WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. government gained sweeping access to international banking records as part of a secret program to choke off financial support for terrorism, officials said Thursday. Treasury Department officials said they used broad subpoenas to collect the financial records from an international system known as Swift. Stuart Levey, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, called the subpoenas "a legal and proper use of our authorities."
"Since immediately following 9-11, the American government has taken every legal measure to prevent another attack on our country," Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary, said Thursday evening. "One of the most important tools in the fight against terror is our ability to choke off funds for the terrorists."
The White House and Treasury Department issued statements about the secret subpoenas after The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal posted stories about the program on their Web sites.
Under the program, which started shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. counterterrorism analysts combed Swift's massive data base looking for financial transactions by suspected terrorists, according to the newspapers' accounts. They said the program was run by the CIA and overseen by the Treasury Department.
Swift is a Belgium-based cooperative that handles financial message traffic from 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.
