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The Commission staff organized its work around specialized studies, or monographs,
prepared by each of the teams. We used some of the evolving draft material for these
studies in preparing the seventeen staff statements delivered in conjunction with the
Commission’s 2004 public hearings. We used more of this material in preparing draft
sections of the Commission’s final report.
entire counterterrorism effort and other agencies can still contribute expertise in
particular cases through the JTTF. Of course, giving the FBI the lead requires continuing
vigilance to ensure that the FBI properly shares information and willingly coordinates
with its JTTF partners.
U.S. foreign intelligence collection and analysis
The day after the September 11 attacks, the CIA began beefing up its effort on terrorist
financing and by mid-month had created a new section dedicated to terrorist financing,
whose purpose was to create long-term intelligence capacity in this area. It is staffed with
personnel from the FBI, NSA, and DoD and it absorbed the CIA intelligence analysts
working on terrorist-financing issues in the Office of Transnational Issues, thereby
correcting the perceived structural defect previously identified. This new section’s
mission is to use information about terrorist money to understand their networks, search
them out, and disrupt their operations. The CIA has devoted considerable resources to
the task, and the effort is led by individuals with extensive expertise in the clandestine
movement of money. It appears that the CIA is devoted to developing an institutional and
long-term expertise in this area.
37 See chapter 6 (discussing reaction to non-terrorism conviction of the executive director of the
Benevolence International Foundation).
38 This designation occurred in a May 2003 memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the secretary
of the DHS and the attorney general. The MOU became necessary to resolve turf battles between the FBI
and ICE, largely resulting from Operation Green Quest, which began as a U.S. Customs–led initiative to
investigate terrorist financing after 9/11 and followed Customs when it moved from Treasury to become
part of DHS/ICE. For a report on the success of the MOU, see GAO Report 04-464R, Investigations of
Terrorist Financing, Money Laundering and Other Financial Crimes (Feb. 20, 2004).
Terrorist Financing Staff Monograph
45
The FBI and CIA report that the information sharing between the FBI and the CIA is
excellent, and that FBI personnel assigned to the CTC’s new unit have duties
indistinguishable from those of the CIA personnel and have complete access to all CIA
data systems, subject to a need-to-know requirement. The CIA has access to FBI data as
well. The CIA distributes its information to the FBI through criminal information
referrals, liaisons at the field-level JTTFs, and interactions between their respective
headquarters units.
Economic and diplomatic efforts
On September 23, 2001, President Bush signed Executive Order 13224 against al Qaeda,
Bin Ladin, and associated terrorist groups, freezing any assets belonging to the listed
terrorists or their supporters and blocking any economic transactions with them.
Thereafter, the U.S. government embarked on a public course of issuing additional lists
of designated terrorist supporters—a pattern that continued into the winter of 2002. The
goal was to try to deprive the terrorists of money, but this approach also served to assure
the general public that action was being taken in the area of terrorist financing and to
keep the intelligence and world communities focused on identifying terrorist financiers.
The United States, understanding that an executive order covered only U.S. persons and
transactions, pushed at the United Nations for a near-universal system of laws to freeze
terrorist assets worldwide. The United Nations Security Council, galvanized into action
as a result of the attacks, passed Resolution 1373 on September 28, mandating member
nations formulate laws to designate individuals and entities as supporters of terrorism and
freeze their assets. In the weeks after 9/11, in an intense effort around the world, more
than 100 nations drafted and passed laws addressing terrorist financing or money
laundering. Worldwide, more than $136 million, including $36 million in the United
States, has been frozen. Currently, approximately 170 nations have the legal ability to
freeze terrorist assets. Moreover, the United States engaged in a broad diplomatic and
educational offensive to make other countries aware of some of the basic methods of
raising and moving money in support of terrorist activities.
There are significant multilateral norms now in place to set standards for ensuring that
terrorists do not use the formal financial system. Chief among these are the efforts of the
Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which, prior to 9/11, had been the multilateral body
responsible for setting international standards for the detection and prosecution of money
laundering. In the months after 9/11, the FATF expanded its remit to include setting
standards for terrorist financing, and made eight recommendations to prevent terrorist
financing. These recommendations included, for example, creating the ability to freeze
terrorist assets, licensing informal money remitters, and regulating nongovernmental
organizations.39 While setting standards is a necessary exercise, far more will depend on
each country’s diligently implementing and enforcing these standards.
