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June 27, 2006
Gray Lady Advocated Tracking Terrorist Funding
As the al Qaeda collaborators at the New York Times batten down the hatches and wait out the storm over their deliberate crippling of government efforts to protect America from terror attacks, they might want to have a look in their own archives at what they were saying in September of 2001, back when 9/11 was so fresh in their minds, they were able to understand that terror attacks don't just blow up Americans in the abstract, but kill real people — possibly including them. These very words appeared on the Shady Gray Lady's pages:
Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists.
The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their 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. There must also must be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies. ...
The Treasury Department also needs new domestic legal weapons to crack down on money laundering by terrorists. The new laws should mandate the identification of all account owners, prohibit transactions with "shell banks" that have no physical premises and require closer monitoring of accounts coming from countries with lax banking laws. Prosecutors, meanwhile, should be able to freeze more easily the assets of suspected terrorists. The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold hearings this week on a bill providing for such measures. It should be approved and signed into law by President Bush. ...
If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one.
But now Executive Editor Bill Keller et al. have come to realize that refraining from publicizing what are in effect military secrets regarding government efforts to track terrorist funding would violate the public's right to know. If you have room for your belly for any more of the Gray Lady's sanctimonious hypocrisy, Keller is now attempting to excuse his paper's despicable behavior by intoning that it would be "arrogant" for them to assume that attempts to keep Islamic terrorists from killing us "are perfectly legal and abuse-proof, based entirely on the word of the government."
Of course a guy who turned up his nose at the Treasury Department's urgent pleas not to hamstring this program wouldn't want anyone accusing him of arrogance.
If Keller, the reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen who wrote the funds-tracking expose, and whoever leaked the information to them are not either in federal prison or better still pushing up weeds by the end of the year, we'll know that the Bush Administration does not have what it takes to win the War on Terror.
Hat tips: Sweetness & Light, Cold Fury
Posted by Van Helsing at June 27, 2006 5:45 PM
Comments
Let's hope that a 747 loaded with the crew from the latest Mike Al'Moor film and the delegates from the last Kos tin foil hat convention gets hijacked by Cindy SheHag and Sean Penn and while they desperately search for Karl Rove's house, they instead land on the office of the NY Times in a spectacular ball of flames.
Posted by: Doug at June 27, 2006 6:30 PM
being the new york slime want to aid the islamic beast with classified intel , that is showing weakness on their part I E> ny slime so maybe the next 9/11 will be their building.
Posted by: gene at June 27, 2006 7:34 PM
