As I explained in a previous post (Is Money the Oxygen of Terrorism?), it was never a secret that after 9/11 the U.S. government intensified its efforts to interrupt the flow of financial resources to terrorists by tracking bank transactions--including via SWIFT. The recent reports on the monitoring of SWIFT in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times did not provide terrorists with secret information and did not hurt efforts to dry up the flow of money to the bad guys. They knew of this long ago--from official and open sources.Yet, the discussions surrounding the SWIFT reports continue and are dominated by partisan extremists who are not interested in sorting out fact from fiction but exploit the case to score election year brownie points.
To be sure, when issues arise we always should welcome and encourage the exchange of different views--whether in person-to-person conversations or in mass-mediated public debates either in the old or new media. Unfortunately, much of today's public discourse consists of nasty, under-the-belt blows against those with opposing views.
Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times does not examine the substance of the Swift "leak," but rather the subsequent political blame game in which the Wall Street Journal's editorial page put itself into a rather peculiar role by attacking the New York Times viciously for the same SWIFT revelations that appeared the same day in the news section of the Wall Street Journal!
Thankfully, there are also voices of reason on all sides. Earlier today, for example, read with great interest a post on the counterterrorismblog by Dennis Lormel whose take on the SWIFT disclosures is different from my own--but well and professionally reasoned and worthwhile to read.
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