Now that the government officials, talk show hosts, call-in participants, bloggers –

and, yes, even a few editorial writers – who called The New York Times treasonous for reporting details of a secret banking surveillance program have had a chance to cool off, they should reconsider the implications of their charges.

The article (and similar pieces elsewhere) reported, “Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counter-terrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.”

The dispatches told specifically about U.S. access to data accumulated by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which routes trillions of dollars daily among banks and other institutions.

As a national debate mounted, the editors of The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times told of their “excruciating” choice between publishing the information or giving in to government demands to withhold it. They concluded jointly that “our job, especially in times like these, is to bring our readers information that will enable them to judge how well our leaders are fighting in their behalf, and at what price.”

The surveillance of international banking was already well known. Days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush promised to “follow the money as a trail to the terrorists.” U.S. officials had boasted that knowledge of banking transactions had helped uncover terrorist operations. And a United Nations report in 2002 mentioned SWIFT and similar organizations, and the new U.S. monitoring techniques. Terrorist leaders surely knew they were being watched and used tricks to avoid detection.

Some critics raised fears that the publicity would cause shy bankers to stop participating. Similar fears were voiced that newspapers’ disclosure of the warrantless wiretapping program would cause its collapse, but it is going right on and so is the banking surveillance thus far.

Other critics have asked about the disclosure of a secret program that is legal and has produced some good results. But the constitutionality of a catch-all subpoena has not been tested. And it turns out that the tracking program has been the subject of much internal debate. U.S. officials saw potential for abuse and used an auditing firm to check whether each search was justified. At least one improper intercept was caught. SWIFT officials had begun to question whether they should continue the arrangement or pull out because of liability considerations.

The bottom line is that the American public has a right to know and question what its leaders are doing and the press has been doing what the Founders wanted when they

drafted the First Amendment.