Former CIA and State Dept counterterror official shows

Larry Johnson, a terrorism and intelligence expert for NBC, CNN, PBS, Fox News and the New York Times, previously worked in the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism.

If you still labor under the fantasy that the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal divulged "classified information" that put U.S. lives at risk or hampered our ability to track terrorist financial assets, you are willfully ignorant or have been living in a sensory isolation tank.

Starting in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, the Administration took up the hue and cry of the need to track terrorist finances. Congressman Michael Oxley, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, speaking at the outset of a public congressional hearing on 3 October 2001:

I applaud the president and our distinguished witness today, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, for taking swift action to block terrorist assets that may be located here in the United States and to warn foreign banks that the U.S. is poised to block their assets in this country and deny them access to U.S. markets that refuse to freeze terrorist assets overseas. The secretary is also to be commended for setting up a new foreign terrorist asset tracking center which I hope will become a model for interagency cooperation in law enforcement and in the sharing of financial intelligence.

The information provided to the public went well beyond general platitudes. In fact, U.S. officials provided specific information that anybody, including members of Al Qaeda, who read the testimony would learn what the United States Government was doing and how it was doing it. Here is the public record on what the U.S. Government has been doing to track terrorist finances.

First, a Teasury Department official publicly identified on the record how Al Qaeda moved money thru the international financial system.(See testimony by Juan Zarate, Deputy Assistant Secretary, For Terrorism And Violent Crime, Office Of Enforcement, U.S. Treasury Department, 12 February 2002 in open session before the House Financial Services Committee):

I would like to read to you a portion of the Al Qaeda manual that I think is instructive to our discussion today. The manual, as you may know, was discovered during the search of an Al Qaeda member's home in England and was introduced in evidence during the embassy bombings trial in New York.

The third lesson in the manual, entitled Counterfeit Currency and Forged Documents, discusses financial security precautions that Al Qaeda members should take to secure their operations. It reads as follows: One, dividing operational funds into two parts; one part is to be invested in projects that offer financial return, and the other is to be saved and not spent except during operations; two, not placing operational funds all in one place; three, not telling the organization members about the location of the funds; four, having proper protection while carrying large amounts of money; five, leaving the money with nonmembers and spending it as needed.

Madam Chairwoman, as you can see, this is an enemy that understands the need to cover their financial tracks while simultaneously fueling funds into new acts of terror. Because we are facing an enemy with faceless tentacles planted around the world, we must employ all our assets to track and disrupt the financing of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups of global reach.

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