War on Terror- Terrorist Tracking
| Print This: |
|
August 2, 2006
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague from Texas for outlining so many of the very important issues facing this country and the Senate today.
I will talk about something that is extremely important to families, to people through the United States. That is the war on terror. How are we going to take the steps to prevent another September 11 attack in the United States?
I don't think anyone who has followed the progress of the Islamo-fascist terrorists who have threatened us believe we are going to be safe if we try a fortress mentality, to step back and say no one is going to hit us, they don't care about the United States. They do.
We work in a very secure place. People who visit us have to go through all kinds of security. Yes, we have built up some good barriers, good protections. High target areas such as the Congress and the White House are protected.
For the vast majority of places in America, there is no way you can build a security system such as we have here because of the high priority this rates in terms of terrorist interests. After September 11, we started some very serious consideration of what we needed to do to fight against terrorism.
I will read a very good editorial that appeared September 24, 2001.
The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities.
Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be accompanied by stronger sanctions against doing business with financial institutions based in these nations.
That is exactly what the Bush administration did. They set up the Terrorist Financing Tracking Program, a very effective program. This program went on clandestinely without any public notice or disclosure.
As the chairman of the subcommittee that funds the Treasury Department and as a Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was briefed on it. I was briefed on the effectiveness of it and how valuable a tool it is to be able to follow the money because the terrorists did not know we could follow when they transferred money from al-Qaida or Hamas or Hezbollah to someone in the United States; or transferred money from a so-called charity in the United States back to a terrorist organization. They did not know how we were doing it. It was effective.
A number of the major terrorist captures we have made, the terrorist operations designed for the United States that we have interrupted, were enabled by the terrorist tracking program.
When the 9/11 Commission made its final report of its recommendations on December 5, 2005, they gave varying degrees of ratings, from the very best being A, to F being a very bad job, to all of the different activities we had undertaken to make our country safe, to make our homeland safe.
Regrettably, many of them only got Bs. The Director of National Intelligence, the National Coun ter ter ror ism Center, they got Bs. Some of them got even lower grades, working with other countries.
But the one that led the rating was terrorist financing. We were doing the best job fighting terrorist threats to the United States by terrorist-financing tracking. We were, until last week. Because that editorial I read from about the need for that, about the need for international cooperation, was a New York Times editorial of September 24, 2001.
Well, the New York Times has blown the cover--blown the cover--on this very important terrorist-financing activity. Now the terrorists know there is a Belgian-based cooperative called SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The SWIFT operation has a facility in the United States to which the Treasury Department issued narrowly targeted administrative subpoenas to get information on specific terrorist organizations and where their money transfers went. But now the terrorists know.
SWIFT is regulated by central bankers. The oversight committee knew about it. The oversight committee had in it the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Belgium. Their committee members overseeing SWIFT knew how this program was operating, and they knew it was operating lawfully.
But the New York Times, continuing its recent tradition, has decided that its right to publish is more important than the American public's right to be safe from terrorist activities. This is another chapter in a very sad series of revelations of our most sensitive intelligence-tracking activities.
Newspapers knew in World War II we could crack the codes of the Axis, that we were able to monitor the defense and military moves of Germany. But they did not expose it. Why? Because they knew our national interest required us to be able to keep confidential, to keep out of the hands of our enemies, the techniques by which we gathered the intelligence, which helped us win World War II--and which had, until recent disclosures, helped us be able to win the war against terrorist attacks in the United States.
Well, the New York Times has decided that its right to publish takes precedence over America's right to have intelligence collection methods that are not disclosed to the people of the United States and, thus, to the terrorists we attempt to track.
Sadly, as I have traveled around the world, meeting with our intelligence agencies, our military people--all across the globe--I found out, since the disclosures--beginning with the disclosure of the renditions of terrorists to other countries, the activities of the President's terrorist surveillance program--our intelligence capabilities have been compromised. Intelligence operatives tell us collections are way down. We don't know how we can replace these tools that have been disclosed by the New York Times and others.
In February, at the open hearing in the Intelligence Committee, I asked CIA Director Porter Goss: What has the damage been? What has the damage been to our intelligence system from this disclosure? He said: It's been very severe. Let me repeat, very severe.
Then again, when Michael Hayden was in a public hearing on his confirmation to be Director of the CIA, I asked him again--and this was before the disclosure of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program--I said: What has been the impact of these disclosures on our intelligence system? He said: These disclosures have now applied the Darwinian theory to terrorists because the only terrorists we are capturing are the dumb terrorists. The smart terrorists know what we are doing, and they know how to avoid it. Therefore, they can plan their attacks, and we are severely crippled.
Well, disclosure of this Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is a very severe blow. This one particular program has had, in my view, as many successes as any of the other programs, and it has been a vital part of building the intelligence network that we need, gathering the information we need to identify and take out those people who are planning to launch deadly terrorist attacks in the United States.
