A scatttering of dots spilled in two seemingly unconnected stories over the weekend adds up to a dispiriting conclusion about one of the most important programs in the our post-9/11 national security arsenal: tracking the movement of money through banks and charities to terrorist groups may be way out of whack.
The first dots fell out of an interesting piece by Ann Louise Bardach in the Sunday Washngton Post's "Outlook" section, about prospects for changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba in the Obama administration.
One of the "losers" under the new regime, Bardach speculates, will be the Cuban program in the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
"OFAC's chief mandate is to enforce sanctions against countries harboring terrorists," writes Bardach, author of "Cuba Confidential" and the forthcoming "Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Washington and Havana."
"But a 2007 government study found that 61 percent of the office's investigations since 2000 had been aimed at just one target: Cuba," Bardach reports. "Between 2000 and 2005, OFAC penalties for violations of the Cuban embargo represented more than 70 percent of all the penalties the office imposed."
Hello? Can anyone here spell I-r-a-n?
Bardach notes that a 2004 congressional hearing revealed that tax dollars earmarked for the war on terrorism were spent on tracking unauthorized travelers to Cuba.
"At the hearing, OFAC acknowledged that it had just four employees searching for the funds of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, as opposed to more than 20 full-time investigators charged with hunting down suspected violators of the embargo."
Among the uses of your taxpayer dollars: "OFAC's prosecution of a 75-year-old grandmother from San Diego who took a bicycling trip to Cuba, an Indiana teacher who delivered Bibles and the son of missionaries who traveled to the island to spread his parents' ashes at the site of the church they'd founded 50 years before."
Good lord.
Now turn to a story in yesterday's New York Times, in which reporters Vikas Bajaj and John Eligion report that:
"Iranian banks illegally shifted billions of dollars through American financial institutions in recent years, and authorities suspect some of the money may have been used to finance Iran's nuclear and missile programs."
Oh, really? Maybe the feds were too busy tracing Grandma's purchase of a Cuban postcard to notice.
The main culprit, the Lloyds TSB Group, in Britain, was so darn tricky, prosecutors told the the reporters.
"It 'stripped' information that would have identified the transfers in order to deceive American financial institutions, which are barred from doing business with Iranian banks ..."
According to Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, "money in one transaction was used to buy a large amount of tungsten, an ingredient for making long-range missiles. He said he suspected that other funds might have been used to finance Iran's nuclear program."
Our friend Doug Farah says that the ongoing investigation suggests that the Iranians have learned much from the nuclear smuggling ring organized by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan.
"This is the pipeline at its best. One simply has to shift addresses, at least on paper, the companies go again, and the pipeline is unclogged and continues to carry its vital products. The flexibility of the pipeline and its ability to adapt and reroute itself in a very short period of time is one of its greatest strengths."
As for terrorist finance investigations, Farah concludes: "Iran, with years of experience in the game, is unlikely to be knocked much off its stride in the acquisitions game."
Especially when OFAC is spending time so much time and effort looking at Cuba, methinks.
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