Treasury secretary defends records tracking

updated 7:43 p.m. ET June 23, 2006

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary John Snow on Friday said a program tracking millions of financial transactions was not invasion of privacy of Americans but “government at its best” and vital to the war on terrorism.

Snow told a news conference the program, run by the CIA and overseen by the Treasury Department, was “responsible government, it’s effective government, it’s government that works.”

“It’s entirely consistent with democratic values, with our best legal traditions,” Snow said.

The once-secret program, which has been going on since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, drew protests from Democrats in Congress, who said it raises concerns about intrusions on privacy and who saw it as the latest step in an aggressive Bush administration expansion of executive-branch powers.

Snow defended the newly disclosed program, saying it was an effective tool in tracking the financial operations of terrorists.

“By following the money we’ve been able to locate operatives, we’ve been able to locate their financiers, we’ve been able to chart the terrorist networks and we’ve been able to bring the terrorists to justice,” he said.

“If people are sending money to help al-Qaida, we want to know about it,” Snow said.

He said Congress had been briefed on the program.

Effective at cutting off funds
At the White House, presidential spokesman Tony Snow said the focus had been shutting off terrorist financing. “It’s a good thing to shut off the spigot, the financial spigot,” he said. “It does seem to be working.”

In the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks, Treasury officials obtained access to an extensive international financial data base — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift.

The cooperative, based in Belgium, handles financial message traffic from thousands of financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

“It’s important to understand that very significant protocols and safeguards have been put in pace in a cooperative way between Swift and the Treasury Department,” Snow said.

He said that access to the data that had been collected was limited to people with appropriate security clearances.

Snow declined to give specific examples of where the program had been successful in shutting off terrorist financing, but said that he had assured himself that it was working.

The administration used broad subpoena powers to get access to the data.

In a statement, Swift said it had negotiated with the U.S. Treasury “over the scope and oversight of the subpoenas.”

Compared to NSA surveillance
Disclosure of the program comes on the heels of intense controversy over President Bush’s ordering of National Security Agency surveillance of telephone calls and e-mails of private citizens.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. , co-chairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, said Friday there were disturbing similarities between the two programs.

“Like the domestic surveillance program exposed last December, the Bush administration’s efforts to tap into the financial records of thousands of Americans appear to rely on justifications concocted without regard to current law,” Markey said in a statement.

Rep. Barney Frank, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said he was “deeply concerned” about people’s privacy.

Barry Steinhartdt, of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the program a “frightening invasion of civil liberties” while Edward Yingling of the American Bankers Association said banks were working to strike the right balance between “protecting customer privacy and stopping terrorist financing.”

James Nason, an official with the Swiss Bankers Association, said his group was surprised to hear about the U.S. effort. “We had no idea this was going on at all,” he said.

Republicans defended the effort. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist of Tennessee had been briefed on the program and had “full confidence in the effectiveness of, and the legal authority for, this vital anti-terrorism tool,” said Frist spokeswoman Amy Call.

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