I regret to tell my colleagues, my constituents in Missouri, and the people in America that we are much less safe.
This program, the SWIFT Program, did not need to be exposed. The Secretary of the Treasury has written to the New York Times a rebuttal to the disclosure they made. They said: Oh, there is a great need for the people to know this. Well, unfortunately, when the people of America know it, the terrorists know it.
Secretary John Snow, with whom I have worked on this program, laid it out very well. He said in a statement on June 22 of this year: After President Bush made it clear that ensuring the safety of our people from terrorist attacks was our No. 1 priority, one of the most important things the Treasury could do is to follow the flow of terrorist money. They don't lie. Skillfully followed, they lead us to terrorists themselves and, thereby, protect our citizens.
He said:
Given our intimate knowledge of the global financial system and financial flows, along with our close working relationships with financial institutions around the world, Treasury is uniquely positioned to track these terrorist money flows both internationally and domestically.
He said:
I am particularly proud of our Terrorist Finance Tracking Program which, based on intelligence leads, carefully targets financial transactions of suspected foreign terrorists. ..... It is an essential tool in the war on terror. ..... It is not ``data mining''. ..... It is not a ``fishing expedition''. ..... today's disclosure [is] so regrettable, because the public dissemination of our sources and methods of fighting terrorists not only harms national security but also degrades the government's efforts to prevent terrorist activity in the future.
If there are people sending money to help al Qaeda, then we need to know about it. We also need to take advantage of that knowledge to follow the money trail and thwart them.
He reports that the 9/11 Commission gave its
highest level of recognition to this work.
Well, Mr. President, when we disclose how our allies are working with us, we not only give the terrorists information on how to avoid disclosure, how to keep their activities secret, what we do, and what is very serious, is we tell our allies that we cannot keep a secret. Our allies are getting more and more reluctant to deal with us on any international cooperative missions when everything we do is blown and all of a sudden they read in their papers in the United States how they have cooperated with the United States.
Now, that is not a very popular thing for some of these governments to do, and it makes it far more difficult for us to say: Hey, let's work together on a clandestine intelligence-gathering program that will keep your country safe and our country safe. Bam, they read about it in the newspapers. Well, this makes not only terrorists more able to get around our existing intelligence-collection assets, but it makes our allies far more reluctant to cooperate with us.
Mr. President, I regret to tell you and my colleagues how serious this has been.
I will talk about something that is extremely important to families, to people through the United States. That is the war on terror. How are we going to take the steps to prevent another September 11 attack in the United States?
I don't think anyone who has followed the progress of the Islamo-fascist terrorists who have threatened us believe we are going to be safe if we try a fortress mentality, to step back and say no one is going to hit us, they don't care about the United States. They do.
We work in a very secure place. People who visit us have to go through all kinds of security. Yes, we have built up some good barriers, good protections. High target areas such as the Congress and the White House are protected.
For the vast majority of places in America, there is no way you can build a security system such as we have here because of the high priority this rates in terms of terrorist interests. After September 11, we started some very serious consideration of what we needed to do to fight against terrorism.
I will read a very good editorial that appeared September 24, 2001.
The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities.
Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be accompanied by stronger sanctions against doing business with financial institutions based in these nations.
That is exactly what the Bush administration did. They set up the Terrorist Financing Tracking Program, a very effective program. This program went on clandestinely without any public notice or disclosure.
As the chairman of the subcommittee that funds the Treasury Department and as a Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was briefed on it. I was briefed on the effectiveness of it and how valuable a tool it is to be able to follow the money because the terrorists did not know we could follow when they transferred money from al-Qaida or Hamas or Hezbollah to someone in the United States; or transferred money from a so-called charity in the United States back to a terrorist organization. They did not know how we were doing it. It was effective.
A number of the major terrorist captures we have made, the terrorist operations designed for the United States that we have interrupted, were enabled by the terrorist tracking program.
When the 9/11 Commission made its final report of its recommendations on December 5, 2005, they gave varying degrees of ratings, from the very best being A, to F being a very bad job, to all of the different activities we had undertaken to make our country safe, to make our homeland safe.
Regrettably, many of them only got Bs. The Director of National Intelligence, the National Coun ter ter ror ism Center, they got Bs. Some of them got even lower grades, working with other countries.
But the one that led the rating was terrorist financing. We were doing the best job fighting terrorist threats to the United States by terrorist-financing tracking. We were, until last week. Because that editorial I read from about the need for that, about the need for international cooperation, was a New York Times editorial of September 24, 2001.
Well, the New York Times has blown the cover--blown the cover--on this very important terrorist-financing activity. Now the terrorists know there is a Belgian-based cooperative called SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The SWIFT operation has a facility in the United States to which the Treasury Department issued narrowly targeted administrative subpoenas to get information on specific terrorist organizations and where their money transfers went. But now the terrorists know.
