Report: Bush Drafts Plan to See Intl Banking Records (Reuters)

[Up2Late]

(...to fight money laundering? that's not going to fly with *'s base)

Report: Bush Drafts Plan to See Intl Banking Records

Sat Apr 9, 2005 05:01 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration is developing a plan to give the government access to possibly hundreds of millions of international banking records in an effort to trace and deter terrorist financing, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions. Citing interviews with government officials, the newspaper reported that the new initiative, conceived by a working group within the Treasury Department, would vastly expand government access to financial transactions via logs of international wire transfers into and out of U.S. banks.

The officials said that such overseas transactions, which were the kind used by the Sept. 11 hijackers to wire more than $130,000, are still believed to be vulnerable to terrorist financiers. The plan, still in the preliminary stages, grew out of a brief, little-noticed provision in the intelligence reform bill passed by Congress in December, the Times said. It would give the government tools to track leads on specific suspects and to analyze patterns in terrorist financing and other finance crimes, the officials said. The newspaper reported that the officials, aware of concerns about privacy, want to include safeguards to prevent misuse of the enormous cache of financial records.

The provision in the December reform bill authorized the Treasury Department to pursue regulations that would force financial institutions to turn over "certain cross-border electronic transmittals of funds" that may be deemed necessary to fight money laundering and terrorist financing, the report said. Industry and government officials told the Times that the plan for tracking overseas wire transfers is likely to intensify pressure on banks and other financial institutions to comply with the growing number of provisions to fight money laundering.

The new initiative reflects concerns by the Bush administration and Congressional officials about the government's ability to track and disrupt financing for terrorist operations by Al Qaeda and other groups, the Times said. The relatively small amount of money used to finance attacks like those of 9/11 made such transactions difficult to spot and track.

(more at link above)

[shraby]

1. They just want to know how much is there

that they can steal.

[ixion]

2. more big government from the so-called partty of small government

really, the hypocrisy is breathtaking. :banghead:

[Triana]

3. When Clinton tried to do this..

...the REPUBLICANS poo-poo'd the idea and accused him of trying to take attention away from the Lewinsky scandal. MY MY do I smell the stench of hypocrisy here or WHAT? I think I do. And THIS, folks is part of the reason we were attacked on 9-11...goes right at the doorstep of none other than the Republican party fighting Clinton's every effort to do something about terrorism for eight years. 'cause the Republicans were more interested in having OUR money, their attention, and the public's attention on blowjobs instead.

There you go.

[punpirate]

5. Absolutely...

... that description of the `pug response is mild compared to what it actually was. The `pugs know that a significant (meaning "huge") amount of Republican money, corporate and personal, is sitting in offshore banks. My guess is $3-4 trillion, based upon recent reports in the UK.

Have no fear, though. The Tresury will be writing those rules to limit them specifically to terrorist investigations, not tax evasion--despite the allusion to "other finance crime."

[tabasco]

6. That's right ! Phil Graham & the repukes STOPPED this ...

under Clinton. They were more concerned with important things like Clinton's cock size.

[otohara]

4. Damn - No More Swiss Bank Accounts For Me

:cry:

[Helga Scow Stern]

7. Perhaps an attempt to chase assets out of the country

as more and more flee the regime and its corps-take-all laws.

[MrPrax]

8. Should Make Foreign Business Comfortable...

to know that Bush and his his Corporate Pals are shifting through their transactions...
Takes 'insider trading' to new heights with a range of possible avenues for favored American companies to get the information on their competitors...

[EVDebs]

9. WTF ? They already have CHIPS and the NSA has powers to do this

via the wires overseas. Haven't they read any of James Bamford's books (Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets) ?

Clearing House Interbank Payment System, or CHIPS, is already capable of what you state...but is at risk itself by transient electromagnetic devices(TED)/portable RF weapons. See

E-Zapper Could Break the Bank
By James P. Lucier
http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-War&Terrorism&Revolution/Doc-War&Terrorism&Revolution-Terrorism/RadioFrequencyGeneratorsBigDangerForCriticalSystems.htm

With our own electronic infrastructure 'at risk' is seems absurd that the 9-11 attacts, which cost around $500,000 to pull off according to what I've heard, would be the main concern of Bush administration officials...when the ENTIRE INFRACTRUCTURE could be attacked with about the same priced attack.

""The TED is in fact based upon modern versions of the spark-gap technology discovered by Michael Faraday in the 19th century. Any good engineering student with access to a textbook, a Radio Shack and an auto-parts store might build one.
. . . . Military experts long dismissed the possibility of a backyard bomber coming up with an RF weapon. But the panel assembled by Saxton from the Pentagon and elsewhere gave a much more somber assessment. Witnesses testified that the TED-in-a-briefcase already has been developed by a Russian technical institute and is for sale for $100,000 to interested parties. Another expert described how he built a TED in his basement, using a couple of ignition coils, an auto fuel pump and oil filter, and other commonly available junk parts. From there it would take only a little practical experimentation to work up to the TED-in-a-van, or the TED hooked up to a 12-foot satellite dish. A witness from the Department of Defense, or DoD, said that the military takes the possibility of RF attacks on aircraft so seriously that it has been testing such effects live in the field on surplus Huey helicopter gunships.""

[NVMojo]

10. Can we also see the Bush family financial books??

[darkism]

11. Why am I not surprised to see "bush" and "draft" in the same sentence?

On a totally unrelated note, of course. :silly: