Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
Encyclopedia
The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is a United States government program to access the SWIFT
transaction database revealed by The New York Times
, The Wall Street Journal
and The Los Angeles Times in June 2006. It is part of the Bush administration
's "Global War on Terrorism
". Based in Belgium
, SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
) establish common standards for financial transactions worldwide.
and The Los Angeles Times revealed that the United States government, specifically the United States Treasury Department and the CIA, had a program to access the SWIFT transaction database after the September 11th attacks. According to the June 2006 New York Times article, the program helped lead to the capture of an al-Qaeda
operative known as Hambali
in 2003, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombing
, as well as helped identify a Brooklyn
man convicted in 2005 for laundering money
for an al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan
. The Treasury Department and White House
responded to the leak the day before it was published and claimed that the leak damaged counter-terrorism
activities. They also referred to the program as the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program ("TFTP"), similar to the Terrorist Surveillance Program
in the NSA wiretapping controversy
.
The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is viewed by the Bush administration as another tool in the "Global War on Terrorism
". The administration contends the program allows additional scrutiny that could prove instrumental in tracking transactions between terrorist cells. Some have raised concerns that this classified
program might also be a violation of U.S. and European financial privacy laws, because individual search warrants to access financial data were not obtained in advance. In response to the claim that the program violates U.S. law, some have noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Miller
(1976) has ruled that there is not an expected right to privacy for financial transaction records held by third parties and that "the Fourth Amendment
does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed."
Immediately following the disclosure, SWIFT released an official press statement asserting that they did give information to the US in compliance with Treasury Department subpoenas, but claiming that "SWIFT received significant protections and assurances as to the purpose, confidentiality, oversight and control of the limited sets of data produced under the subpoenas". The central bank
of Belgium, the National Bank of Belgium
, was revealed on June 27, 2006, to have known about the U.S. government's access to the SWIFT databases since 2002. Belgian Christian Democratic and Flemish party claimed on June 28, that the actions of the CIA with SWIFT were in breach with Belgian privacy laws. The Belgian parliamentary committee (Comité I), that deals with the workings of the Belgian State Security Service
reported that SWIFT was indeed in violation with Belgian and European privacy laws. The New York branch of the Dutch Rabobank
is said to deliver information on its European customers to the U.S. government, in contempt of European privacy laws. The Dutch Data Protection Authority claims that Dutch banks could face monetary fines if they hand over data on their customers to the American government. Consequently the European Union
(EU) has obtained the possibility to send a high rank magistrate as High Representative of EU to United States of America for the Financing of Terrorism, in order to monitor the TFTP activities. This magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière
, has a permanent office in Washington DC at the US Department of Treasury.
and other related federal statutes. In response, some have questioned why The New York Times alone should be singled out for discipline, since The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal divulged information about the TFTP at the same time. The New York Times itself argued in a June 28, 2006 editorial
that its reporting about the TFTP is protected by the First Amendment
and serves a vital role, providing "information the public needs to make things right again." The New York Times editorial further argued that terrorists would have to be "fairly credulous" to believe their finances were not being tracked and that the reporting bore "no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals.
Some have also questioned whether the information in the original June 23, 2006 newspaper articles was even secret, despite its U.S. government classification, because of previous newspaper articles discussing SWIFT. Specifically, a 1998 Washington Post article, in the wake of the U.S. embassy bombings
, mentioned that the "CIA and agents with Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
also will try to lay tripwires to find out when bin Laden
moves funds by plugging into the computerized systems of bank transaction monitoring services – operated
by the Federal Reserve
and private organizations called SWIFT and CHIPS
– that record the billions of dollars coursing through the global banking system daily." Also, a September 21, 2001 Baltimore Sun article mentioned SWIFT "headquartered in Belgium" and conjectured about the ability of the U.S. National Security Agency
"to follow the money through its electronic intercepts of such transactions." Still others have questioned the secrecy of the TFTP because the Bush administration has made public announcements
that it planned to track terrorist-related finances. For example, in a speech shortly after the September 11th attacks, George W. Bush elaborated on the Administration's intention to track terrorist funding, saying "if [financial institutions] fail to help us by sharing information or freezing accounts, the Department of the Treasury now has the authority to freeze their bank's assets and transactions in the United States".
