The Silent Struggle Against Terrorist Financing
By Joseph M. Myers
In the more than three years since the 9/11 attacks, the “war on
terrorism” has been fought on many fronts. Much attention
has been paid to military action in Afghanistan and Iraq and to
prosecutions and preventive measures taken by the
Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland
Security in the United States. Meanwhile, a somewhat quieter,
complex campaign against terrorist financing has shown that
financial intelligence, investigations, prosecutions, sanctions,
and diplomacy, when carefully coordinated among national
authorities and with the private sector, can make a meaningful
contribution to the security of the United States against the
threat of Islamist terrorism.
Going forward, U.S. policymakers should invest in building
infrastructure, both in the United States and around the
world, to deepen and broaden the role of financial intelli
gence investigators and analysts. Contrary to the occasional
claims of politicians, following and interdicting money will
never “eliminate” terrorism or even “cut off” financial sup
port to particular terrorist groups; so long as people are motivated
to commit acts of terrorism, funds will flow to support
them. Indeed, the level of financial support provided to a par
ticular terrorist group may be a useful indicator of the depth
of its political support, and vice versa. Unfortunately,
unprecedented levels of anger and
resentment in the Arab and Muslim
worlds over U.S. foreign policy threaten
to undermine efforts to control terrorist
financing, and perhaps the “war on ter
rorism” more broadly. Policymakers
need to take a longer view, develop metrics
to evaluate whether we are winning or
losing the hearts and minds of potential
Islamist terrorists, and act accordingly.
Following the Money. Efforts to
combat financing of Islamist terrorism
prior to 9/11 have been well documented
by the so-called “9/11 Commission” and
by insider accounts of former National
Security Council officials Richard A.
Clarke, William Wechsler, Daniel
Benjamin, and Steven Simon.1 Despite
the best efforts of these and other offi
cials, the problem was and remains a difficult
one. In short, efforts to address
terrorist financing were sporadic and
largely ineffective. As the 9/11
Commission staff concluded, “[t]error
ist financing was not a priority for either
domestic or foreign intelligence collection.
As a result, intelligence reporting
on the issue was episodic, insufficient,
and often inaccurate.”2 The lack of
actionable intelligence fundamentally
limited the ability of the government to
take effective steps to limit funding
streams directed toward Islamist extremist
groups, and government policymakers
never made the development of such
intelligence a priority.
It has become cliché to report that
everything changed after 9/11, but with
respect to efforts to combat terrorist
financing, much did, indeed, change.
For the first time, the U.S. government
focused on the issue and devoted
resources to address it. In the immediate
aftermath of the attacks, financial inves
tigators and analysts descended on the
FBI’s Secure Intelligence and
Operations Center (SIOC) to assist in
unraveling the financial trail of the al-
Qaeda hijackers. This effort proved its
value quickly, persuading FBI Director
Robert Mueller to incorporate financial
investigators into the FBI’s Counter-ter
rorism Division and its joint terrorism
task forces across the country.