• Military
• WMD
• Intelligence

• Security Menu                     

• Systems
• Industry
• Operations
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Space

24 April 2003

"U.S. Goes After 'Blood Money'," by David Aufhauser

(USA Today 04/23/03 op-ed) (440)
(This column by David Aufhauser, who is general counsel of the
Treasury Department, first appeared in USA Today April 23, 2003 and is
in the public domain. No republication restrictions.)
(begin byliner)
U.S. Goes After 'Blood Money'
By David Aufhauser
Some of the best of our kids perished last week on the outskirts of
Baghdad, in part, because the international banking system failed to
capture a river of laundered funds generated through the sale of
smuggled Iraqi oil in violation of a decade of U.N. economic
sanctions. The money was banked abroad and used to purchase goods and
services that armed Iraq with the wherewithal to develop weapons of
mass destruction -- the weapons that we have sought to deny them with
the blood of coalition soldiers.
This is the bitter harvest of a lethal casualness that characterized
much of the international financial system before 9/11, but one that
is history thanks to the initiatives of President Bush, who recognized
early that if you stop the money, you stop the killing.
In September 2001, the president established an interagency task force
focused on three sources of terrorist financing: knowing donors,
financial intermediaries who ignored the terrorist money passing
through their hands, and the diversion of money intended for charity
to violence. Weapons were then fashioned to target each source of
blood money.
The first was the president's executive order freezing the assets of
anyone associated with terrorist financing -- wittingly or
unwittingly. Financial institutions risk their assets if their
enterprises become switching stations for terrorist finance. This
strict standard ensures the highest level of diligence and is now law
in more than 170 countries. Additionally, all United Nations members
have agreed that those who bankroll terror are as guilty as those who
commit it. The noose around the neck of the financiers of terror is
drawing ever tighter.
The results are real: More than $130 million in terrorist assets have
been frozen; greater streams of money have grown dry thanks to the
fear inspired in terror financiers by this effort; and over 263
entities are now designated as underwriters of terror -- frozen out of
the world's financial system.
The results are encouraging, but not complete. Our enemies retain
funds and a conceit that they can mock detection. Money may be the
vehicle for their stealth and mobility, but it is also their flaw; it
leaves a footprint. We and 170 other countries -- sharing
unprecedented resources -- are tracking them with the commitment that
no nation or sovereign is immune from the hunt.
(David Aufhauser is general counsel of the Treasury Department.)
(end byliner)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)