DIAF

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Declaring that "loose lips" kill Americans, a top Congressional Republican leader said on Wednesday the House of Representatives will debate a resolution condemning the U.S. media for exposing details of secret intelligence programs.

The move heaps more criticism on The New York Times and other newspapers that reported last week on a secret program by the U.S. Treasury Department that tracks private bank records.

"What we're talking about is people who are leaking classified information. It's not news. It's classified information our government is using to fight terrorists," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, of Illinois.

"Loose lips kill American people," he added.

A floor vote is scheduled for Thursday, said a spokesman for House Majority Leader John Boehner.

News reports of the bank-monitoring program, and a separate surveillance effort that monitors phone traffic without a court warrant, have drawn outbursts from President George W. Bush and other Republicans who say that coverage of the programs undermines their effectiveness.

In the Senate, Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, has asked the administration for a formal assessment of any damage to the secret programs caused by news coverage.

In the House, New York Republican Rep. Peter King (news, bio, voting record), who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, has asked the Justice Department to investigate The New York Times.

Arizona Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth (news, bio, voting record) has demanded that New York Times reporters be stripped of their press passes, according to CQToday, a daily publication that covers Capitol Hill.

And the White House Press Liar answers some questions;

"Q Tony, regarding the disclosure last week of the SWIFT monitoring program, I understand the theoretical argument that this impedes the ability to conduct intelligence, but does the White House know for a fact that it's demonstrably changed and lessened the ability --

"MR. SNOW: We took this up yesterday, which is, you're not going to be able to assess definitively within a day. But I think what you're likely to have is negative confirmation in the sense people change their behavior. . . .

"So we really don't have any basis right now for knowing exactly how it's influenced things, but I think it is safe to say that once you provide a piece of intelligence, people on the inside act on it. . . .

"Q I guess what I'm asking is -- and I'm sorry for not being specific enough -- but is there the belief that even though terrorists had clearly been tipped off from the very beginning by the President that there was going to be an aggressive attempt to get as much financial information as possible, that they did not know about the SWIFT Bank?

"MR. SNOW: I am absolutely sure they didn't know about SWIFT. There are -- when you have key government officials around the world saying, we didn't know about it -- there may have been a lot of activity, but it is a program that was not well-known, including among people who have pretty high positions in the banking industry. So, yes, this is not the sort of thing that everybody knew."

At Friday's briefing , Snow actually mocked reporters who suggested that SWIFT was not exactly operating covertly.

"Q But the existence of this organization is no secret. . . .

"MR. SNOW: Are you kidding? Are you talking about Swift? When did you know about Swift before? . . .

"Q Let me ask a follow up. Are you saying that the financial experts in the terrorist ranks would not know about an organization that works for 7,800 different financial institutions in 200 countries?

"MR. SNOW: I'm saying, yes. I think that a lot of people didn't know about the existence of Swift."

As Dan Froomkin points out;

When asked to back up the White House accusation that a recent New York Times story put American lives at risk by disclosing vital secrets to terrorists, the best press secretary Tony Snow could do yesterday was this: "I am absolutely sure they didn't know about SWIFT."

SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is the international banking cooperative that quietly allowed the Treasury Department and the CIA to examine hundreds of thousands of private banking records from around the world.

But the existence of SWIFT itself has not exactly been a secret. Certainly not to anyone who had an Internet connection.

SWIFT has a Web site, at swift.com .

It's a very informative Web site. For instance, this page describes how "SWIFT has a history of cooperating in good faith with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and appropriate international organisations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in their efforts to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities."

(And yes, FATF has its own Web site, too.)

An e-mail from White House Briefing reader Tim O'Keefe tipped me off to just how nutty it is to suggest that SWIFT keeps a low profile. Among other things, he explained, "SWIFT also happens to put on the largest financial services trade show in the world every year," he wrote. "Swift also puts out a lovely magazine ."

Furthermore, as I noted in Monday's column , it has been my personal experience that your garden-variety wire-transfer form mentions SWIFT. Mine warned: "With respect to payment orders executed through SWIFT, the SWIFT operating rules shall govern the payment orders."

This is pretty extraordinary... and I'm really curious about what the fuck is going on? Clearly the NY Times is being attacked for publishing other stories detailing the un-American activities of this corrupt administration. However, we have Republican Congressional leaders simply lying. It's not a simple mis-interpretation of the evidence. It's out and out lying, and now they're trying to banish the Times from the White House? Holy fucking shit on a shingle. That violates the Constitution for god's sake.

It completely boggles the imagination.