Money trail ethics

CAN8217;T KEEP A SECRET? President George W Bush slammed the US media for exposing the secret government programme to keep tabs on financial records in order to stymie terrorist activities. On Monday, the White House accused The New York Times of breaking a long tradition of keeping wartime secrets. 8220;The fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror,8221; Bush said. 8220;Congress was briefed,8221; the President added. 8220;And what we did was fully authorised under the law. And the disclosure of this programme is disgraceful. We8217;re at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that programme, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America.8221;

FINGER IN THE TILL: Under a secret programme initiated weeks after the 9/11 attacks, counterterrorism officials gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the US. The programme is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve centre of the global banking industry8212;the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications SWIFT, a cooperative telecommunications network based in Brussels, 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 US.

TOPIC OF DEBATE: The programme is a significant departure from typical practice in how the US government acquires Americans8217; 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.

THE EDITOR8217;S CASE: In a letter to readers, Bill Keller, executive editor, wrote on Tuesday: 8220;Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress. Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government8217;s actions and over the adequacy of oversight. We believe the Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them.8221;

THE EXPOSE: The New York Times, followed by The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, had begun publishing accounts of the programme since last Thursday.