In the months following 9/11, if you'd have taken a poll of the general public most would have predicted that the United States would not go another five years without a major terrorist attack.

For all its mistakes in just about every other aspect of governance -- from out-of-control spending on the domestic front to a failure to deal decisively with the Iraqi insurgency -- homeland security has been the one thing that President Bush has undeniably gotten right.

This hasn't been an easy thing to do. With tinfoil-hatted civil libertarians describing commonsense security moves as akin to 1984's Big Brother and The New York Times demonstrating and institutional arrogance when it comes to classified programs to track and kill terrorists, it's a little bit amazing that terrorists have failed to find their way through our self-imposed blind spots.

Today, the likelihood of a terrorist attack is higher than it was this time last week, thanks to the New York Times.

Thursday, in a little reported move here in the United States, the European Central Bank shut down the SWIFT program which allowed the U.S. to monitor terrorist finances. (via Gabriel Schoenfeld) The existence of the program was declassified by the New York Times.

For the record, here is the appropriate excerpt from Times editor Bill Keller's defense of his decision to declassify the program.

We weighed most heavily the Administration's concern that describing this program would endanger it. The central argument we heard from officials at senior levels was that international bankers would stop cooperating, would resist, if this program saw the light of day. We don't know what the banking consortium will do, but we found this argument puzzling. First, the bankers provide this information under the authority of a subpoena, which imposes a legal obligation. Second, if, as the Administration says, the program is legal, highly effective, and well protected against invasion of privacy, the bankers should have little trouble defending it. The Bush Administration and America itself may be unpopular in Europe these days, but policing the byways of international terror seems to have pretty strong support everywhere. And while it is too early to tell, the initial signs are that our article is not generating a banker backlash against the program.

That letter was published June 25, 2006. It took the European Central Bankers just over seven months to kill the program.

I'm skeptical that the United States' luck will continue to hold. While a large portion of the past five terrorism-free years here at home has been due to hard work, there's no doubt that there's some luck involved as well. When the next attack occurs, will the subsequent investigation reveal that we might have prevented the deaths of hundreds or thousands of our fellow citizens if only we'd have had access to certain banking records? Banking records denied to us because of Bill Keller's arrogance?

What will the Bill Keller death toll be?