U.S. Government Monitors International Banking for Counterterrorism

JEFFREY BROWN: I'm joined now by one of the key people overseeing the program, Stuart Levey, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Department of Treasury.

And welcome to you.

STUART LEVEY, Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence: Thank you for having me.

JEFFREY BROWN: What was the purpose of looking at transactions that flowed through SWIFT?

STUART LEVEY: The purpose of looking at these transactions is very simple. We're trying to follow the money to identify the terrorists and to put pressure on terrorist organizations and to map out their networks.

The type of information that we were looking at and continue to look at through this SWIFT program is incredibly valuable. We're talking about international wire transfers for the most part, and that is the kind of information that can draw concrete links between two individuals.

Let me just give you an example. If you're looking at a terrorist operative, say Stuart Levey, a terrorist operative, and you know that someone has either sent him money, sent me money, or that I've sent money to another person, that's a kind of link that we're looking for and that we can follow up on.

And, in particular, if it's an international wire transfer, the kind of information that goes through SWIFT, the transactional data will give you names, addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, just the kind of concrete information that our counterterrorism officials need to follow up.

JEFFREY BROWN: And did it, in fact, lead to some success?

STUART LEVEY: It's led to a number of successes. There are a number of very successful counterterrorism investigations that have had successful conclusions where this program what was one of the key factors that lead to the successful conclusion of those investigations.

And that's one of the reasons why, as you indicated in your opening, we did try to talk the relevant newspapers out of publishing this story.

We've been quite open, Jeff -- as you may know, we've been quite open that we follow the money. My title is undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. We're very open that we use financial intelligence to fight terrorism. That's my job.

The only thing that this story revealed, in my view, that we hadn't already made public is exactly the source and method of how we do that. And, in my view, that's quite damaging to our overall effort.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, now you know this has already raised a lot of questions, though, about appropriateness, about means, about even legality. There's a huge pool of transactions that go through SWIFT.

First, explain to us, what's the exact criteria for deciding which ones you're going to look at.

STUART LEVEY: I'm glad you asked me that. What we do is this: We issue an administrative subpoena to SWIFT periodically, approximately once a month. In response to that...

JEFFREY BROWN: Excuse me. Administrative subpoena means it comes from the administration, not through the courts, is what I'm getting at?

STUART LEVEY: It comes from the Treasury Department, but any recipient of an administrative subpoena, including this one, can challenge it in court if they wish to, so it compels the company to produce information.

In response to that subpoena, SWIFT has provided us a set of data which does have a lot of transactions in it, but we cannot access that data unless and until our analyst types in a specific query -- this is not general browsing around -- a specific query aimed at a specific target that is tied to terrorism and has to articulate exactly what that tie to terrorism is before any search can be done.

JEFFREY BROWN: But who is watching that? I mean, who is making that decision that the search goes forward?

STUART LEVEY: I'm glad you asked me that, too. The initial decision, of course, is made by the analyst himself or herself who takes the intelligence information about an ongoing terrorism investigation and makes a decision, in consultation with his supervisors, that this is a target that we should do financial research on.

But, as I said, we type -- that person has to enter that query and the basis for it into our computer.

And in real time, SWIFT, the company itself, is able to monitor the searches and determine if there are any questions about whether or not the connection to terrorism is strong enough. If they have any questions about it, they can stop the search in real time.

But in addition to that, on top of that, we've had an outside auditor who's been engaged for just this purpose to oversee how the government has been using this data, and that auditor has issued periodic reports.

They have access to all of these queries.

And they have determined, in report after report, that in fact the government is using the data only to conduct counterterrorism searches. And we've had a very strong record on that.

So we put appropriate safeguards in place. Our legal authority is very powerful. It's really not -- there aren't significant questions. There are no real questions about our legal authority.

And we're using it only for counterterrorism purposes. We're following the money; we're finding the terrorists. And it's having real value for the American people. I think it would be irresponsible if we weren't doing this because we have the legal authority to do it.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, but there have been questions about the legal authority. And there were certainly reports in the papers today and people we've talked to that referred to it as a legal gray area. What exactly is the legal authority that allows you to do it? There are protections in place, after all, for privacy of financial transactions.

STUART LEVEY: Well, actually, the Supreme Court issued a decision called United States v. Miller which held that there isn't a privacy interest in these kinds of financial transactions.

But our authority to issue this subpoena and to conduct this kind of investigation is a statutory authority. It's long-standing. It's called IEEPA. It was passed by Congress in 1977. And it's specifically designed to allow the executive branch to do just this kind of investigation and to issue just this kind of subpoena.

JEFFREY BROWN: You saw what Congressman Markey said in our set-up, and others are now questioning this, something that starts as a short-term emergency and now, they say, looks like a limitless, unchecked power by the federal government.

STUART LEVEY: Well, I have seen those comments. I look forward to discussing with Congressman Markey, because I think, when he has all of the facts, I don't think that he'll have the same concerns.

In terms of these emergencies being long-standing, under IEEPA, the statute I referred to, there are a number of emergencies that were declared by President Clinton that are still ongoing, with respect to Sudan, the Middle East peace process, Burma. These are all ongoing emergencies under the same statute that I'm referring to that President Clinton declared that are still ongoing.

I think the American people understand that the threat we face from al-Qaida is still ongoing. President Bush did declare an emergency with respect to that in September of 2001, and I don't think that there's anyone who seriously questions that that's still an ongoing threat to us.