Bush condemns disclosure of secret anti-terror program

Well here we go again!

the story today coming from CNN.com originally from NYTimes. Bush is slamming the NYT for their publishing this story, saying that the papers decision to publish this story has hurt the effort on the WOT. This, if left to Bush, would be just another hidden relic that we may have discovered ten years after the fact. But I for one applaud the NYT for doing it. We have EVERY right to know exactly what is being done by our govt. If they dont like it tough luck. We are our govts Bosses. Not the other way around.
Somewhere along the line I think the people in power seem to forget that.

Bush condemns disclosure of secret anti-terror program
Program that searches bank records lawful, president says

Monday, June 26, 2006; Posted: 11:35 a.m. EDT (15:35 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday sharply condemned the disclosure of a program to secretly monitor the financial transactions of suspected terrorists. "The disclosure of this program is disgraceful," he said.

"For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America," Bush said, jabbing his finger for emphasis. He said the disclosure of the program "makes it harder to win this war on terror."

The program has been going on since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. It was disclosed last week by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. (Full Story)
full story here

Personally I feel that this goes hand in hand with the mass data mining of Americans information.

One lawmaker even said that the NYT should be prosocuted and according to the new Supreme court decision(wistle-blower) this may be able to happen.
Im almost feeling bad for the press at this point. They are besieged on both sides.
From we the people they get labelled as complicit to the govt and on the other side the govt is trying to attack the press from the other side.

Personally I cannot even begin to see where this story is going to hurt efforts. If the terrorists were smart enough to fool the American govt and pull off 911... then they are smart enough to know what kinds of methods our govt will use to track them. Come on Mr. BUsh, which is it? Are the terrorists masterminds or feeble minds? you certainly cant have both. This whole WOT is starting to stink something fierce.

Great point TONE23. Surely only a "Bush terrorist" would be dumb enough not to take precautions against bank account surveillance?
Maybe George could give a few examples of how this would hurt terrorists. I wonder if he could do better than this…Example….
1. America hating terrorist buys into the U.S stock market with the intention of selling their shares before a terrorist attack.
2. America hating terrorist doesn't have enough space to put all the U.S dollars (from the enemy within) in his suitcase. He considers putting the extra money in Halliburton where it should give a good return. However he remembers reading something from the NYT and instead leaves the dollars at home.
3. Osama Bin Laden is at his local bank branch in the Afghanistan Mountains and thinks he will write a cheque to his supporters in the U.S. However remembering the NYT article he writes it under a different name instead.

Yeah this is serious stuff. I can see it hurting the administrations war on terror excuses really badly. It makes you ashamed of your country to think the NYT could plausibly write about stuff like that.

More seriously there are a lot of bank accounts that the owners have forgotten. Sometimes it’s because they are dead and never told anyone much about how they existed, or it’s because someone’s created them illegally through tax evasion or more likely drug profiting. I wonder if the real reason is for the government to find out where these bank accounts are; confiscate them, and use them to pay of things like national debt? Worse (but perhaps more realistically) I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these bank accounts ended up in the terrorist hands of some of Bush's political allies. Republican donors? Or could Osma Bin Laden be one of them? (You never know!!! Personally nothing they can do would surprise me).

Its just an excuse so he has someone to blame when all is said and done. When they say shortly after 9-11 I guess they mean after those transactions that went through the computers right before the towers went down and the trades that went uninvestigated.


Pie

Not a very good exercise in responsible journalism.
In the long run, it's self defeating.

And it goes on everyday.
The newspapers, the Blogs, even some members of this SITE.
I recently used the term "Verbal Insurgency" to describe these types of actions.
It will do nothing but prolong the war. It's tantamount to aiding the enemy.

You really think the American public, and in this case, The WORLD, has the right to know EVERYTHING the government is doing EVEN IN THE TIME OF WAR? Should we just give everyone in the country a TOP SECRET clearance? No secrets then, right?

We could put Al Qeda on our Mailing list, just to make sure they know what we're up to.
Not like we don't already bare our souls, in our blogs, bulletin boards, online diaries. All of that, ALL OF IT, is insight. Insight into our own collective consciousness . You can bet that our enemies find it good reading, and valuable information.

They merely digest it, and throw it back at us in the form of propaganda, including providing the goriest of details when it comes to how they kill our soldiers.

