The Swift Counterterror Program Was Effective, Because Terrorists Aren’t All-Knowing Supermen
One of the arguments made by people desperate to undermine the significance of the bank tracking program disclosures is the claim that the terrorists must have known about this already. Even some who aren’t determined minimizers have fallen for this argument. For example, Roger L. Simon recently said: “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I assumed that such things were monitored in the post 9-11 era.”
Well, I don’t know about Roger L. Simon, but I never heard of the Swift consortium until June 22, when the stories first broke online. I bet the same is true of you. I think Roger and I assumed that financial transactions were monitored. But we didn’t know how.
Hugh Hewitt made a great analogy today in his interview with L.A. Times Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus:
Is there a difference between knowing, Doyle McManus, that, say, a city is looking for speeders, and knowing that they’ve installed a camera at a particular intersection?
Yes. Yes, there is. When you know where the traffic cameras are located, you just might drive down a different street. Especially when the stakes are high.
Similarly, there’s a difference between knowing that a government is trying to monitor financial transactions, and knowing how they’re doing it.
Many financial institutions participate in the Swift consortium. But not all do. The wise terrorist, opening his terrorism handbook (i.e. the home page of the New York Times), will carefully note which financial institutions participate, and use other ones.
Or perhaps the terrorist will find it useful to know exactly what information is available through Swift records — or that (as the New York Times carefully explained) “the information is not provided in real time – Swift generally turns it over several weeks later.”
“Mohammed, make sure the attack is carried out within two weeks of receipt of the funds. Yes, I know we originally planned it for later. Plans have changed. Don’t you read the New York Times?”
The minimizers say: ah, but the precise methods were already public! They point to this post from the Counterterrorism Blog, which says:
[R]eports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group, on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries. The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website.
But there is a significant difference between information being “out there,” as in “available in a single bureaucratically worded paragraph in an obscure U.N. report,” and between being “out there,” as in splashed all over the front pages of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
But ultimately, the key issue isn’t whether I knew about Swift, or whether Roger L. Simon knew about Swift, or even whether you knew about Swift. The question is whether the terrorists knew about Swift.
And we don’t have to speculate about this. The undeniable fact is that they didn’t all know.
I hate to keep getting back to the facts, but sometimes it seems necessary. So, let’s reprise. The program’s most salient success was the capture of Hambali, the mastermind of the deadly 2002 Bali bombing. Counterterrorism Blog says the Swift information was “out there” in an obscure U.N. report in December 2002. So Hambali must have been captured before then, right?
Nope. Hambali was arrested on August 12, 2003.
But surely the program’s successes end there, correct?
Again, back to the pesky facts. The Wall Street Journal article (no link available) tells us another success story resulting from the program:
People familiar with the program said, for example, that it yielded useful information on the bombings last July 7 in London.
Last July 7? As in July 7, 2005?
Impossible! The terrorists must have known about Swift by then! How could they have failed to scrutinize paragraph 31 of the UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group’s report to the UN Security Council in December 2002?
The bottom line, folks, is that terrorists are not all supermen. Yes, many of them are quite sophisticated. Many are adept at using the Internet. I am willing to wager that plenty of Al Qaeda terrorists actively scour the Web for scraps of information relating to our government’s efforts to track and monitor them.
But you know what? Evidently they didn’t all get the message.
But I guarantee you they got it this time.
Thank you again, Bill Keller and Dean Baquet.
UPDATE: From John Snow’s letter today to Bill Keller:
You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that “terror financiers know” our methods for tracking their funds and have already moved to other methods to send money. The fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works. While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this particular program incredibly valuable.
But forget you read that. After all, Bill Keller knows far more about how the terrorists move their money than do John Snow and the President of the United States! He’s Bill Freaking Keller! He goes to cocktail parties in the Hamptons! He’s the editor of the freaking New York Times! It’s the closest thing to God himself on the planet! The power that has been given him is not something to be taken lightly!
Kids need fairy tales to sleep, and I imagine that these days, Bill Keller, Dean Baquet, and their defenders probably sleep better thinking that this program wasn’t effective anyway. The facts say otherwise — but since when do facts matter when you’re determined to believe in a fairy tale?
Because we only monitor the Swift consortium. Boy, these terrorists just are one step ahead of us heh?
actus (6234ee) — 6/26/2006 @ 11:14 pmYou’re desperate, actus. I notice that you’re here, almost crying out “FIRST!” on each one of these threads, determined to try to put a spin that undercuts the conclusion that these papers have done something very dangerous with the publication of these articles.
