The Law of Unintended Consequences, it HAS BECOME Aid and Comfort

Belgian leader orders bank inquiry

Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium has asked the Justice Ministry to investigate whether a banking consortium here broke the law when it aided the U.S. government's anti-terrorism activities by providing it with confidential information about international money transfers. The group, known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or Swift, has come under scrutiny following a report last week by The New York Times and other American newspapers that it allowed officials from the CIA, the FBI and other agencies to examine tens of thousands of confidential financial transactions.

A spokesman for Verhofstadt, Didier Seus, said the prime minister had asked the Justice Ministry to examine whether Swift had done anything illegal by providing access to information from its database to the U.S. authorities without the approval of a Belgian judge.

"We need to ask what are the legal frontiers in this case and whether it is right that a U.S. civil servant could look at a private transaction without the approval of a Belgian judge," he said.

Is there ANYONE at West 43rd St that believes we are IN a war, let alone care to win it

Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday defended the secret program, telling The New York Times that the information exchange, run in conjunction with the CIA, was an "absolutely essential" and legal weapon in the war on terror.

On Monday, President George W. Bush condemned the disclosure of the program by The Times and other U.S. newspapers, saying, "The disclosure of this program is disgraceful."

"For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America," he said.

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