Nobody knows how to self censor anymore.
This is not a tea party, or after dinner cocktails, where we talk about the state of the world. Our thoughts, and our news, is GLOBAL. Potentially BILLIONS of people have access to our conversations.

A little data mining going on there too, ya think?

"So How does America feel about all these roadside bombs?
" I don't know, let me take a sniff of the blogosphere"

"How in the name of Allah, Do we keep losing our financing?"
"AH, right here, on the New York Times Website, this explains it all!"
"Good, we'll find another way to do it"


The only person I want censoring my speech, is me.
Something a lot of Americans, and others, need to learn.
It's the responsible way to exercise your right.

And shows TRUE SOPHISTICATION.
That you understand your responsibility.



NEXT:
America provides a TIMELINE for Troop Withdrawl.
AL Qeda has a party.

thanks for the response, Liberal1984

The three reasons you gave that President Bush could come up with are pretty funny especially the third one

I for one would love to see him come up with something better, but alas, thats not going to be the case.

original quote by:Liberal1984
More seriously there are a lot of bank accounts that the owners have forgotten.

I have to try to dig up any stories on this I can find; but, I saw at one point that the govt was actually confiscating "abandoned" savings accounts. And not using it to pay off the debt; but rather, to fund the war machine(Iraq, and Afghanistan).

in the meantime heres the FBI's website detailing the procedures for seizures of property.

also it was in 2000 that congress did some overhauling to the federal laws. Ironically I learned about this fromBoat/US Magazine, July, 2000

Congress Overhauls Property Seizure Laws
Boat/US Magazine, July, 2000

Boat owners and other citizens who face seizure of their assets by the federal government -- from boats to bank accounts -- will no longer be considered guilty until proven innocent thanks to a reform measure passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton on April 25.

The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 amends federal law that allowed a person's assets to be seized and held by federal agencies, whether the person was ever arrested or convicted of any crime. Before the reform measure passed, a citizen's property could be seized on as little as "probable cause" that the property was connected to criminal activity. The property was "arrested," not the person, and it was then up to the citizen to post a bond and prove his or her innocence.

The reform bill was supported by BoatU.S., along with an unusual collection of interest groups, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Rifle Association and sponsored by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Even if this Administration does have the absolute best of intentions innocent people are inevitably going to get "mistaken" for possible terrorists. That's if they have the best of intentions. I feel more that the govt is doing this to get themselves as much money as they can find from "abandoned" or "delinquent" or "suspected" accounts; and use it to fund the WOT.

Im trying (unsuccsessfully) to find any newer overhauls that may have been done in this regard.

the following is in response to spacedoubt

original quote by:spacedoubt
And it goes on everyday.
The newspapers, the Blogs, even some members of this SITE.
I recently used the term "Verbal Insurgency" to describe these types of actions.
It will do nothing but prolong the war. It's tantamount to aiding the enemy..

Like I said before if these "terrorists" are smart enough to pull off the greatest attack in American history; then they are sure as hell smart enough to know that we are traking they're bank accounts and movements. These people are smart enough to fool the entire planet's intel; yet they are not smart enough to logically deduce that the biggest govts in the world are always using every means necc to find and detain them.
NO! The only reason our govt wants to hide these things are so that they can use them for much more than their intended use.

original quote by:spacedoubt
You really think the American public, and in this case, The WORLD, has the right to know EVERYTHING the government is doing EVEN IN THE TIME OF WAR? Should we just give everyone in the country a TOP SECRET clearance? No secrets then, right?

With my tax dollars?...Your damn right I have EVERY right to know EVERYTHING that MY govt DOES period!... YOU and I are the govt BOSSES not the other way around. And if they cannot own up(even in generalized terms) to what they are doing that goes against our laws then they need to be exposed.
And dont blow this story out of proportion.. the NYT never disclosed proceedures. If they HAD then this would be a whole different ball game.

As far as censoring myself... sure over my dead body!!!!!!

I will agree to and adhere to; the T&C of this board in terms of censorship. BUT, I will be damned if I am going to stop speaking and exposing things that our, and other govts, do that I feel are BS. And shame on you for evenb suggesting it

If you want to silence me youll have to kill me.