As the post shows, actus says one thing, but the facts say another. You can one-line snark your way through a couple more dozen comments on this thread if you like, but it ain’t gonna change the facts.
Patterico (50c3cd) — 6/26/2006 @ 11:24 pmMalkin has a link to video of Keller’s interview with Wolf Blitzer. Keller is a real piece of work. He starts off with the idea that he “hopes” that he hasn’t endangered lives. “Hopes?????” Are you kidding me? You mean he isn’t at least pretty sure? Of course, he says that he doesn’t “believe” that he has endangered lives? Well, gee Bill, before you start messing around with these disclosures, doncha think ya oughta be a bit more sure of yourself you arrogant MF.
But you know who else this SOB endangered–the SWIFT execs who cooperated. I’m sure that there are a lot of AQ folks who want them. Keller is a bastard.
SPO (62ca0c) — 6/26/2006 @ 11:25 pmThanks to Keller, terrorists in Iraq will continue to receive money to buy car bombs, to purchase equipment to make IEDs and to pay bounties to kill Americans.
Every future death in Iraq should carry the subtitle:
Perfect Sense (024110) — 6/26/2006 @ 11:50 pmThis death made possible by Bob Keller and the New York Times.
Patterico, so you are claiming this program won’t continue to catch terrorists? I don’t think anything of much significance was revealed.
James B. Shearer (16638b) — 6/27/2006 @ 1:01 am“mohammed, make sure the attack is carried out within two weeks of receipt of the funds. yes, i know we originally planned it for later. plans have changed. don’t you read the new york times?”
assistant devil's advocate (50726a) — 6/27/2006 @ 1:08 am“abdul, you worry too damn much. they had this swift thing going in 2002, but they failed to arrest hambali until ten months after the bali bombing. some bloggers are actually claiming this as a triumph for swift, and they even brought up the london bombing which had nothing to do with us. considering how many opportunities it had to avert 9/11, the bush administration seems almost complicit, as if it had desired a major event so that it could consolidate control, as it has done. even if they can i.d. me right after the attack, they won’t be able to catch me, osama got out of tora bora ok and america is bigger than tora bora and easier to hide in, and best of all, i know they’ll give the highest priority to flying all my relatives home safe to our motherland, just like they did with osama.”
btw, los angeles has equivalents to the hamptons, but you’ll never be able to afford to live there unless you either go over to the defense side or hit the lotto.
Patterico, do you blame defense attorneys when they get dangerous criminals off? If not, why blame journalists for doing their job?
James B. Shearer (16638b) — 6/27/2006 @ 1:10 amSo James, are you saying that the job of journalists is protecting dangerous terrorists? I just want to understand your analogy.
Trurl (b8f8be) — 6/27/2006 @ 2:31 am“Because we only monitor the Swift consortium. Boy, these terrorists just are one step ahead of us heh?”
They try to be. That’s why they monitor our press.
“Patterico, do you blame defense attorneys when they get dangerous criminals off? If not, why blame journalists for doing their job?”
I do. I don’t know how they live with themselves, particularly when they *know* that their client is guilty but wrap themselves in the atty BS that everybody deserves a “fair trial.”
sharon (fecb65) — 6/27/2006 @ 4:12 am“Patterico, do you blame defense attorneys when they get dangerous criminals off? If not, why blame journalists for doing their job?”
Can people really not distinguish between defense counsel and newspaper writers?
Damn, what the hell happened to our schools?!
Federal Dog (9afd6c) — 6/27/2006 @ 4:21 amDefense attorneys, like doctors, have legally protected confidentiality clauses with their clients, no?
I understand journalists would love to have an arrangement like that with their anonymous (aka “made up” or “felonious”) sources, but I do not believe that desire to currently be codified in law. Correct me if I’m wrong here, please.
DaveG (a721ef) — 6/27/2006 @ 4:50 amThere’s no federal shield law, but many states have them.
sharon (fecb65) — 6/27/2006 @ 5:55 amYou are correct under federal law, and “fake but accurate” under state law. Many states do indeed have a qualified journalist privilege, but AFAIK none are nearly broad enough to allow journalists (or doctors, or lawyers, etc.) to avoid testifying to a crime they personally witnessed.
Xrlq (f52b4f) — 6/27/2006 @ 8:50 amTrurl, the job of journalists is to produce accurate stories of interest to their readers.
James B. Shearer (fc887e) — 6/27/2006 @ 9:17 amXrlq, so if you are a defense attorney and your client reveals to you classified information which you were not authorized to receive you can be forced to testify about it? I am not convinced.
