Daniel Freedman, at the New York Sun's blog reports:

"Belgium's government said on Monday it was investigating the legality of counter—terrorism searches by U.S. officials of thousands of private records held by Brussels—based international bank cooperative SWIFT," Reuters reports. So not only has the publishing of details of this program allowed Al Qaeda to know America's counter—terrorism plans, it also is encouraging those Europeans who never go far without a white flag in hand to hoist it.

Now tell me that the Belgian Government did not already know about the SWIFT investigation before media disclosures. Clearly, they were forced into taking this step by the media publicity and consequent pressure from anti—American forces within their nation.

I believe the desire to force foreign governments to act against America was one of the motivations behind the disclosers. After all, it worked with detainees and renditions programs in Europe. The governments and their secret intelligence groups had to have known about these practices and either cooperated or stayed quiet. When the New York Times publicized the operations, the governments feigned outrage and protest.

All predictable, and almost certainly known to those who leaked the information as well as those who published it. A valuable tool in the war is rendered less effective as the predictable and evidently desired result.

Ed Lasky   6 27 06

Update: Today, the BBC reported that Europe's human rights body has passed a resoutlion accusing governments of colluding with the CIA on secret flights transferring terror suspects. The New York Times has now arrogated to itself the means and methods by which it can influence our domestic policies, our international relations and now, breathtakingly, the domestic political fortunes of European governments.