Staff Report to the Commission
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States
Monograph on Terrorist Financing
________________
Staff Report to the Commission
John Roth
Douglas Greenburg
Serena Wille
Preface
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. Some of the specialized staff work, while not
appropriate for inclusion in the report, nonetheless offered substantial information or
analysis that was not well represented in the Commission’s report. In a few cases this
supplemental work could be prepared to a publishable standard, either in an unclassified
or classified form, before the Commission expired.
This study is on terrorist financing. It was prepared principally by John Roth, Douglas
Greenburg, and Serena Wille, with editing assistance from Alice Falk. As in all staff
studies, they often relied on work done by their colleagues.
This is a study by Commission staff. While the Commissioners have been briefed on the
work and have had the opportunity to review earlier drafts of some of this work, they
have not approved this text and it does not necessarily reflect their views.
Philip Zelikow
Terrorist Financing Staff Monograph
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.......................
AL QAEDA’S MEANS AND METHODS
TO RAISE, MOVE, AND USE MONEY.........................
GOVERNMENT EFFORTS BEFORE AND AFTER THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS................ 30
COMBATING TERRORIST FINANCING IN THE UNITED STATES: THE ROLE OF
FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS..................
AL-BARAKAAT CASE STUDY ..............................
THE ILLINOIS CHARITIES CASE STUDY.........................
AL HARAMAIN CASE STUDY.........................
APPENDIX A: THE FINANCING OF THE
9/11 PLOT..........................
APPENDIX B: SECURITIES TRADING.......................
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Chapter 1
Introduction and Executive Summary
Introduction
After the September 11 attacks, the highest-level U.S. government officials publicly
declared that the fight against al Qaeda financing was as critical as the fight against al
Qaeda itself. It has been presented as one of the keys to success in the fight against
terrorism: if we choke off the terrorists’ money, we limit their ability to conduct mass
casualty attacks. In reality, completely choking off the money to al Qaeda and affiliated
terrorist groups has been essentially impossible. At the same time, tracking al Qaeda
financing has proven a very effective way to locate terrorist operatives and supporters
and to disrupt terrorist plots.
As a result, the U.S. terrorist financing strategy has changed from the early post-9/11
days. Choking off the money remains the most visible aspect of our approach, but it is not
our only, or even most important, goal. Ultimately, making it harder for terrorists to get
money is a necessary, but not sufficient, component of our overall strategy. Following the money to identify terrorist operatives and sympathizers provides a particularly powerful tool in the fight against terrorist groups. Use of this tool almost always remains invisible to the general public, but it is a critical part of the overall campaign against al Qaeda. Moreover, the U.S. government recognizes—appropriately, in the Commission staff’s view—that terrorist-financing measures are simply one of many tools in the fight against al Qaeda.
This monograph, together with the relevant parts of the Commission’s final report,
reflects the staff’s investigation into al Qaeda financing and the U.S. government’s efforts to combat it. This monograph represents the collective efforts of a number of members of the staff. John Roth, Douglas Greenburg and Serena Wille did the bulk of the work reflected in this report. Thanks also go to Dianna Campagna, Marquittia Coleman,Melissa Coffey and the entire administrative staff for their excellent support. We were fortunate in being able to build upon a great deal of excellent work already done by the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities.
The starting point for our inquiry is 1998, when al Qaeda emerged as a primary global
threat to U.S. interests. Although we address earlier periods as necessary, we have not
attempted to tell the history of al Qaeda financing from its inception. We have sought to
understand how al Qaeda raised, moved, and stored money before and after the
September 11 attacks, and how the U.S. government confronted the problem of al Qaeda financing before and after 9/11. We have had significant access to highly classified raw and finished intelligence from the intelligence community, have reviewed law enforcement, State Department, and Treasury Department files, and have interviewed at Terrorist Financing Staff Monograph
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length government officials, from street-level agents to cabinet secretaries, as well as
non-government experts, representatives from the financial services industry, and
representatives of individuals and entities directly affected by U.S. government action to
combat al Qaeda financing.
This monograph does not attempt a comprehensive survey of all known data on al Qaeda financing and every government action to combat it. Rather, we have sought to
understand the issues that make a difference, what the 9/11 disaster should have taught us about these issues, and the extent to which the current U.S. strategy reflects these lessons. What we have found is instructive in the larger analysis of what the U.S. government can do to detect, investigate, deter, and disrupt al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups bent on mass casualty attacks against the United States.1
Executive Summary
September 11 financing
The September 11 hijackers used U.S. and foreign financial institutions to hold, move,
and retrieve their money. The hijackers deposited money into U.S. accounts, primarily by wire transfers and deposits of cash or travelers checks brought from overseas.
Additionally, several of them kept funds in foreign accounts, which they accessed in the
United States through ATM and credit card transactions. The hijackers received funds
from facilitators in Germany and the United Arab Emirates or directly from Khalid
Sheikh Mohamed (KSM) as they transited Pakistan before coming to the United States.
The plot cost al Qaeda somewhere in the range of $400,000–500,000, of which
approximately $300,000 passed through the hijackers’ bank accounts in the United
States. The hijackers returned approximately $26,000 to a facilitator in the UAE in the
days prior to the attack. While in the United States, the hijackers spent money primarily
for flight training, travel, and living expenses (such as housing, food, cars, and auto
insurance). Extensive investigation has revealed no substantial source of domestic
financial support.
Neither the hijackers nor their financial facilitators were experts in the use of the
international financial system. They created a paper trail linking them to each other and
their facilitators. Still, they were easily adept enough to blend into the vast international
financial system without doing anything to reveal themselves as criminals, let alone
terrorists bent on mass murder. The money-laundering controls in place at the time were largely focused on drug trafficking and large-scale financial fraud and could not have detected the hijackers’ transactions. The controls were never intended to, and could not, detect or disrupt the routine transactions in which the hijackers engaged.