39 FATF, “Special Recommendations on Terrorist Financing,” Oct. 31, 2001 (online at
http://www1.oecd.org/fatf/pdf/
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
46
As part of the USA PATRIOT Act, Congress enacted financial institution regulations that
had been largely rejected before the attacks; many were only tangentially related to
terrorist financing. In part, they give the Secretary of the Treasury the power to name
countries, institutions, or transactions found to be of primary money-laundering or
terrorist-financing concern and implement new requirements that banks more closely
scrutinize their relationships with foreign persons and banks. A broader range of
industries—insurance companies, money services businesses, broker-dealers, and credit
card companies, for example—were potentially subject to a host of new requirements,
including reporting suspicious financial activity on the part of their customers to the
Treasury Department. Federal Reserve examiners now inspect banks for compliance with
antiterrorism directives. As noted in chapter 4, private financial institutions provided, and
continue to provide, significant assistance in investigating terrorist groups.
Although Saudi Arabia’s cooperation on al Qaeda financing was limited and inconsistent
in the first year and a half after the September 11 attacks, the situation changed
dramatically after the May 12, 2003, al Qaeda attacks in Riyadh. Saudi leadership, now
finally understanding the al Qaeda threat, is by all accounts providing significantly higher
levels of cooperation. Much of the Saudi government’s efforts understandably focus on
killing or capturing terrorist operatives, but the Saudis also have moved against fundraisers
and facilitators, shared intelligence, and enacted financial controls, such as
requiring that all charitable donations destined for overseas be administered by the
government and banning cash donations in mosques. They have taken significant action
against al Haramain, for example, a charity suspected of funneling money to terrorist
organizations, and seem prepared to go further. In addition, the Saudis are participating in
a joint task force on terrorist financing with the United States, in which U.S. law
enforcement agents are working side by side with Saudi security personnel to combat
terrorist financing. To further this effort, the Saudis have accepted substantial—and much
needed—U.S. training in conducting financial investigations and identifying suspicious
financial transactions, help that the Saudis had long refused. Although Saudi Arabia
likely remains the best and easiest place for al Qaeda to raise money, the Saudi
crackdown appears to have had a real impact in reducing its funding. In addition, the
Saudi population may feel that as a result of the attacks against their own people, they
should be more cautious in their giving.40
The Saudis have demonstrated they can and will act against Saudi financiers of al Qaeda
when the United States provides them with actionable intelligence and consistently
applies high-level pressure on them to take action. At least until recently, as noted in
chapter 7, the Saudis have generally moved slowly, and only after considerable U.S.
prodding. Because Saudi Arabia remains the primary source for al Qaeda fund-raising, it
is in a better position than the United States to identify the fund-raisers and collect
intelligence about their activities. Apparently the Saudis may now be willing to take the
Terrorist Financing,” Apr. 24, 2002 (online
at http://www1.oecd.org/fatf/pdf/
Caruana and Claes Norgren, “Wipe Out the Treasuries of Terror,” Financial Times, Apr. 7, 2004, p.17.
40 See chapter 7, the case study on al Haramain, and chapter 2, on al Qaeda financing, for more on these
issues.
Terrorist Financing Staff Monograph
47
initiative. Certainly, the joint task force, their willingness to accept U.S. training in
conducting financial investigations, and their recent successful actions against key
facilitators are significant steps in the right direction. Time will tell whether the Saudis
follow through on these efforts and accept their responsibility to lead the fight against al
Qaeda fund-raising by Saudi sources.
Intergovernmental coordination and policy development
Terrorist financing is now, and has been since the attacks, the subject of extensive
interagency coordination mechanisms involving the intelligence community, law
enforcement, Treasury, and State. An NSC-level Policy Coordinating Committee (PCC)
on Terrorist Financing was established in March 2002 to replace the ad hoc structure that
had arisen in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. The PCC was chaired by the
General Counsel of the Department of the Treasury until he left government service in
November 2003. The process, often driven by force of personality rather than by any
structural mechanism, appears to have worked well in resolving differing points of view
on terrorist-financing policy and operational differences. The key participants in the
interagency process, especially the leaders of the CIA and FBI terrorist-financing units,
have lavishly praised each other’s commitment to cooperation and information sharing.
The PCC often was not fully integrated into the United States’ broader counterterrorism
policy and Saudi relations, however.
An Assessment
After 9/11, the government, in an attempt to “starve the terrorists of money,” engaged in
a series of aggressive and high-profile actions to designate terrorist financiers and freeze
their money, both in the United States and through the United Nations. Donors and al
Qaeda sympathizers, wary of being publicly named and having their assets frozen, may
have become more reluctant to provide overt support. The overall or long-term effect of
these actions, however, is not clear.
