Larry,
first: I don´t care if the information was “classified whatever”. There is a lot of information in the public known that is “classified” or has been reclassified as secret or higher.
I care about you using an not justified argument against a journalist doing his job.
I have not read or have access to Suskind’s book so I don´t know about what he reveals on hawalas. Anyway you did not use that part in your original post to blame Suskind for blowing secrets. You did use the Western Union story.
According to this story Suskind also writes that the folks who were targeted with US help by Israel using the Western Union data found out about the scheme in autumn 2004. They stopped using Western Union. If they found out (the hard way), they certainly will have provided that knowledge to other folks too.
So the scheme of tracking Western Union money tranfers to kill terrorists was known by those terrorists in autumn 2004. The scheme had been used so often that it one day occured to the terrorists what their problem was. US’s “methods and sources”, access to WU record, to track terrorists was blown into the open because the US allowed the Israeli to use this data so often, that the pattern was detactable by the enemy. Who did blow the secret here?
The Wall Street frontpage story appeared October 2004 (I suspect after the programs usefullness was blown). It is detailed and obvious enough for anybody to recognize through that story that all WU money transactions are accessible to the various US government agencies and whoever may be connected to them.
No serious folks interested in hiding their money transfers would have used Western Union after that.
Suskind did not blow any secret here, just like the NYT, WSJ and LA Times did not blow any secret with the Swift case.
I don´t know Suskind, but I find it dangerous to accuse journalist of blowing
secrets, i.e. “unpatriotic” behaviour, with such dud arguments.

Posted by: b | Jul 13 2006 18:55 utc | 3

pyrrho
was it a good thing the rosenberg’s passed nuclear secrets to the soviet union?

Posted by: slothrop | Jul 13 2006 21:09 utc | 5

@ Slothrop:
I’m missing your question’s connection to this thread or my previous statement. Freed from that context, however, and I’d be forced to ask for clarification. Good for whom? The U.S.? No (although it was the fuel that allowed the cold war profiteering to take place ; so for “defense” industries, a clear “yes”). The Soviet Union? Yes. The world? Possibly — a country with imperialist tendencies with unchecked power is not a desirable condition.

Posted by: Pyrrho | Jul 13 2006 23:12 utc | 7

The notion that any serious criminal or political enterprise would use Western Union as a financial conduit is ludicrous really. As I have written elsewhere in MoA the problems that followers of Islam have in utilising Western Union were well known before the end of 2004.
Similarly hawala penetration for any meaningful financial transactions might work once but with a system which relies so heavily on personal relationships, penetration would last about as long as the first time the information was used.
The most effective and secure long term funding conduits utilise goods transfers.
Most of these transfers are perfectly legitmate. It is only Johnson and his colleagues that would consider narcotics or sex traffic a viable means of funding an operation.
The xtian phalange, close colleagues of the oppressors of the ME were the largest suppliers of Lebanese hashish in Europe throughout the 70’s. It was the anti-soviet forces in Afghanistan who first encouraged the large scale brown smack exports to Europe. Most amerikans are aware of the CIA’s role in introducing crack to the world, especially to their own people.
In fact that one example there typifies the disadvantage that western capitalism operates under when confronting it’s opponents.
The profit at any cost ethos means that resources become diverted from their primary tasks. In addition the type of work which has always been believed to enhance skills and training is more likely to corrupt.
The cost to reputations is expensive as well. There is barely a nation in the world which doesn’t have a sordid tale of crime, particularly narcotics crime, and US intelligence involvement. Comrade Giap may remember the Frank Nugan saga which blew US credibility in Oz for many years.
It is only a matter of time before the involvement of western intelligence employees/ sources in the trafficking of sex industry workers from eastern europe to ‘the west’ will be fully exposed (pun intended).
When that occurs the same people will attempt to obsfuscate and therefore retain the moral highground by accusing the journalists and their sources of ‘breaching national security’.
The attempt will fail then just as it has here. Abstract notions such as ‘national security pale into insignificance when compared to protecting one’s children from the vermin who used to be called ‘white slavers’. That they aren’t anymore is a reflection of the fact that most humans no longer make that distinction. That is the rape and death of Abeer Hamaz el-Janabi upsets and revolts them just as much as any coed’s rape and murder during spring break.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 14 2006 1:59 utc | 9

@Pyrrho et al…
It is merely my opinion of course, but I am of the belief that “when the law breaks the law, there is no law.” All “law”, becomes null and void at that point.
Clearly, that is not what “the law” Believes.
Nor does my puny opinion account for anything nor, the rest of the citizens apparently.
The function of Law? The recitation of the unintelligible by the unscrupulous to empty the purses of the unwary.
If lawyers had been present on Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments would have twelve hundred amendments, all summing to the conclusion: The rich may ignore the rules, the poor will be hanged if they violate the smallest subordinate clause.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 14 2006 8:28 utc | 11