However, critics of the decision to disclose the classified program's existence, including U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow
, responded by arguing that there is a vast difference between stating general intentions to track terrorist finances and actually revealing the exact means employed to do so. Some of these critics called attention to The New York Times itself making no mention of either SWIFT or the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program in a November 29, 2005 article ironically detailing the Bush administration's apparent lack of progress in tracking terrorist finances. Moreover, in an editorial on the press's obligations in wartime, the Wall Street Journal clarified the basic differences between its approach to the story and that of the "Times." As for Secretary Snow, he disagreed with executive editor of The New York Times Bill Keller
's claim that terrorists are now exclusively using "other means" to transfer funds, by stating that terrorists "have continued to [use] the formal financial system, which has made this program incredibly valuable." Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on July 11, 2006, Stuart Levey, the Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, stated:
On October 22, 2006, Public Editor of The New York Times Byron Calame
stated that he didn't think the article should have been published. reversing his strong support of the Times in his June 2 column. "I haven't found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal.... The lack of appropriate oversight—to catch any abuses in the absence of media attention—was a key reason I originally supported publication. I think, however, that I gave it too much weight."
In September 2006, however, the Belgian government declared that the SWIFT dealings with U.S. government authorities were, in fact, a breach of Belgian and European privacy laws. New York Times editor Bill Keller
responded to Calame’s “revisionist epiphany” in a letter published on November 6, 2006. Keller felt that Calame’s premise that “the press should not reveal sensitive secret information unless there is a preponderance of evidence that the information exposes illegal or abusive actions by the government” set too high a bar. Keller explained that “The banking story landed in the context of a national debate about the concentration of executive power. The Swift program was the latest in a series of programs carried out without the customary checks and balances — in this case, Congressional oversight. Key members of Congress who would normally be apprised of such a program and who would be expected to monitor its safeguards only learned of the program because we did.”
Swift
The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are actually not closely related to passerine species at all; swifts are in the separate order Apodiformes, which they share with hummingbirds...
transaction database revealed by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
and The Los Angeles Times in June 2006. It is part of the Bush administration
George W. Bush administration
The presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...
's "Global War on Terrorism
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
". Based in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication operates a worldwide financial messaging network which exchanges messages between banks and other financial institutions...
) establish common standards for financial transactions worldwide.
Introduction
A series of articles published on June 23, 2006, by The New York Times, The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
and The Los Angeles Times revealed that the United States government, specifically the United States Treasury Department and the CIA, had a program to access the SWIFT transaction database after the September 11th attacks. According to the June 2006 New York Times article, the program helped lead to the capture of an al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
operative known as Hambali
Riduan Isamuddin
Riduan Isamuddin also transliterated as Riduan Isamudin, Riduan Isomuddin, and Riduan Isomudin, better known by the nom de guerre Hambali, born as Encep Nurjaman, born April 4, 1964 is the former military leader of the Indonesian terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiyah , which is linked with Al...
in 2003, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombing
2002 Bali bombing
The 2002 Bali bombings occurred on 12 October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The attack was claimed as the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia according to the current police general, killing 202 people,...
, as well as helped identify a Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
man convicted in 2005 for laundering money
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
for an al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. The Treasury Department and White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
responded to the leak the day before it was published and claimed that the leak damaged counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
activities. They also referred to the program as the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program ("TFTP"), similar to the Terrorist Surveillance Program
NSA electronic surveillance program
An electronic surveillance program, whose actual name is currently unknown, was implemented by the National Security Agency of the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was part of the President's Surveillance Program which was in turn conducted under the overall umbrella...
in the NSA wiretapping controversy
NSA warrantless surveillance controversy
The NSA warrantless surveillance controversy concerns surveillance of persons within the United States during the collection of foreign intelligence by the U.S. National Security Agency as part of the war on terror...
.
The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is viewed by the Bush administration as another tool in the "Global War on Terrorism
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
". The administration contends the program allows additional scrutiny that could prove instrumental in tracking transactions between terrorist cells. Some have raised concerns that this classified
Classified information
Classified information is sensitive information to which access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of persons. A formal security clearance is required to handle classified documents or access classified data. The clearance process requires a satisfactory background investigation...
program might also be a violation of U.S. and European financial privacy laws, because individual search warrants to access financial data were not obtained in advance. In response to the claim that the program violates U.S. law, some have noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Miller
United States v. Miller
United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 , was the first Supreme Court of the United States decision to involve the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Miller is a controversial decision in the ongoing American gun politics debate, as both sides claim that it supports their...
