    
Foj
Citizen
Username: Foger
Post Number: 1599
Registered: 9-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, June 29, 2006 - 12:22 am: | 
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Terrorist funds-tracking no secret, some say
Cite White House boasts of tighter monitoring system
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | June 28, 2006
...
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.
....
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.
``There have been public references to SWIFT before," said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. ``The White House is overreaching when they say a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before."
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."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/06/28/terrorist_funds _tracking_no_secret_some_say?mode=PF
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