Moreover, these initial designations were undertaken with limited evidence, and some
were overbroad, resulting in legal challenges. Faced with having to defend actions in
courts that required a higher standard of evidence than was provided by the intelligence
that supported the designations in the first place, the United States and the United Nations
were forced to “unfreeze” assets (see, generally, chapter 5).
The difficulty, not completely understood by the policymakers when they instituted the
freezes, was that the intelligence community “linked” certain entities or individuals to
known terrorist groups primarily through common acquaintances, group affiliations,
historic relationships, phone communications, and other such contacts. It proved far more
difficult to actually trace the money from a suspected entity or individual to the terrorist
group, or to otherwise show complicity, as required in defending the designations in
court. Intelligence agents, long accustomed to the Cold War reality of collecting
intelligence for extended periods of time before public action was necessary, were now
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
48
faced with a new demand for intelligence that needed not only to be immediately and
publicly acted on but to be defended in court as well. Policymakers, many newly thrust
into the world of intelligence, were sometimes surprised to find that intelligence
assessments were often supported by information far less reliable than they had
presumed.41
These early missteps have made other countries unwilling to freeze assets or otherwise
act merely on the basis of a U.S. action. Multilateral freezing mechanisms now require
waiting periods before money can be frozen, a change that has eliminated the element of
surprise and virtually ensured that little money is actually frozen. The worldwide asset
freezes have not been adequately enforced and have been easily circumvented, often
within weeks, by simple methods.
Treasury officials were forthright in recognizing the difficulty in stopping enough of the
money flow to stop terrorist attacks, but argue that such freezes and the prohibition of
transactions have other benefits. Designations prevent open fund-raising and assist, for
example, in preventing al Qaeda from raising the amounts of money necessary to create
the kind of refuge it had in Afghanistan, or from expending the sums necessary to buy or
develop a weapon of mass destruction. Moreover, freezing groups or individuals out of
the world’s financial systems forces them into slow, expensive, and less reliable methods
of storing and moving money. Additionally, there is significant diplomatic utility in
having the world governments join together to condemn named individuals and groups as
terrorists.
A far more nuanced and integrated strategy has since evolved. As the government’s
understanding of the methods al Qaeda uses to raise, move, and spend money has
sharpened, the United States has recognized that measures to counter terrorist financing
are among the many tools for understanding terrorist networks, to be used in conjunction
with and in close proximity to other types of intelligence. Moreover, these measures,
again when closely coordinated with the overall counterterrorism effort, can be used to
disrupt terrorist operations and support systems. Intelligence and law enforcement
agencies have targeted the relatively small number of financial facilitators—individuals
al Qaeda relied on for their ability to raise and deliver money—at the core of al Qaeda’s
revenue stream (see chapter 2), and appear to have reaped benefits as a result. The death
and capture of several important facilitators have decreased the amount of money al
Qaeda has raised and have increased the costs and difficulty of raising and moving that
money. These captures have additionally provided a windfall of intelligence, which can
then be used to continue the disruption.
Some entirely corrupt charities are now completely out of business, with many of their
principals killed or captured. Charities that have been identified as likely avenues for
41 Compare Tenet’s speech at Georgetown University, Feb. 5, 2004 (“In the intelligence business, you are
almost never completely wrong or completely right”) with Mueller’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission,
April 14, 2004, p. 126 (“If there’s one concern I have about intelligence, it is that often there are statements
made about an uncorroborated source with indirect access and then there is a stating of a particular fact.…I
think there has to be a balance between the information we get and the foundation of that information”).
Terrorist Financing Staff Monograph
49
terrorist financing have seen their donations diminish and their activities come under
more scrutiny. Controlling overseas branches of Gulf-area charities remains a complex
task, however. The sheer volume of charitable dollars originating in the Gulf region, the
nature of charitable giving in the Islamic world, and the austere and uncompromising
version of Islam practiced by many Saudis pose a daunting challenge.42 U.S. efforts have
shown that detecting and disrupting the terrorist money among the billions is extremely
difficult, even with the best capabilities and intentions.43
The May 2003 terrorist attacks in Riyadh, moreover, apparently have contributed to a
reduction of funds available to al Qaeda. Increased public scrutiny and public
designations of high-profile Gulf-area donors have made other donors cautious. The fight
has come to the Saudi homeland, and Saudis and their government (as well as other Gulfarea
governments) have come to realize the problems that unfettered financial flows may
bring.44 Although Saudi Arabia has by most accounts become more fully engaged in
stopping al Qaeda financial flows, the Kingdom requires considerable technical
assistance and must take the initiative in combating terrorist financing, as opposed to
merely responding to U.S. requests. The Saudi regime must balance its terrorist-financing
efforts, the legitimate charitable relief Saudi charities provide, and the need to maintain
its own stability. A critical part of the U.S. strategy to combat terrorist financing must be
to monitor, encourage, and nurture Saudi cooperation while simultaneously recognizing
that terrorist financing is only one of a number of crucial issues that the U.S. and Saudi
governments must address together. Managing this nuanced and complicated relationship
will play a critical part in determining the success of U.S. counterterrorism policy for the
foreseeable future.
