US President George W. Bush said it was "disgraceful" that the US 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 on Monday, leaning forward and jabbing his finger during a question-and-answer session with reporters in the Roosevelt Room.
The Times has defended its effort, saying publication has served US 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 terror attacks, had obtained access to an extensive international financial database -- the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift).
The New York Times late last year also disclosed that the National Security Agency had been conducting warrantless surveillance in the US since 2002 of people with suspected al-Qaeda 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," US Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech at a political fundraising luncheon in Grand Island, Nebraska. "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."
Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York 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 on Sunday.
But US Secretary of the Treasury John Snow said in a letter to the paper that over the past two months he and other officials had engaged in a "vigorous dialogue" with reporters and editors at the newspaper, trying to persuade them to refrain from revealing the program.
"In choosing to expose this program, despite repeated pleas from high-level officials on both sides of the aisle, including myself, the Times undermined a highly successful counterterrorism program and alerted terrorists to the methods and sources used to track their money trail," Snow wrote.
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The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
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