"Swift"

A huge financial data mining program, conducted by the Treasury Department, in collaboration with a cooperative in Belgium, known only as "Swift," has been secretly gathering financial records, over the past 5 years, using "broad administrative subpoenas," as revealed in today's New York Times as "the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing."

Using the same argument as the National Security Agency has with regard to electronic, and cellular, data collection, Treasury officials insist that they are targeting "international," not domestic, bank records, especially those who are believed to have connections with Al Qaeda. It would seem, to the naked eye, that having dinner with Saudi royalty only hours before 9/11 might just constitute having ties.

It's about time that someone looked into the bank accounts, and financial records, of those who may gain from their affiliations with terrorists, and terrorist groups, not just since 2001, but even going back to the first Persian Gulf War. One can only hope that the bank data of Mr. Cheney, Halliburton, Jack Abramoff, as well as Bush pere et fils, as well as all the contracts, and contractors, are also being investigated!