to be." Bill Kristol argued: "I think the Attorney General has an absolute obligation to consider prosecution here." Friday night on FNC, columnist Charles Krauthammer lit into the judgment of the Times: "The idea of having it published out there, in a sense disarming us by letting the bad guys know how we're tracing their wire transfers, I think, is a disgrace." Krauthammer added: "I think this is the 21st century equivalent of publishing the Enigma program in the Second World War in which we listened in on secret German communications in submarines." Morton Kondracke suggested the New York Times assumes "we've got more to fear from our own government than we do from terrorist attacks."
posted by Marie's Two Cents | 6:23 AM
4 Comments:
President Bush, campaigning for re-election in Hershey, Pennsylvania on April 19, 2004, boasting about our vigilant efforts to monitor the terrorists' banking transactions:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040419-4.html
"Before September the 11th, law enforcement could more easily obtain business and financial records of white-collar criminals than of suspected terrorists. See, part of the way to make sure that we catch terrorists is we chase money trails. And yet it was easier to chase a money trail with a white-collar criminal than it was a terrorist. The Patriot Act ended this double standard and it made it easier for investigators to catch suspected terrorists by following paper trails here in America."
And as former State Department official Victor Comraes detailed (and documented) on the Counterterrorism blog, it has long been pubic knowledge that the U.S. Government specifically monitors terrorists' banking transactions through SWIFT:
"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.
Claims that The New York Times (and other newspapers which published stories about this program) disclosed information about banking surveillance which could help terrorists are factually false. Nobody can identify a single sentence in any of these stories which disclosed meaningful information that terrorists would not have previously known or which they could use to evade detection. To the extent that it is (ludicrously) asserted that the more they are reminded of such surveillance, the more they will remember it, nobody has spoken more openly and publicly about the Government's anti-terrorism surveillance programs than a campaigning George Bush.
Anon,
I didnt need to know the details of this plan, and I dont think the terrorists needed to either.
I knew this was going on, I think most of us did, but NONE of us knew the details. And If I didnt know them, then Al-Quaeda didnt know them, and if I know them now, So does Al-Quaeda.
The Times and a few other left leaning papers as well as most of the left are trying to give an upper hand to the terrorists and they should be brought up on charges of Treason!
Doesnt the papers have a right to print anything?
Sick,
Yes they do, but the question is, SHOULD they print everything?
I think they if asked not to by the administration especially during war time have an obligation not to give aid and comfort to the enemy!
Can you imagine if all this crap was going on in WW2?
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