The American Spectator interviewed officials from the Treasury and Judiciary Departments on the SWIFT terrorist finance tracking leak. Here are some highlights:
“We thought that once the reporters and editors understood that one, these were not warrantless searches, and two, that this was a successful program that had netted real bad guys, and three, that it was a program that was helping us with current, ongoing cases, they would agree to hold off or just not do a story,” says the U.S. Treasury official. “But it became clear that nothing we said was going sway them. Whomever they were talking to, whoever was leaking the stuff, had them sold on this story.”
To that end, the Justice Department has quietly and unofficially begun looking into possible sources for the leak. “We don’t think it’s someone currently employed by the government or involved in law enforcement or the intelligence community,” says another Justice source. “That stuff about ‘current and former’ sources just doesn’t wash. No one currently working on terrorism investigations that use SWIFT data would want to leak this or see it leaked by others. We think we’re looking at fairly high-ranking, former officials who want to make life difficult for us and what we do for whatever reasons.”
Sounds like another case of Democrat holdovers in the federal bureaucracy putting party ahead of country. Here’s more:
As for the ongoing investigations that the two Times papers were told of, only time will tell if they have been damaged by the reporting. “Let’s put it this way, some of these folks probably aren’t using their banks anymore, so who knows,” says the Treasury source. “Using banks for transfers was easier for them to move funds faster, especially if it was in a part of the world that was heavily Muslim and they thought the money wouldn’t draw as much attention there. But groups like al Qaeda aren’t about to put expediency before their goals of destroying us, so they will do what they have to do to protect their financing and their operatives. We know that, we just wish the New York Times and Los Angeles Times cared, too.”
Democrats in the federal bureaucracy collude with Democrats in the press to undermine American foreign policy, hoping thereby to benefit their party. It’s one of the most important stories of the last four years, and so far, at least, there isn’t a single Democrat of national stature who has spoken out against this unholy alliance.
Via Power Line News.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.