Behold this editorial from the Solons of the New York Times, just three days after 9/11:
Finances of Terror
September 24, 2001
Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists.
The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America’s law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies.
Osama bin Laden originally rose to prominence because his inherited fortune allowed him to bankroll Arab volunteers fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Since then, he has acquired funds from a panoply of Islamic charities and illegal and legal businesses, including export-import and commodity trading firms, and is estimated to have as much as $300 million at his disposal.
Some of these businesses move funds through major commercial banks that lack the procedures to monitor such transactions properly. Locally, terrorists can utilize tiny unregulated storefront financial centers, including what are known as hawala banks, which people in South Asian immigrant communities in the United States and other Western countries use to transfer money abroad. Though some smaller financial transactions are likely to slip through undetected even after new rules are in place, much of the financing needed for major attacks could dry up.
Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be accompanied by strong sanctions against doing business with financial institutions based in these nations. The Bush administration initially opposed such measures. But after the events of Sept. 11, it appears ready to embrace them.
The Treasury Department also needs new domestic legal weapons to crack down on money laundering by terrorists. The new laws should mandate the identification of all account owners, prohibit transactions with "shell banks" that have no physical premises and require closer monitoring of accounts coming from countries with lax banking laws. Prosecutors, meanwhile, should be able to freeze more easily the assets of suspected terrorists. The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold hearings this week on a bill providing for such measures. It should be approved and signed into law by President Bush.
New regulations requiring money service businesses like the hawala banks to register and imposing criminal penalties on those that do not are scheduled to come into force late next year. The effective date should be moved up to this fall, and rules should be strictly enforced the moment they take effect. If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on all fronts, including the financial one.
2 comments:
Six: Let's not forget how indignant lefty commentators (including Nadir) were -- and remain -- about the need for secrecy when it came to protecting the falsely bloated credentials of Joe ("I got this job due entirely to my expertise, experiance, and credentials") Wilson. Oh, secrets. How sacred they are! The secret (suposedly) agent wife write a letter to get Wilson a non-paying job, which he uses to publicly lambaste the president. Just how concerned were they about maintaining her "secret" status?
"Joe, you know we can't let anybody know that I work for the CIA. So, please don't use that job I helped you get with an official letter signed by me in your public debate with the administration. Just don't mention that job, and please don't make it seem like you got that job entirely due to your superior expertise and nonpareal experience, because that would be untrue, and open yourself for a logical retort involving that letter I wrote for you."
"Don't worry, honey. If they use that letter to expose my lie, we'll accuse them of exposing your secret job, and then we'll pose together for a Vanity Fair article."
First of all "an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists" is very different from massive databases that track nearly all international financial transactions of a certain size. And we know that the Bush administration did change many of the laws. We also know that it did freeze the assets of a lot of people who were not terrorists who contributed money to charities that were dubiously linked to so-called "terrorist organizations".
You should be calling the Times hypocritical because it did not follow up on the put options that cause many people to get rich off of the 911 attacks though prior knowledge would have been a prerequisite.
As for Paul's comments (which are completely unrelated by the way) about AMBASSADOR Joe Wilson, who did have the credentials, whether it was his wife who recommended him or not, show the administration's hypocrisy. They are willing to break the law by leaking classified information, but then cry "national security" when they are caught spying on US citizens.
People knew that Valerie was Joe Wilson's wife. What most folks didn't know was that she was a CIA agent. So the fact that they appeared in Vanity Fair together wouldn't have been a breach of classified info. It would have been a former ambassador and his wife taking a picture together.
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