Administration resents "swift" kick: after the press reported that a secret operation following the money trails to terrorists was including financial dealings of innocent citizens, the neo-conservatives lashed back.

On June 23, Vice President Dick Cheney harshly criticized the nation's news media for disclosing information about the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift. According to the disclosure appearing in the New York Times for June 24: "The program [Swift], run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, has allowed counterterrorism authorities to gain access to millions of records of transactions routed through Swift from individual banks and financial institutions around the world. The data is obtained using broad administrative subpoenas, not court warrants."

Responding in his typically confrontational style, Cheney told a group at a Chicago Republican fund-raising luncheon: "What I find most disturbing about these stories is the fact that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people. That offends me."

Constitutionalist Americans should also be offended. They should be offended that members of a presidential administration, each one of whom has sworn, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so cavalierly disregard the protections stated in our Bill of Rights. Not only has this administration violated the Fourth Amendment's protection of the people's right to be secure in their persons, houses, paper, and effects, and against unreasonable searches, but our vice president compounds the violation with his obvious contempt for the First Amendment's protection of freedom of the press.

Even more outrageously, on June 25, according to the AP, Representative Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he will write Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, urging him to "begin an investigation and prosecution of the New York Times--the reporters, the editors and the publisher." Compounding his ignorance of--or disregard for--the Constitution, King added: "We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous."

Since only Congress has the power to declare war, one would think that King, as a member of Congress, would remember that the body has not done so.

Finally, on June 26, President Bush also added his voice to the mounting administration criticism of the Times and other papers that ran the story: "The American people expect this government to protect our constitutional liberties and at the same time make sure we understand what the terrorists are trying to do," Bush said. "You try to follow their money. And that's exactly what we're doing and the fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror."

In a letter to the newspaper's readers published on June 27, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, explained the paper's decision to run the story. Among the reasons Keller cited were:

* "The people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish."

* "Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress"

Republicans who defend the trampling of the Bill of Rights in the name of "national security" or "the war on terror" would do well to remember how the infamous alien and sedition acts brought down the Federalist Party after the administration of John Adams.