SWIFT is regulated by central bankers. The oversight committee knew about it. The oversight committee had in it the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Belgium. Their committee members overseeing SWIFT knew how this program was operating, and they knew it was operating lawfully.
But the New York Times, continuing its recent tradition, has decided that its right to publish is more important than the American public's right to be safe from terrorist activities. This is another chapter in a very sad series of revelations of our most sensitive intelligence-tracking activities.
Newspapers knew in World War II we could crack the codes of the Axis, that we were able to monitor the defense and military moves of Germany. But they did not expose it. Why? Because they knew our national interest required us to be able to keep confidential, to keep out of the hands of our enemies, the techniques by which we gathered the intelligence, which helped us win World War II--and which had, until recent disclosures, helped us be able to win the war against terrorist attacks in the United States.
Well, the New York Times has decided that its right to publish takes precedence over America's right to have intelligence collection methods that are not disclosed to the people of the United States and, thus, to the terrorists we attempt to track.
Sadly, as I have traveled around the world, meeting with our intelligence agencies, our military people--all across the globe--I found out, since the disclosures--beginning with the disclosure of the renditions of terrorists to other countries, the activities of the President's terrorist surveillance program--our intelligence capabilities have been compromised. Intelligence operatives tell us collections are way down. We don't know how we can replace these tools that have been disclosed by the New York Times and others.
In February, at the open hearing in the Intelligence Committee, I asked CIA Director Porter Goss: What has the damage been? What has the damage been to our intelligence system from this disclosure? He said: It's been very severe. Let me repeat, very severe.
Then again, when Michael Hayden was in a public hearing on his confirmation to be Director of the CIA, I asked him again--and this was before the disclosure of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program--I said: What has been the impact of these disclosures on our intelligence system? He said: These disclosures have now applied the Darwinian theory to terrorists because the only terrorists we are capturing are the dumb terrorists. The smart terrorists know what we are doing, and they know how to avoid it. Therefore, they can plan their attacks, and we are severely crippled.
Well, disclosure of this Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is a very severe blow. This one particular program has had, in my view, as many successes as any of the other programs, and it has been a vital part of building the intelligence network that we need, gathering the information we need to identify and take out those people who are planning to launch deadly terrorist attacks in the United States.
I regret to tell my colleagues, my constituents in Missouri, and the people in America that we are much less safe.
This program, the SWIFT Program, did not need to be exposed. The Secretary of the Treasury has written to the New York Times a rebuttal to the disclosure they made. They said: Oh, there is a great need for the people to know this. Well, unfortunately, when the people of America know it, the terrorists know it.
Secretary John Snow, with whom I have worked on this program, laid it out very well. He said in a statement on June 22 of this year: After President Bush made it clear that ensuring the safety of our people from terrorist attacks was our No. 1 priority, one of the most important things the Treasury could do is to follow the flow of terrorist money. They don't lie. Skillfully followed, they lead us to terrorists themselves and, thereby, protect our citizens.
He said:
Given our intimate knowledge of the global financial system and financial flows, along with our close working relationships with financial institutions around the world, Treasury is uniquely positioned to track these terrorist money flows both internationally and domestically.
He said:
I am particularly proud of our Terrorist Finance Tracking Program which, based on intelligence leads, carefully targets financial transactions of suspected foreign terrorists. ..... It is an essential tool in the war on terror. ..... It is not ``data mining''. ..... It is not a ``fishing expedition''. ..... today's disclosure [is] so regrettable, because the public dissemination of our sources and methods of fighting terrorists not only harms national security but also degrades the government's efforts to prevent terrorist activity in the future.
If there are people sending money to help al Qaeda, then we need to know about it. We also need to take advantage of that knowledge to follow the money trail and thwart them.
He reports that the 9/11 Commission gave its
highest level of recognition to this work.
Well, Mr. President, when we disclose how our allies are working with us, we not only give the terrorists information on how to avoid disclosure, how to keep their activities secret, what we do, and what is very serious, is we tell our allies that we cannot keep a secret. Our allies are getting more and more reluctant to deal with us on any international cooperative missions when everything we do is blown and all of a sudden they read in their papers in the United States how they have cooperated with the United States.
Now, that is not a very popular thing for some of these governments to do, and it makes it far more difficult for us to say: Hey, let's work together on a clandestine intelligence-gathering program that will keep your country safe and our country safe. Bam, they read about it in the newspapers. Well, this makes not only terrorists more able to get around our existing intelligence-collection assets, but it makes our allies far more reluctant to cooperate with us.
Mr. President, I regret to tell you and my colleagues how serious this has been.
|
||||||||||||||
