While the hearings are underway, readers can see the “Planned Testimony” of Stuart Levey, Under Secretary of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, for the Department of the Treasury before the committee in a PDF found HERE!
Secretary Levey stresses the importance of tracking financial dealings, and in the process points out one of the most egregious examples of the Left’s moral bankruptcy in cheering the release of the secret SWIFT financial tracking program by the NY and LA Times:
As this Committee knows well, tracking and combating terrorist financing are critical facets of our overall efforts to protect our citizens and other innocents around the world from terrorist attacks. This is true for two main reasons. First, when we block the assets of a terrorist front company, arrest a donor, or shut down a corrupt charity, we deter other donors, restrict the flow of funds to terrorist groups and shift their focus from planning attacks to worrying about their own needs. While any single terrorist attack may be relatively inexpensive to carry out, terrorist groups continue to need real money. They depend on a regular cash flow to pay operatives and their families, arrange for travel, train new members, forge documents, pay bribes, acquire weapons, and stage attacks. Disrupting money flows stresses terrorist networks and undermines their operations. In recent months, we have seen at least one instance of what we look for most – a terrorist organization indicating that it cannot pursue sophisticated attacks because it lacks adequate funding.
Second, “following the money” is one of the most valuable sources of information that we have to identify and locate the networks of terrorists and their supporters. If a terrorist associate whom we are watching sends or receives money from another person, we know that there’s a link between the two individuals. And, while terrorist supporters may use code names on the phone, when they send or receive money through the banking system, they often provide information that yields the kind of concrete leads that can advance an investigation. For these reasons, counter-terrorism officials place a heavy premium on financial intelligence. As the 9/11 Commission staff pointed out – and as Chairman Hamilton testified before this Committee – “following the money to identify terrorist operatives and sympathizers provides a particularly powerful tool in the fight against terrorist groups. Use of this tool almost always remains invisible to the general public, but it is a critical part of the overall campaign against al Qaeda.” The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was just such an invisible tool. Its exposure represents a grave loss to our overall efforts to combat al Qaida and other terrorist groups.
The Left has issued a steady drumbeat of concern over the innocent Iraqi lives and American soldiers killed in our invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yet at the same time, the Left wants to handcuff law enforcement activities in the name of “civil rights” by decrying any attempt to spy on international terrorists and their supporters.
Constitutional protections of privacy do not apply to financial transactions. As I’ve stated before, the Bank Secrecy Act requires all transactions of a certain size to be reported to the government by the banking institution for all citizens. However, we have no such reporting requirements for transactions originating and ending in foreign countries with foreign funds. The SWIFT tracking program gave us the opportunity to data mine the transactions to see who was funding terrorists, track back the links and capture … CAPTURE … terrorists.
Notice I wrote “CAPTURE” in caps up there? This was a law enforcement action, and except for the brave men and women who go out to actually apprehend the terrorists, there was no “collateral damage”. No children bombed, no fires in residential neighborhoods started by the explosions, no innocents harmed.
Hugh Hewitt mentions, in his blog entry on the bombings in India, that the revelation of the SWIFT tracking activities can lead to more of this kind of activity.
Non-existent privacy rights are weighed against the lives of innocents, and the innocents lose.
We need increased ability to track financial transactions, as well as all other peaceful means to isolate, corner and capture terrorists. Combined with the aggressive attack by our military on terrorist targets, pursuing all avenues against the terrorists will enable continued success. The Left, which claims to care about human life, shows itself instead to be selfish, blinded by hate for a particular President, and incapable of making the moral distinctions necessary in modern life.
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