

Swift, the banking consortium, responded readily to unusually broad subpoenas for information from the Treasury Department starting months after 9/11. Swift's relationship with the government was revealed by the media last summer, and two U.S. banking customers are suing Swift on invasion-of-privacy grounds. The suit was expected to be thrown out due to America's lax privacy laws, but a judge refused to drop them. Enter the ultimate protector of citizen's rights--the Bush Administration. Invoking the "state secrets" privilege (a tool rarely used by other administrations but becoming the go-to argument for Bush, who has used it dozens of times), the administration claims that the lawsuit will disrupt a vital national security program and will reveal "highly classified information." Bush says it's a vital national security tool (other vital national security tools: repressing whistleblowers, not reading the news, firing independent prosecutors, and making rosy predictions about the future of a country you can't visit without a flak jacket), and the Justice Department is taking an active interest in shutting down the lawsuit.