Experts are saying that a plan that will force banks into disclosing hundreds of millions of wire transfers to help fight terrorist financing would not only overwhelm bankers and regulators, but it would also add questionable aid to the war on terrorism.

The proposal, which is being studied by the U.S. Treasury, would give the government unprecedented access to banking records. Each day, more than$6 trillion is wired out by banks across the globe, with the bulk of the money coming in and out of the United States.

While counterterrorism officials are eager to tap into this huge pool of financial information, others disagree, saying that doing so would not significantly benefit the war on terrorism. Bankers and financial experts are questioning whether authorities can actually glean pertinent information from the flood of data while simultaneously try to protect the privacy of banking clients.

"The big provisos are whether that data can be obtained in a cost-effective way that doesn't overburden the private sector, doesn't choke the government, and in a way that it can be ... used without running roughshod over privacy and civil liberties concerns," said Joseph Myers, a former National Security Council official under President Bush.

One official involved in counter terrorism said: "With a billion additional reported transactions a day, you're just increasing the amount of hay in the haystack. You're not getting any closer to finding the needle."

Many government officials and financial experts, including Myers, are saying that wire transfers might contain useful information to track down terrorists and believe the idea of reporting some of those flows merits study, as long as the challenges are clear.

In December, the U.S. Congress passed a sweeping intelligence bill intended to overhaul the U.S. intelligence community. It called upon the Treasury to study whether the proposal was useful and feasible.

A spokesman for the Treasury Department said, "Information collected from certain cross-border wire transfers could be incredibly valuable to our efforts to starve terrorists of funding."

Douglas Greenburg, co-author of the Sept. 11 commission's report on terrorism financing, pointed to Abdul Aziz Ali, a facilitator of the Sept. 11, 2001, plot who wired an estimated $120,000 from Dubai to the hijackers in the United States.

"If the government had a database they could search through by name to find what wire transfers he's made, where and to whom, that could be extraordinarily useful," Greenburg said

Dennis Lormel, who was in charge of the FBI's anti-terrorism financing operations following the 2001 attacks, also said access to wire transfer data was a very valuable resource, but that the government needs to develop better technology to analyze the vast amounts of information.

"You have to balance the burden versus the benefit. Because right now, you're hard-pressed to demonstrate what the benefit would be," he said.

In the financial industry, bankers are wary of more reporting requirements in the wake of Sept. 11. Financial institutions already have to report to the government a host of other transactions, such as "suspicious activities" and some currency moves.

"Someone needs to take a temperature check," said John Byrne, a senior official at the American Bankers Association. "Is all of this information worthwhile? Should resources be allocated to yet another information-gathering requirement without any sort of evidence that this is going to be remotely useful?"

Former Treasury undersecretary for enforcement, Jimmy Gurule, agreed, saying, "In the end, the banks could be reporting this overwhelming volume of data, most of which will probably not have any legitimate legislative

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