Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror





WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration
program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism
officials have gained access to financial records from a vast
international database and examined banking transactions involving
thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to
government and industry officials.


The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking
industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily
between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The
records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money
overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial
transactions confined to this country are not in the database.
Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has
played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations
since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in
Southeast Asia, the officials said.
The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique
and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is,
without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview on Thursday.
The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency
economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been
imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans'
records.
The program, however, is 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 from the cooperative,
known as Swift.
That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly
unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the
administration about legal and privacy issues.
"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're
sitting, troubling," said one former senior counterterrorism official
who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place,
the official added, "the potential for abuse is enormous."
The program is separate from the National Security Agency's efforts to eavesdrop without warrants and collect domestic phone
records, operations that have provoked fierce public debate and spurred
lawsuits against the government and telecommunications companies.
But all the programs grew out of the Bush administration's
desire to exploit technological tools to prevent another terrorist
strike, and all reflect attempts to break down longstanding legal or
institutional barriers to the government's access to private
information about Americans and others inside the United States.
Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most
far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. Much
more limited agreements with other companies have provided access to
A.T.M. transactions, credit card purchases and Western Union wire
payments, the officials said.
Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry
executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York
Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified.
Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program,
saying that what they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become
permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization.
Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as
the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has
allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine "tens of thousands" of financial transactions, Mr. Levey said.
While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign
soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international
transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other
groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said. A
small fraction of Swift's records
involve transactions entirely within this country, but Treasury
officials said they were uncertain whether any had been examined.
Swift executives have been uneasy at times about their secret role,
the government and industry officials said. By 2003, the executives
told American officials they were considering pulling out of the
arrangement, which began as an emergency response to the Sept. 11
attacks, the officials said. Worried
about potential legal liability, the Swift executives agreed to
continue providing the data only after top officials, including Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, intervened. At that time, new controls were introduced.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html?ei=5088&en=168d69d26685c26c&ex=1308715200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1215011101-H38uUw610ZW1vjD18sM0Dw