(1976) has ruled that there is not an expected right to privacy for financial transaction records held by third parties and that "the Fourth Amendment
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause...
does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed."
Immediately following the disclosure, SWIFT released an official press statement asserting that they did give information to the US in compliance with Treasury Department subpoenas, but claiming that "SWIFT received significant protections and assurances as to the purpose, confidentiality, oversight and control of the limited sets of data produced under the subpoenas". The central bank
Central bank
A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is a public institution that usually issues the currency, regulates the money supply, and controls the interest rates in a country. Central banks often also oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries...
of Belgium, the National Bank of Belgium
National Bank of Belgium
The National Bank of Belgium has been the central bank of Belgium since 1850...
, was revealed on June 27, 2006, to have known about the U.S. government's access to the SWIFT databases since 2002. Belgian Christian Democratic and Flemish party claimed on June 28, that the actions of the CIA with SWIFT were in breach with Belgian privacy laws. The Belgian parliamentary committee (Comité I), that deals with the workings of the Belgian State Security Service
Belgian State Security Service
The Belgian State Security Service, known in Dutch as Veiligheid van de Staat, or Staatsveiligheid , and in French as Sûreté de l'État , is a Belgian intelligence agency...
reported that SWIFT was indeed in violation with Belgian and European privacy laws. The New York branch of the Dutch Rabobank
Rabobank
Rabobank is a financial services provider with offices worldwide. Their main location is in the Netherlands. They are a global leader in Food and Agri financing and in sustainability-oriented banking...
is said to deliver information on its European customers to the U.S. government, in contempt of European privacy laws. The Dutch Data Protection Authority claims that Dutch banks could face monetary fines if they hand over data on their customers to the American government. Consequently the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
(EU) has obtained the possibility to send a high rank magistrate as High Representative of EU to United States of America for the Financing of Terrorism, in order to monitor the TFTP activities. This magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière
Jean-Louis Bruguière
Jean-Louis Bruguière was the leading French investigating magistrate in charge of counter-terrorism affairs. He was appointed in 2004 vice-president of the Paris Court of Serious Claims . He has garnered controversy for various acts, including the indictment of Rwandan president Paul Kagame for the...
, has a permanent office in Washington DC at the US Department of Treasury.
Controversy regarding The New York Times decision to publish
There have been discussions on whether The New York Times should be prosecuted for its actions for violating the Espionage Act of 1917Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...
and other related federal statutes. In response, some have questioned why The New York Times alone should be singled out for discipline, since The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal divulged information about the TFTP at the same time. The New York Times itself argued in a June 28, 2006 editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
that its reporting about the TFTP is protected by the First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
and serves a vital role, providing "information the public needs to make things right again." The New York Times editorial further argued that terrorists would have to be "fairly credulous" to believe their finances were not being tracked and that the reporting bore "no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals.
Some have also questioned whether the information in the original June 23, 2006 newspaper articles was even secret, despite its U.S. government classification, because of previous newspaper articles discussing SWIFT. Specifically, a 1998 Washington Post article, in the wake of the U.S. embassy bombings
1998 United States embassy bombings
The 1998 United States embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the East African capitals of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. The date of the...
, mentioned that the "CIA and agents with Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is a bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury that collects and analyzes information about financial transactions in order to combat money laundering, terrorist financiers, and other financial crimes.As reflected in its name, the Financial...
also will try to lay tripwires to find out when bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
moves funds by plugging into the computerized systems of bank transaction monitoring services – operated
Fedwire
Formally known as the Federal Reserve Wire Network, Fedwire is a Real Time Gross Settlement Funds Transfer system operated by the Federal Reserve Banks that enables financial institutions to electronically transfer funds between its more than 9,289 participants...
by the Federal Reserve
Federal Reserve System
The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913 with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, largely in response to a series of financial panics, particularly a severe panic in 1907...
and private organizations called SWIFT and CHIPS
Clearing House Interbank Payments System
The Clearing House Interbank Payments System is the main privately held clearing house for large-value transactions in the United States, settling well over US$1 trillion a day in around 250,000 interbank payments. Together with the Fedwire Funds Service , CHIPS forms the primary U.S...
