Victor Comras, Partisan Hack?

It just gets so old. Bill Keller, in his defense of his indefensible heads-up to terrorists, cites Victor Comras, in Counterterrorism Blog. Cormas writes:

Yesterday’s New York Times Story on US monitoring of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) transactions certainly hit the street with a splash. It awoke the general public to the practice. In that sense, it was truly new news. But reports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time.

See? The terrorists, even the home-grown, not-so bright Richard Reid types, already could find this stuff out.

The fact is that there is really very little privacy today when it comes to the international transfer of funds. That is why criminal networks, money launderers and terrorist groups have increasingly turned to Hawalas and cash couriers for such transactions.

So the terrorists knew about financial monitoring - makes you wonder why we even bothered to do it. And sure, reports on financial surveillance have been out there for some time. A year ago Victor Cormas wrote:

The United States has put great effort into tracking terrorist funds. A major part of this effort involves regulating and monitoring domestic banking activities and overseas transactions. And it has done a good job of driving terrorism financing away from U.S. shores. Other countries also have financial intelligence units similar to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. But few, if any, are as active. Most countries rely on their banking and financial communities to police themselves. And few nations other than the United States impose penalties on banks for failing to meet due-diligence requirements. Getting them to strengthen this process remains one of our most difficult challenges.

What? Doesn't sound like there was much of a program back then. It sounds like our ability to monitor foreign transactions was kind of weak. Else why would "getting them to strengthen this process" be one of our most difficult challenges?

When Cormas wrote that in June, 2005, there were two possibilities:

1) He didn't know about the SWIFT program, or was unaware of the level of cooperation we were getting.
2) He did know about it and had the good sense to protect it's efficacy by down-playing its value.

Regardless, now he's providing cover for Bill Keller. And it doesn't matter how they rationalize it, if just one terrorist cell benefits from the information Keller publicized, it will be the innocent who pay for it.

UPDATE *** Victor Comras speaks in September on the state of our financial tracking of terror. In short:

International cooperation in support of the war on terrorism financing is still patently inadequate....

That was nine months ago. Were we getting cooperation from SWIFT at that time? Well, at that time, anyway, Victor Comras didn't choose to expose whatever cooperation there was. And I think he knows that the NYT was wrong in exposing it now. Maybe it's retired-general syndrome that leads him to pull in the wrong direction.