James B. Shearer (fc887e) — 6/27/2006 @ 9:20 amWell, I don’t think they’ve done something very dangerous. As early as 04, the state department said the terrorists know we monitor financial transactions and are moving to cash. Spin? I save that for the morons crying ‘treason’ and ‘prosecution’ and ‘on the other side.’
And is the program eviscerated? something tells me we’re going to keep on subpoenaing financial records.
actus (ebc508) — 6/27/2006 @ 10:39 amDepending on the circumstances, yes. If he happened to reveal classified information in the course of seeking legal advice, then probably not. But if he did so for some other reason, e.g., with the intent to leak it to the general public by way of me, then yes, I could indeed be forced to testify about it.
If you think the attorney client privilege is broader than that, you’re probably confusing it with the ethical duty of confidentiality. The duty of confidentiality is much broader than the attorney-client privilege, requiring the attorney to clam up about just about everything that has the potential to harm his client’s legal interests. However, it is not a privilege; just because I can’t blab about that stuff voluntarily, does not mean I can’t be compelled to by a court of law.
Xrlq (b79ca2) — 6/27/2006 @ 12:52 pmXrlq, so in other words a lawyer is shielded from testifying about a crime, disclosure of classified information to a person not authorized to receive it, that he personally witnessed when the disclosure falls within the scope of the attorney client priviledge. So why wouldn’t the same apply to disclosures made to a journalist within the scope of any journalist privilege that may exist?
James B. Shearer (fc887e) — 6/27/2006 @ 1:58 pm[…] Something else. Jim Treacher and I have been e-mailing trying to figure out precisely why it is the “Al Qaeda already knew” defense bugs the hell out of us so much. Patterico helps out here. Aside from the argument being factually wrong, I think it grates simply because it shows what straws they’re willing to grab at just to be on the Times’s side in this. They refuse, categorically, to line up with Bush, even if it means half-heartedly defending the exposure of a counterterror program that’s legal and effective. Which I guess brings us full circle, back to Patterico’s point about the jury. […]
Hot Air » Blog Archive » Consensus emerges: Don’t prosecute the Times (d4224a) — 6/27/2006 @ 2:11 pmJames, lest we miss the forest for the trees, keep in mind who is and is not shielded. The client holds the privilege, not the attorney. Thus, to argue for such a privilege is, in effect, to argue that dishonest government workers who leak classified information are engaging in an activity every bit as worthy of protection as your right to engage an attorney to represent your legal interests, or my right to go to a doctor rather than self-medicate. The reasons why society has created the attorney-client privilege and the doctor-patient privilege are clear. Why we should create what amounts to a journalist-mole privilege is beyond me.
That said, if we are to assume such a privilege should exist, then presumably the rules should be similar to those governing the established privileges; certainly no broader. So while it might make sense to enforce the journalist-mole privilege where a little classified information is inadvertently dropped in the course of an otherwise legal disclosure (e.g., the basic story was legal, but the journalist seemed to be drawing all the wrong inferences so the informant slips in a little classified information to get him back on track), then it might make sense to allow the journalist to withhold testimony. But if the principal purpose of the disclosure was to get classified information out there, then I can’t see why any such privilege would apply, any more than there would be if someone disclosed classified information to his attorney, not to seek counsel (e.g., to find out if the information really was classified, or whether classified information may lawfully be disclosed under certain circumstances, etc.) but simply to obtain an anonymizing mouthpiece.
Xrlq (b79ca2) — 6/27/2006 @ 2:46 pm[…] A pontification from somebody named Patterico: One of the arguments made by people desperate to undermine the significance of the bank tracking program disclosures is the claim that the terrorists must have known about this already. Even some who aren’t determined minimizers have fallen for this argument. For example, Roger L. Simon recently said: “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I assumed that such things were monitored in the post 9-11 era.” […]
The Heretik » Blog Archive » “Pontification” (e5312a) — 6/28/2006 @ 7:59 am[…] Add it all up, and sum in my own personal revulsion towards the nanny state and big government, my deep personal distrust for this administration, and I initially really had no problem with the Times breaking the story. I still am not very sure where I stand on the issue, but as I read some of the more level-headed members of the right, I think perhaps maybe this time their might be some room for thinking the Times did something wrong: […]
Balloon Juice (c62e7c) — 6/28/2006 @ 9:56 amWell, given that the program is essentially dead in the water, the answer is yes. You can read about the impeding dustup and draw your own conclusions. But I think it is safe to say that SWIFT will no longer cooperate.