– that record the billions of dollars coursing through the global banking system daily." Also, a September 21, 2001 Baltimore Sun article mentioned SWIFT "headquartered in Belgium" and conjectured about the ability of the U.S. National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
"to follow the money through its electronic intercepts of such transactions." Still others have questioned the secrecy of the TFTP because the Bush administration has made public announcements
News release
A press release, news release, media release, press statement or video release is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something ostensibly newsworthy...
that it planned to track terrorist-related finances. For example, in a speech shortly after the September 11th attacks, George W. Bush elaborated on the Administration's intention to track terrorist funding, saying "if [financial institutions] fail to help us by sharing information or freezing accounts, the Department of the Treasury now has the authority to freeze their bank's assets and transactions in the United States".
However, critics of the decision to disclose the classified program's existence, including U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow
John W. Snow
| image=John W. Snow.jpg|imagesize = 250px| order=73rd| title=United States Secretary of the Treasury| term_start=February 3, 2003| term_end=June 28, 2006| predecessor=Paul O'Neill| successor=Henry Paulson| birth_date=| birth_place=Toledo, Ohio...
, responded by arguing that there is a vast difference between stating general intentions to track terrorist finances and actually revealing the exact means employed to do so. Some of these critics called attention to The New York Times itself making no mention of either SWIFT or the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program in a November 29, 2005 article ironically detailing the Bush administration's apparent lack of progress in tracking terrorist finances. Moreover, in an editorial on the press's obligations in wartime, the Wall Street Journal clarified the basic differences between its approach to the story and that of the "Times." As for Secretary Snow, he disagreed with executive editor of The New York Times Bill Keller
Bill Keller
Bill Keller is a writer for the The New York Times, of which Keller was the executive editor from July 2003 until September 2011. On June 2, 2011, Keller announced that he would step down from the position to become a full-time writer...
's claim that terrorists are now exclusively using "other means" to transfer funds, by stating that terrorists "have continued to [use] the formal financial system, which has made this program incredibly valuable." Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on July 11, 2006, Stuart Levey, the Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, stated:
"Since being asked to oversee this program by then-Secretary Snow and then-Deputy Secretary Bodman almost two years ago, I have received the written output from this program as part of my daily intelligence briefing. For two years, I have been reviewing that output every morning. I cannot remember a day when that briefing did not include at least one terrorism lead from this program. Despite attempts at secrecy, terrorist facilitators have continued to use the international banking system to send money to one another, even after September 11th. This disclosure compromised one of our most valuable programs and will only make our efforts to track terrorist financingTerrorist FinancingTerrorist financing came into limelight after the events of terrorism on 9/11. The US passed the USA PATRIOT Act to, among other reasons, attempt thwarting the financing of terrorism and anti-money laundering making sure these were given some sort of adequate focus by US financial institutions...
- and to prevent terrorist attacks - harder. Tracking terrorist money trails is difficult enough without having our sources and methods reported on the front page of newspapers."
On October 22, 2006, Public Editor of The New York Times Byron Calame
Byron Calame
Byron Calame was the second public editor of the New York Times. He succeeded Daniel Okrent in this ombudsman-like position in 2005, and was followed by Clark Hoyt...
stated that he didn't think the article should have been published. reversing his strong support of the Times in his June 2 column. "I haven't found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal.... The lack of appropriate oversight—to catch any abuses in the absence of media attention—was a key reason I originally supported publication. I think, however, that I gave it too much weight."
In September 2006, however, the Belgian government declared that the SWIFT dealings with U.S. government authorities were, in fact, a breach of Belgian and European privacy laws. New York Times editor Bill Keller
Bill Keller
Bill Keller is a writer for the The New York Times, of which Keller was the executive editor from July 2003 until September 2011. On June 2, 2011, Keller announced that he would step down from the position to become a full-time writer...
responded to Calame’s “revisionist epiphany” in a letter published on November 6, 2006. Keller felt that Calame’s premise that “the press should not reveal sensitive secret information unless there is a preponderance of evidence that the information exposes illegal or abusive actions by the government” set too high a bar. Keller explained that “The banking story landed in the context of a national debate about the concentration of executive power. The Swift program was the latest in a series of programs carried out without the customary checks and balances — in this case, Congressional oversight. Key members of Congress who would normally be apprised of such a program and who would be expected to monitor its safeguards only learned of the program because we did.”