While overall al Qaeda funding has apparently been reduced, it is nevertheless relatively
easy to fund terrorist operations. When investigators do not know where to look, the tiny
amounts of money needed for deadly operations are impossible to find and stop in a
multi-trillion-dollar global economy. The U.S. intelligence community has attacked the
problem with imagination and vigor, and cooperation among the world’s security services
seems to be at unprecedented levels, but terrorist financing remains a notoriously hard
target. The small sums involved, al Qaeda’s use of decentralized and informal methods of
moving funds (including trusted hawaladars and relatively anonymous couriers), and the
existence of a cadre of dedicated financial facilitators who raise money from potentially
unwitting sources all contribute to a significant and ongoing challenge for the intelligence
community for the foreseeable future.
42 See chapters 2 and 7 for a discussion of the role of charities in Saudi Arabia.
43 The United States perhaps leads the world in its ability to conduct financial investigations, yet often finds
itself stymied in doing the financial tracing and analysis necessary to detect terrorist money flows. See
generally chapter 6.
44 As noted in chapter 2, despite numerous allegations about Saudi government complicity in al Qaeda, the
Commission has found no persuasive evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior
officials within the Saudi government knowingly support or supported al Qaeda. A lack of awareness of the
problem and failure to conduct oversight over institutions, however, probably created an environment in
which such activity has flourished.
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
50
The U.S. financial community and some international financial institutions have
generally provided law enforcement and intelligence agencies with extraordinary
cooperation, particularly in furnishing information to support quickly developing
investigations. Obvious vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system, such as the largely
unchecked use of correspondent or private banking accounts by foreign banks or other
high-risk customers, have been corrected. However, no valid financial profile of terrorist
financing exists (despite efforts to create one), and the ability of financial institutions to
detect terrorist financing without receiving more information from the government
remains limited.
Law enforcement investigations often fail to prove the destination and purpose of money
transferred across continents in complex transactions, and transactions recorded in a bank
statement or a wire transfer say nothing about their source or purpose. Funds are sent
overseas through a charity; a fraction of these funds may then be diverted for terrorist or
jihadist purposes, often through additional charities and cash transactions. The
investigations of the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) and the Global Relief
Foundation (GRF) vividly illustrate that even substantial intelligence of ties to terrorist
groups can be insufficient to prove a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt (see
chapter 6). When terrorism charges are not possible, the government has brought
nonterrorist criminal charges against those suspected of terrorist financing. Such an
approach, while perhaps necessary, leaves the government susceptible to accusations of
ethnic or religious profiling that can undermine support in the very communities where
the government needs it most. Moreover, ethnic or geographic generalizations,
unsupported even by intelligence, can both divert scarce resources away from the real
threats and violate the Constitution.
Because prosecuting criminal terrorist fund-raising cases can be difficult and timeconsuming,
the government has at times used administrative orders under the IEEPA to
block transactions and freeze assets even against U.S. citizens and entities, as we show in
the case studies of the al-Barakaat money remitters and the Chicago charities (in chapters
5 and 6). In some cases, there may be little alternative. But the use of administrative
orders with few due process protections, particularly against our own citizens, raises
significant civil liberty concerns and risks a substantial backlash. The government ought
to exercise great caution in using these powers, as officials who have participated in the
process have acknowledged,45 particularly when the entities and individuals involved
have not been convicted of terrorism offenses.
The designated person or entity in such a situation does not have certain rights that might
be available in a civil forfeiture action, when the government in most circumstances must
file a lawsuit and bear the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence. As in any
other lawsuit, the owner of the property has the right to conduct discovery of the
government’s evidence, such as taking sworn depositions and obtaining documents.
Moreover, the defendant has the right to avoid forfeiture by demonstrating that he or she