Bush lambastes news media

WASHINGTON – President Bush said Monday it was “disgraceful” that the news media had disclosed a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorist suspects. The White House accused the New York Times of breaking a long tradition of keeping wartime secrets.

“The fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror,” Bush said, leaning forward and jabbing his finger during a brief question-and-answer session in the Roosevelt Room.

The Times has defended its effort, saying publication has served the public interest.

The newspaper, along with the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, revealed last week that Treasury offi-cials, beginning shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, had obtained access to an extensive international financial database – the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift.

The New York Times also disclosed late last year that the National Security Agency had been conducting warrantless surveillance in the United States since 2002 of people with suspected al-Qaida ties.

“Some in the press, in particular the New York Times, have made the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programs,” Vice President Dick Cheney said at a fund-raising luncheon in Grand Island, Neb.

“The New York Times has now twice – on two separate occasions – disclosed programs; both times, they had been asked not to publish those stories by senior administration officials,” Cheney said. “They went ahead anyway. The leaks to the New York Times and the publishing of those leaks is very damaging.”

Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, defended the decision to publish the story.

Some Democrats in Congress have said the financial-tracking program raises concerns about intrusions on privacy and is another step in an aggressive Bush administration expansion of executive-branch powers.

On the other side of the argument, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has urged the Justice Department to “begin an investigation and prosecution of the New York Times – the reporters, the editors and the publisher.”

Keller told CNN he doesn’t expect to be prosecuted.