Another Strange Play

Vice-President Cheney is offended that the media is reporting on yet another surveillance program. This one monitors financial transactions in an effort to find out where terrorists are getting their money from and to prevent them from having the use of that money. The program works by issuing very broad investigatory subpoenas to banking organizations which do business in the U.S. and abroad, particuarly a financial transaction clearinghouse in Belgium.

The government claims that the program has successfully stopped a number of terror activities. Critics of the government claim it is a violation of civil liberties to gather so much information which otherwise would be protected by privacy rights. However, "I think that the tracking of the financing of terrorism trumps most things," said Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Chairman. Subpoenas were obtained from a court, and an "independent auditing firm," Booz Allen Hamilton, reviewed the government's scrutiny of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of transactions, and found no singificant invasion of privacy or misuse of private information.

Friday, the existence of that program was leaked and published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, the government argued with the papers before the story was published, asking that they not make public the existence of this program on the theory that if the public (and therefore our enemies) were aware of the program, it would be less effective.

When the papers decided not to follow the government's request, Vice President Cheney had a fit of pique: "What I find most disturbing about these stories is that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people," Cheney said. "That offends me." The editor of the L.A. Fish Wrapper defended himself, saying that it is "in the public interest to publish information about the extraordinary reach of this program."

There, in a nutshell of just a few statements, you have the essence of the dispute. I have two questions.

First, if the existence of the program is an essential component of its efficacy, and the purpose of the program is counterterrorism, then why wasn't the program classified? The government can suppress publication of classified material in the interests of national security consistent with the First Amendment. That the program was not classified suggests either some very sloppy thinking about security (which does not seem to be one of the administration's faults) or an implicit admission that the program did not meet the criteria for classification.

Second, what exactly does the Administration think is going on in people's minds when banks tell them, "The USA Patriot Act makes us report every deposit to the Department of Homeland Security?" Do they think that the terrorists are unaware of this law, themselves? Could they possibly believe that for the past five years, terrorists sophisticated enough to raise money and transfer it through western banks are also unaware that these transactions are being monitored? The existence of this program comes as a surprise to exactly no one -- our banks have been telling us that the government is watching what we do with our money since about October 1, 2001. Why, then, does the media coverage of something that everyone knew was going on anyway hurt the efficacy of the program?

The Vice-President has been delegated the power to classify and declassify information on his own initiative. As far as I can tell, this was not a classified program. As far as I can tell, the reports only confirm what anyone with the remotest clue about banking laws already suspected to a high level of certainty anyway. And if Cheney had really cared about the public remaining ignorant of the program's existence, he could have simply classified it and prevented its publication -- but he did not do this.

So what's going on here? Is this just agitprop intended to rile up the GOP base against the "liberal news media" (including that leftist rag, the Wall Street Journal)? I doubt it; that would be a singularly ineffective, and unnecessary, tactic even in a tight election year. Is this just an ego of Caesarian proportions being publicly upset that he didn't get his way? Once again, there seems to be no political advantage and no policy advantage to any of this.