Demanding Action to Fight Terrorism

The New York Times, in the direct aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that ravaged Lower Manhattan, called for an expansive program for tracking down terrorists through their financial arrangements. Sweetness and Light has the details:

Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be accompanied by strong sanctions against doing business with financial institutions based in these nations. The Bush administration initially opposed such measures. But after the events of Sept. 11, it appears ready to embrace them.

The Treasury Department also needs new domestic legal weapons to crack down on money laundering by terrorists. The new laws should mandate the identification of all account owners, prohibit transactions with "shell banks" that have no physical premises and require closer monitoring of accounts coming from countries with lax banking laws. Prosecutors, meanwhile, should be able to freeze more easily the assets of suspected terrorists. The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold hearings this week on a bill providing for such measures. It should be approved and signed into law by President Bush.

New regulations requiring money service businesses like the hawala banks to register and imposing criminal penalties on those that do not are scheduled to come into force late next year. The effective date should be moved up to this fall, and rules should be strictly enforced the moment they take effect. If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one.

That was the New York Times on September 24, 2001. My, what four years have done to the Times' position on such programs. Instead of pushing for such programs, the Times now seeks to out the existence of programs that do precisely what the paper deemed essential to the war on terrorism, thereby undermining the ability of those programs to operate effectively.

As the Times would like you to believe, they have your best interests in mind when publishing such information. I'd strenuously beg to differ. They have their own agenda in mind when publishing such information.