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‘US secretly probing financial records to track terrorists’

WASHINGTON: The US government has secretly probed a vast number of international financial transactions since shortly after September 11 in its counter-terrorism effort, leading US newspapers said Friday.

Run by the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, the programme is based on the president’s emergency economic powers and relies on records of a Belgian cooperative, Swift, that routes millions of transfer instructions every day.

The secret programme relies on broad administrative subpoenas, which has raised concerns about legal and privacy issues. Treasury officials said multiple safeguards are in place to protect unwarranted searches of Americans’ records.

Treasury Department Under Secretary Stuart Levey, in an interview with The New York Times, said the programme “has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks”, adding that it was “without doubt a legal and proper use of our authorities.” “We are not on a fishing expedition,” Levey said.

Still, news of the secret programme, which the government agreed to reveal after it was unable to dissuade The Times from publishing the results of its investigation, is likely to stir up debate over the right to infringe on privacy for national security reasons.

An eavesdropping programme on domestic telephone records without warrants run by the National Security Agency has already put Washington on the defensive as its legality is being questioned.

Besides the Times, The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal also carried articles Friday on the programme to snoop on international financial transactions.

Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) was approached shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States because of its vast international database.

The Times said that Swift, owned by more than 2,200 organizations and virtually every major commercial bank, routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders. It is run by US national Leonard Schrank.

Described as a “crucial gatekeeper,” the Times said Swift provides electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide.

Its database, which a former US official described as “the mother lode,” has provided clues to money trails and ties between possible terrorists and groups financing them, and directly led to the capture of Al Qaeda operative Riduan Isamuddin, believed to have masterminded the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort.

It has also helped identify a US man convicted of helping an Al Qaeda member launder 200,000 dollars through a Pakistani bank, prosecutors told the Times.

Only a small fraction of the transactions were entirely within the United States, said Treasury officials, who were unsure whether any had been examined. AFP

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