Originally posted by ThePieMaN
Its just an excuse so he has someone to blame when all is said and done. When they say shortly after 9-11 I guess they mean after those transactions that went through the computers right before the towers went down and the trades that went uninvestigated.


Pie

The trades were investigated, but a report was never released because there were no terrorists on the list. Only Germans, Americans, and Israelies.

Obviously the people who actually think it was Okay for the NYT to 'break' the story could never be more wrong.

The telling of this 'Top secret' program was wrong. It has nothing to do with the vast majority of Americans, unless you are doing international trading/international money transfers.

Please tell me how this affects the typical US citizen?

With this program the US Government was able to track terrorist funding back to the source....to be able to get deep inside fanatical groups who would love to do more damage to the US. Now thanks to the NYT & LAT, it's now an avenue the terrorists know is being watched and will now go through other channels.

Obviously this is not a big deal to some of you....................maybe you'll get bombed next time, or you'll be on the next hi-jacked plane or the next building that terrorists crash a plane into...........I guess you'll say with your last thoughts...."because of people like me, the Government was unable to stop this attack...KUDOS TO ME......................."

[edit on 26-6-2006 by ferretman2]

original quote by:ferretman2
Please tell me how this affects the typical US citizen?

Ok Ill tell you, Just like when the NSA story first broke it was only international call that were being monitored... then a couple months later it comes to light that the NSA was in fact data mining millions of domestic calls aswell. The problem here is once again this opens the doorway for the same thing to happen again.. first it comes out that they are tracking international accounts and in a couple months the same crap all over again.

original quote by:ferretman2
Obviously this is not a big deal to some of you....................maybe you'll get bombed next time, or you'll be on the next hi-jacked plane or the next building that terrorists crach a plane into...........I guess you'll say with your last thoughts...."because of people like me, the Government was unable to stop this attacked...KUDOS TO ME......................."

you know what? YES KUDOS to me... and you know why?.. because Id rather be free and in my grave.. than alive and a slave...marinate on that one.
You may be willing to trade your liberty for security but I sir am NOT!!!!

Originally posted by TONE23
Your damn right I have EVERY right to know EVERYTHING that MY govt DOES period!...

I assume misunderstanding of Presidential powers during times of war, along with historical knowledge of same.

Take D-Day for instance.... www.historyplace.com...

No, there are items during war which rightfully remain secret, even Congressmen will attest to that fact.

Mod Edit: Fixed Link.

[edit on 27/6/2006 by Mirthful Me]

Originally posted by smokenmirrors
ight I have EVERY right to know EVERYTHING that MY govt DOES period!...

I assume misunderstanding of Presidential powers during times of war, along with historical knowledge of same.

Well how convenient for government heh?

Start an illegal war that has no end, and they can spy on, collect private info on, and take away the rights of their own citizens for ever.

I can't believe people are still buying into this 'war on terror' as to be anything but a sham, with lots of benefits for the ruling elites and their corporations.

How convenient all this is for Bush and co. They are not the dumb incompetent government ppl seem to think they are. They are cold, calculating, and know exactly what they are doing. The dumb incompetents are those that blindly follow them!

Heil Bush...Why is it some never seem to learn from history?

Originally posted by ANOK
Start an illegal war that has no end, and they can spy on, collect private info on, and take away the rights of their own citizens for ever.

The dumb incompetents are those that blindly follow them!

To subscribe to the belief the current U.S. administration is evil, a danger to the world, the enemy of peace, yada yada yada is your prerogative...

I, however, do not subscribe to such belief.

To infer I am a dumb incompetent is also your prerogative, though far from true. As a matter of decency I will keep some of my opinions to myself.

Go ahead and keep it to yourself, just like the government you support likes to do

War is peace...
Slavery is freedom...
Privacy is anti-government...

C'mon man don't be shy, I'd love to hear your opinion...

Seriously I'd love to know what makes you tick, what motivates you to support the war machine.

Are you profiting from it? Do you love money more than life? Have you bought into the fear of terrorism? I'm really curious.

To infer I am a dumb incompetent is also your prerogative

So you admit you blindly follow them then? Otherwise the inference wasn't aimed at you

[edit on 26/6/2006 by ANOK]

I certainly am not calling you or anyone else dumb or incompetent, smokenmirrors
Quite the contrary in fact.