I R A Darth Aggie (9e9ecf) — 6/28/2006 @ 11:28 amUpon further review, the NYTimes article has additional unindented consequences. Not only is the program dead, Bill Kellar has single-handedly given the terrorists and other evil-doers a financial transaction clearing house guaranteed to be free from USofA monitoring.
I R A Darth Aggie (9e9ecf) — 6/28/2006 @ 11:32 amAnd we don’t have to speculate about this. The undeniable fact is that they didn’t all know.
Similarly, it’s an undeniable fact that people ticketed for speeding don’t know about the existence of radar guns.
But there is a significant difference between information being “out there,” as in “available in a single bureaucratically worded paragraph in an obscure U.N. report,” and between being “out there,” as in splashed all over the front pages of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
I’ll remember that the next time I’m told that “outing” Valerie Plame was no big deal because someone may have seen her driving to Langley.
Vladi G (e6e282) — 6/28/2006 @ 12:35 pmMore unintended consequences!
nmac (f38b77) — 6/28/2006 @ 5:35 pmApparently the NYT’s “editorial malfunction” resulted in some EU countries requesting SWIFT stop providing financial information to others.(I have misplaced the original citation)
Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” revealed her breast. NYT’s “editorial malfunction” revealed a”heartless soul” shown bright
[…] This is not the point, as I explained here. The issue is not that the stories told the terrorists we were watching financial transactions, but that the stories told them how. […]
Patterico’s Pontifications » Debunking the Lefties’ Arguments About the Swift Program — in One Convenient Post (421107) — 6/28/2006 @ 6:33 pmJames B. Shearer writes
Are you really that dense? As an officer of the court, attorneys are duty bound to report all crimes of which they are aware. If an attorney witnesses his or her client committing a crime, attorny-client privilege does not shield that lawyer from prosecution as an accessory if they choose to remain silent.
Make no mistake about it. Revealing classified information is a crime. If a “normal” person does it, they will be prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. It’s only the privileged elites that get away with it.
For 40 years, I never told my wife or children what I did in the Navy (SIGINT) – until I (recently) discovered that the program had been declassified in the mid-90’s. Even now I wouldn’t reveal the details of how we did it.
Yet the Times blithely reveals the details of an active classified program, and you (and others) scoff and try to minimize their crime. You can make all the excuses you want, but honest people know a crime has been committed.
antimedia (0df2ee) — 6/28/2006 @ 9:26 pmI don’t think terrorists are in the dark about the possibility that their financial transactions can be monitored. It is well known that the government can obtain financial records, and well known that governments cooperate with each other. These sorts of things get reported all the time. Unless a terrorist is a complete amateur or and moron, he knows that the possibility exists that the transaction is being “tapped.”
What no terrorist can know with any sort of probability is whether HIS transactions ARE being tracked. After all, you can’t just seize all the records, you need some reason to even be looking at somebody in the first place. A money transfer is pretty neutral, without knowing the players and their negotiations, that transfer could pay for rental vans and fertilizer, or to pay for a wedding.
What might be new about the NY Times story is that the Bush Administration may have once again decided to do away with the concept of particularized suspicion, but to cast as wide as possible, and has once again put forward an argument that speaks less to the administration’s desire to catch terrorists than to its need to establish the principle that the President can do whatever it wants for no reason at all.
Phil (bd03f6) — 6/29/2006 @ 8:45 ambtw, los angeles has equivalents to the hamptons, but you’ll never be able to afford to live there unless you either go over to the defense side or hit the lotto.
Interesting. I’m actually quite happy with where I live, but maybe you can share with me what areas of L.A. are equivalent to the Hamptons, but that I can’t afford — such that I should be jealous of rich private defense attorneys (like you??).
‘Cause that’s your point, right?
Patterico (50c3cd) — 6/30/2006 @ 12:02 am[…] Arguments claiming that nothing bas been lost because the terrorists had to have guessed that they were being watched are stupid. Prior to last weekend, all they had to go on were vague suspicions, hearsay and some all too convenient arrests of comrades-in-arms. The Times handed them operational details of a working program and, in the process of doing so, neutralized our only real advantage against the terrorists: intelligence. We have Tomahawks that can hit targets from thousands of miles away, but we are at a loss without effective information telling us where and when to point those missiles. […]
Signs Of The Times at Literal Barrage (8d0628) — 7/1/2006 @ 7:00 pmWill They Still Kill Each Other For This?…
The Jews and Palestinians have killed each other over land for thousands of years.
Gene Pool Survival Guide and Tips (624f16) — 7/11/2006 @ 3:24 pmI was wondering. The Palestinians have controlled the land for more than 1200 years. Would the Jews mind allowing them to have the land for 60 years if that means peace?…
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