Bush Slams Leak of Terror Financing Info

President Bush, right, speaks to the 2006 Presidential Scholars in the East Room of the White House Monday, June 26, 2006 in Washington. The United States Presidential Scholars Program was established in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson to recognize and honor some of the nations most distinguished graduating high school seniors. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (Charles Dharapak - AP)

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Monday it was "disgraceful" that the news media had disclosed a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorist suspects. The White House accused The New York Times of breaking a long tradition of keeping wartime secrets.

"The fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror," Bush said, leaning forward and jabbing his finger during a brief question-and-answer session with reporters in the Roosevelt Room.

The Times has defended its effort, saying publication has served America's public interest.

The newspaper, along with the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, revealed last week that Treasury officials, beginning shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, had obtained access to an extensive international financial data base _ the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift.

The New York Times late last year also disclosed that the National Security Agency had been conducting warrantless surveillance in the United States since 2002 of people with suspected al-Qaida ties.

"Some in the press, in particular The New York Times, have made the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programs," Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech at a political fundraising luncheon in Grand Island, Neb.

"The New York Times has now twice _ two separate occasions _ disclosed programs; both times they had been asked not to publish those stories by senior administration officials," Cheney said. "They went ahead anyway. The leaks to The New York Times and the publishing of those leaks is very damaging."

Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, defended the decision to publish the story.

"Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight," Keller said in a note on the paper's Web site Sunday.

But Treasury Secretary John Snow said in a letter to the York Times that over the past two months he and other administration officials had engaged in a "vigorous dialogue" with reporters and editors at the newspaper trying to persuade them to refrain from revealing the program.

Snow said the effort to persuade the paper not to publish also included former Republican Gov. Thomas Kean of New Jersey and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., the co-chairmen of the Sept. 11 commission, as well as a number of members of Congress and top government officials.

In an interview Monday on CNN's "The Situation Room," Keller revealed that Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who has been a vocal critic of the Iraq war, also urged the Times not to print the information.