The biggest arguement that bush stated in THIS piece is that we are helping the terrorists by divulging, in broad terms, things that our govt is doing.
Forget about the fact that by trouncing on our constitution our govt is helping the "terrorist" movement more than ANY news service could hope to muster.

Let me make something perfectly clear here:

In a war of ideology; as is the WOT, it is of the upmost importance that we maintain our IDEALS. The moment we compromise our ideals, we have already lost the war of ideology.

This may not be important to you(as you put it earlier).. But it matters a great deal to me.

I am not so afraid to die that I am willing to compromise, even in wartime
the Ideals and laws of our beloved Constitution; even If my own life ends violently by "terrorists"

Can you say the same?

My life is insignifigant next to the living breathing document that is our entire way of life. I will not kill to advance my Ideals; but I will happily perish defending them.
that is courage, to me.

I can see things from your perspective and it IS valid. But I do not feel that the trade-off of safety is worth my liberty. read my sig

Give it away, give it away, give it away now.

Everyone is capable of, and performs Self-editing, and self censorship on a daily basis.
It boils down to self preservation, sometimes you shut up, so you don't hurt someone elses feelings, or, so you don't get your butt kicked.

OR.

So a country, or region, that is capable of using our freedoms, as our Achilles Heel, has more trouble doing so.
You don't just HAND IT OVER, because they probably know it all already. It's not a well thought out plan..not at all.

If it's cathartic for yourself to spew everything you know, onto this global database called the Internet. More power to you, You STILL have the right to do so.
But, is it RIGHT to do so? That's a judgeement call YOU have to make.

Our Soldiers, risking their lives in the line of fire, are counting on YOU to make the best decision.

Spacedoubt- believe me I censor myself a great deal. If I didnt I wouldve been banned a for some time now.

You keep acting like we are telling the terrorists a detailed report as to how we go about performing the said task(in this case Bank monitoring)..

As I said earlier, If they had divulged specifics about this proceddure then I would not only not argue with you but I would join you in your arguement. But they are just giving a broad overview. HUGE DIFFERENCE!

Now I again have answered your points. I even point out the validity. Now if you would be so kind as to answer these two questions for me?

1.)

original quote by:TONE23
Let me make something perfectly clear here:

In a war of ideology; as is the WOT, it is of the upmost importance that we maintain our IDEALS. The moment we compromise our ideals, we have already lost the war of ideology.

This may not be important to you(as you put it earlier).. But it matters a great deal to me.

I am not so afraid to die that I am willing to compromise, even in wartime
the Ideals and laws of our beloved Constitution; even If my own life ends violently by "terrorists"

Can you say the same?

and

2.) How is the Govt.'s abuse of the Constitution Not more dangerous to our way of life than a terrorist?

thank you for your time spacedoubt

The greater and more important story in all this,
is the use of third party data dealers, third party security and investigative merchants, and other private merchants to get around constitutional laws.

So now we learn of SWIFT, controlling roughly 80% of interntional banking data.

What else wil we learn as more leaks surface to expose the inner workings of those
who manipulate world events to their advantage?

Today I was reading about the use of a private PR group used to sell the war in Iraq.

Seems The Rendon Group has proven quite popular with the neocon establishment.

www.huffingtonpost.com...












[edit on 26-6-2006 by FallenFromTheTree]

Originally posted by TONE23

1.)

original quote by:TONE23
Let me make something perfectly clear here:

In a war of ideology; as is the WOT, it is of the upmost importance that we maintain our IDEALS. The moment we compromise our ideals, we have already lost the war of ideology.

This may not be important to you(as you put it earlier).. But it matters a great deal to me.

I am not so afraid to die that I am willing to compromise, even in wartime
the Ideals and laws of our beloved Constitution; even If my own life ends violently by "terrorists"

Can you say the same?

and

2.) How is the Govt.'s abuse of the Constitution Not more dangerous to our way of life than a terrorist?

thank you for your time spacedoubt

1. I agree that the WOT is about Ideologies.
But nowhere do I advocate compromising our own ideologies. I never would.
I too would rather die, than live under the thumb of a tyrant.
I just feel that Freedom of speech, includes the freedom to NOT speak, if one desires.
I think there is responsibilty that goes with this freedom.

