Book: First Data gave feds records

[banana republican]

Colorado’s First Data Corp., the world’s largest processor of credit-card transactions and wire transfers, gave the FBI and CIA unfettered access to data on millions of customers shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new book alleges.

First Data’s computer systems served as the “FBI’s own in-house search engine,” and the CIA was allowed to monitor money-wire transactions in real time, according to “The One Percent Doctrine” by Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind.

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First Data has a market capitalization of $34 billion and employs more than 31,000 people worldwide. Western Union is due to spin off as a separate company by year’s end. Both will be based in the Denver area.

Suskind cites access to 19,000 pages of internal government documents in his book, recently published by Simon & Schuster. The book “appears to have been written with wide access to former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet,” and other intelligence and defense sources, according to a New York Times book review Tuesday.

http://www.denverpostbloghouse.com/washington/2006/06/21/book-first-data-gave-feds-records/