Europe Wary of U.S. Bank Monitors
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
When Europeans halted a program used to monitor international banking transactions, the United States had to scramble to regain support for it.
WASHINGTON — When the European Parliament ordered a halt in February to an American government program to monitor international banking transactions for terrorist activity, the Obama administration was blindsided by the rebuke. Day 8 Articles in this series will examine American diplomatic cables as a window on relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and terrorism. “Paranoia runs deep especially about US intelligence agencies,” a secret cable from the American Embassy in Berlin said. “We were astonished to learn how quickly rumors about alleged U.S. economic espionage” had taken root among German politicians who opposed the program, it said. The memo was among dozens of State Department cables that revealed the deep distrust of some traditional European allies toward what they considered American intrusion into their citizens’ affairs without stringent oversight. The program, created in secrecy by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has allowed American counterterrorism officials to examine banking transactions routed through a vast database run by a Brussels consortium known as Swift. When the program was disclosed in 2006 by The New York Times, just months after the newspaper reported the existence of the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, it set off protests in Europe and forced the United States to accept new restrictions. But by 2010, new leaders at the European Parliament had what one State Department memo called “a fixation” on privacy issues. On Feb. 10, the Europeans voted 378 to 196 to halt the Swift program. Obama administration officials valued it because it allowed them to trace the transactions of suspected terrorist financiers while including “robust” privacy protections, according to the cables. But many Europeans were skeptical. Some allies not only were concerned that program might be used to steal secrets from European companies, but also considered it of “dubious” value. In Austria, for example, “the Nazi legacy and familiarity with communist regimes” have fueled “a widespread presumption against government data collection and in favor of stringent privacy protections,” officials at the embassy wrote. Many Germans, meanwhile, remember “how the Stasi,” the former East German secret police, “abused information to destroy people’s lives,” according to a dispatch from the American Embassy in Berlin. Opposition in Germany was particularly damaging because the country was among a handful of allies that, according to a 2006 cable, organized a “coalition of the constructive” to ensure that the Swift operation was not “ruined by privacy experts.” After German representatives voted against the program, a German official reported to American diplomats that Chancellor Angela Merkel — a strong supporter of the program — was “angrier than he had ever seen her.” After mobilizing top officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, TreasurySecretary Timothy F. Geithner and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the administration was able to reverse course. The European Parliament voted 484 to 109 in July to restart the program after the United States made modest concessions that promised greater European oversight.
Europe Wary of U.S. Bank Monitors
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: December 5, 2010
State's Secrets
Related Documents
Related
Cash Flow to Terrorists Evades U.S. Efforts (December 6, 2010)
Link by Link: WikiLeaks and the Perils of Oversharing (December 6, 2010)
