Congress' Curiosity

From IBD:
Posted 7/13/2006

National Security: There's clearly no shortage of voyeurs of classified information on Capitol Hill. But nosiness is no license for congressmen to hamper the executive branch's efforts in tracking down terrorists.
Rep. Sue Kelly, R-N.Y., chairwoman of the House Financial Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations, seems to think terrorist finance is her own personal turf.

During a subcommittee hearing this week, Kelly groused that she and other members of Congress weren't briefed on the Treasury Department's tracking of international banking transactions to monitor terrorist funding. Kelly was joined by Democrats only too happy for the chance to score political points against the president.

"What else is it that we don't know?" Kelly wondered.

Well, the short answer is: plenty. And there's plenty you and your insatiably curious colleagues in Congress aren't supposed to know. And the primary reason you're not supposed to know it is that the U.S. government doesn't want secrets to cease being secrets, because that impedes our efforts to prevent terrorist atrocities.
Stuart Levey, treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told Kelly's panel that The New York Times' revelation about our monitoring of the huge Belgium-based Swift international banking network "compromised one of our most valuable programs and will only make our efforts to track terrorist financing — and to prevent terrorist attacks — harder."

Levey also noted that "the program played an important role in the investigation that eventually culminated in the capture of Hambali, Jemaah Islamiya's operations chief, who masterminded the 2002 Bali bombings. The program supplied a key piece of evidence that confirmed the identity of a major Iraqi terrorist facilitator and financier."

So the Swift operation has already saved lives.

Kelly should get it straight that her committee is not one of Congress' intelligence panels. As Levey noted, the chairman and ranking Democrat of Congress' two intelligence panels were informed of the Swift surveillance because the program was an intelligence operation — and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, has said he is perfectly happy with that.

But Kelly founded the bipartisan Congressional Anti-Terrorist Financing Task Force. A bill she introduced last year to assess anti-terror finance activities in other countries passed the House with Democratic support. In other words, Kelly, with an eye toward eventually holding statewide office, is seeking to make terror finance her specialty. And she doesn't want to be left out of the game.

So now she's calling for a probe of the Treasury Department tracking program by Congress' Government Accountability Office, the invariable purpose of which is to embarrass executive agencies.

But Kelly is going to have a hard time squaring that with her tough talk of how "we must keep pace with evil terrorist financiers who have cunning and intricate ways to hide their money and transmit their funds to carry out terrorist attacks."How much easier is it for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups to adapt when Congress is hounding the executive branch for classified secrets about our efforts against them? Add to that the fact that the House Financial Services Committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., gave the game away about congressional intelligence briefings. He disclosed that the administration offered to brief him on the Swift program, but he turned it down because he would not have been allowed to discuss what he was told.

In other words, if it's information you can't clobber the White House over the head with, what use is it?
The global war on terror is one of the most serious challenges this country has ever faced. Members of Congress should control their unhealthy curiosity, let the executive branch do its job and resist the temptation to use the fight against terrorism to try to turn themselves into stars.