2. If I felt the Government was abusing the constitution, I would vote them out.
Thats one of the other great things about the US...

That is, unless one still thinks the elections were rigged.
I don't think they were, unless you count Illegals voting via Drives licenses.


If you need more info, or if I misinterpreted your questions, I'd be happy to give it another shot..

Ferret Man Given that we are now approaching 3000 U.S deaths in Iraq I think statistically I am more likely to conscripted by the likes of Bush and blown up that way than some one in a million weekend chance of being on a plane. Personally I think it’s kind of cowardly to get worked up over it.
The right wing on this thread have moaned a lot about the release of this information just not being on; but no one has yet to outdo me on my 3 possible examples of the NYT times inadvertedly alerting Al Qaeda. And with the NYT being in New York, and the threat of terrorism being “so real” I think that would be a very, very stupid thing for them to do.
It’s great that America actually has a newspaper that is prepared to reveal how the government is wasting your money whilst eccentrically intruding on your privacy. People are not stupid

Spacedoubt I think your wrong to complain that nobody knows how to self censor anymore. What do you think Fox News does? CNN isn’t much different ether although at least it’s not quite so separated from reality. That of course is what censorship does; and that is what I fear it more than terrorists.
After all the job of the news media was (originally) to keep people informed; if the terrorists can have the smallest impact on that; then the more for their victory, at the expense of your once great country. There was always room for secrecy but never a rightful place for expenditure “eccentricity” (or worse outright corruption).

As for this being “a time of war” I go “ha, ha, ha you listen to Fox don’t you?”!!! I mean what is the point in calling a never ending war; a war when it actual fact it’s a fight or struggle? We aren’t winning ether and it’s not because America hasn’t deluded itself with enough censorship. Instead it’s because since September the 11th the world has grown more pissed of at America than ever. Unless that changes Americas only accomplishment will be a lot of money spent (and if they are lucky hatred kept just below the lid). But don’t think you’re immune from your problems just because you can prevent the world from getting in; after all it’s your people who have to live with the facts of the lives your peoples (elected but not chosen) leaders have taken away.

Has any one stopped to think that maybe bush does not really care what the NYT said? Bush gets mad at the media for telling these huge secrets and the media gets more crediblity with the public. The NYTs only tells half or less of the story and everyone suddenly thinks they know exactly what is going on with the goverment. Then congress gets involved, dick Cheny shoots someone distracting us for the goverments crimes and by the time anyone rembers what the goverment did illegaly were told the problem was resolved and it won't happen again. But can we really trust that it ever stopped to begin with? I think not.

If this was a real threat to our security then why did the put options go uninvestigated? Why did not the Enron debacle recieve the same level of assesment, these were financial dealers sending money to who knows? They were friends of the Bush administration and they flagrently violated financial laws yet somehow it was never a security risk? Was there ever one story of how that could have helped people such as terrorists? With so many accounting shenanigans going on in corporate America I doubt the terrorists would have to do much other than flash a bunch of money around, as the Saudi's have proven and effectively write American foriegn policy and sick their spy agents of Al Quaeda on us whenever we don't get the cost of oil up high enough so they can better enslave their new trainees. NOt to forget the oil barrons from texas and their financial dealings with the Bin Ladens. Maybe the times should front and center some of Bushs old financial dealings, geeze I hope they do. Murrow went right for the throat as they say and Mcarthy never saw it coming. I see no end to the need for secrecy in Bushes schemes, it will make everyone less knowledgable about their government and afraid. Didn't Bush get some special investors in Arbusto? Weren't they associated with the family of the man that attacked us on 911 in the first place. Let's investigate this deal, maybe this made 911 possible?

"The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society and we are as
a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret
oaths, and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of
excessive and unwarrented concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the
dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today there is little value in
opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating it's arbitrary
restrictions, even today there's little value in insuring the survival of
our nation if our traditions do not survive with it and there is very grave
danger that an annouced need for increase in security would be seized upon
by those anxious to expand it's meaning to the very limits of official
censorship and concealment that I do not intend to permit to the extent
that's in my control and no official of my administration, whether his rank
is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight
as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our
mistakes, or to withhold from the press or the public, the facts they
deserve to know." John F. Kennedy

[edit on 27-6-2006 by bubbabuddha]