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Bush slams terror finance leak
27/06/2006 08:50 - (SA)
Washington - President George W Bush said it was "disgraceful" that the American news media had disclosed a secret CIA-Treasury programme to track millions of financial records in search of terrorist suspects.
The White House accused The New York Times of breaking a long tradition of keeping wartime secrets.
"The fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror," Bush said on Monday, leaning forward and jabbing his finger during a brief question-and-answer session with reporters in the Roosevelt Room.
The Times has defended its effort, saying publication has served America's public interest.
International financial database
The newspaper, along with the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, revealed last week that Treasury officials, beginning shortly after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, had obtained access to an extensive international financial database - the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift.
The New York Times late last year also disclosed that the National Security Agency had been conducting warrantless surveillance in the United States since 2002 of people with suspected al-Qaeda ties.
"Some in the press, in particular The New York Times, have made the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programmes," vice president Dick Cheney said in a speech at a political fundraising luncheon in Grand Island, Neb.
Leaks 'very damaging'
"The New York Times has now twice - two separate occasions - disclosed programmes; both times they had been asked not to publish those stories by senior administration officials," Cheney said.
"They went ahead anyway. The leaks to The New York Times and the publishing of those leaks is very damaging."
Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, defended the decision to publish the story.
Concerns over legality of govt actions
"Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defence against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programmes have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight," Keller said in a note on the paper's website on Sunday.
But Treasury Secretary John Snow said in a letter to the York Times that over the past two months he and other administration officials had engaged in a "vigorous dialogue" with reporters and editors at the newspaper trying to persuade them to refrain from revealing the programme.
- AP
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