1 Our investigation has focused on al Qaeda financing and the country’s response to it. Although much of
our analysis may apply to the financing of other terrorist groups, we have made no systematic effort to
investigate any of those groups, and we recognize that the financing of other terrorist groups may present
the government with problems or opportunities not existing in the context of al Qaeda.
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There is no evidence that any person with advance knowledge of the impending terrorist
attacks used that information to profit by trading securities. Although there has been
consistent speculation that massive al Qaeda–related “insider trading” preceded the
attacks, exhaustive investigation by federal law enforcement and the securities industry
has determined that unusual spikes in the trading of certain securities were based on
factors unrelated to terrorism.
One of the pillars of al Qaeda: Fund-raising
Al Qaeda and Usama Bin Ladin obtained money from a variety of sources. Contrary to
common belief, Bin Ladin did not have access to any significant amounts of personal
wealth (particularly after his move from Sudan to Afghanistan) and did not personally
fund al Qaeda, either through an inheritance or businesses he was said to have owned in
Sudan. Rather, al Qaeda was funded, to the tune of approximately $30 million per year,
by diversions of money from Islamic charities and the use of well-placed financial
facilitators who gathered money from both witting and unwitting donors, primarily in the
Gulf region. No persuasive evidence exists that al Qaeda relied on the drug trade as an
important source of revenue, had any substantial involvement with conflict diamonds, or
was financially sponsored by any foreign government. The United States is not, and has
not been, a substantial source of al Qaeda funding, although some funds raised in the
United States may have made their way to al Qaeda and its affiliated groups.
After Bin Ladin relocated to Afghanistan in 1996, al Qaeda made less use of formal
banking channels to transfer money, preferring instead to use an informal system of
money movers or bulk cash couriers. Supporters and other operatives did use banks,
particularly in the Gulf region, to move money on behalf of al Qaeda. Prior to 9/11 the
largest single al Qaeda expense was support for the Taliban, estimated at about $20
million per year. Bin Ladin also used money to train operatives in camps in Afghanistan,
create terrorist networks and alliances, and support the jihadists and their families.
Finally, a relatively small amount of money was used to finance operations, including the
approximately $400,000–500,000 spent on the September 11 attacks themselves.
U.S. government efforts before the September 11 attacks
Terrorist 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. Although the National Security Council considered terrorist financing
important in its campaign to disrupt al Qaeda, other agencies failed to participate to the
NSC’s satisfaction, and there was little interagency strategic planning or coordination.
Without an effective interagency mechanism, responsibility for the problem was
dispersed among a myriad of agencies, each working independently.
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The FBI gathered intelligence on a significant number of organizations in the United
States suspected of raising funds for al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. Highly motivated
street agents in specific FBI field offices overcame setbacks, bureaucratic inefficiencies,
and what they believed to be a dysfunctional Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) system2 to gain a basic understanding of some of the largest and most problematic
terrorist-financing conspiracies since identified. The FBI did not develop an endgame,
however. The agents continued to gather intelligence with little hope that they would be
able to make a criminal case or otherwise disrupt the operations. The FBI could not turn
these investigations into criminal cases because of insufficient international cooperation,
a perceived inability to mingle criminal and intelligence investigations due to the “wall”
between intelligence and law enforcement matters, sensitivities to overt investigations of
Islamic charities and organizations, and the sheer difficulty of prosecuting most terroristfinancing
cases. As a result, the FBI rarely sought to involve criminal prosecutors in its
terrorist-financing investigations. Nonetheless, FBI street agents had gathered significant
intelligence on specific groups.
On a national level the FBI did not systematically gather and analyze the information its
agents developed. It lacked a headquarters unit focusing on terrorist financing, and its
overworked counterterrorism personnel lacked time and resources to focus specifically on
financing. The FBI as an organization therefore failed to understand the nature and extent
of the jihadist3 fund-raising problem within the United States or to develop a coherent
strategy for confronting the problem. The FBI did not, nor could it, fulfill its role to
provide intelligence on domestic terrorist financing to government policymakers and did
not contribute to national policy coordination. For its part, the Criminal Division of the
Department of Justice had no national program for prosecuting terrorist-financing cases,
despite a 1996 statute that gave it much broader legal powers for doing so. The
Department of Justice could not develop an effective program for prosecuting these cases
because its prosecutors had no systematic way to learn what evidence of prosecutable
crimes could be found in the FBI’s intelligence files, to which they did not have access.
The U.S. intelligence community largely failed to comprehend al Qaeda’s methods of
raising, moving, and storing money, because it devoted relatively few resources to
collecting the strategic financial intelligence that policymakers were requesting or that
would have informed the larger counterterrorism strategy. Al Qaeda financing was in
many respects a hard target for intelligence gathering. But the CIA also arrived belatedly
2 This monograph is a survey and analysis of the government’s efforts with regard to terrorist financing
both before and after 9/11. This necessarily touches on many different aspects of the government’s
counterterrorism efforts, including the FISA review process and barrier between law enforcement and
intelligence information. We did not attempt, however, to conduct an exhaustive review of those issues.
Rather, we refer the reader to the 9/11 Commission Report, pp.78-80.
3 We use the term jihadist to include militant Islamist groups other than the Palestinian terrorist groups,
such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Lebanese Hizbollah. The other jihadist groups who have
raised money in the United States appear to loosely share a common ideology, and many of them have been
linked directly or indirectly to al Qaeda. These groups raise funds in the United States to support Islamist
militants around the world; some of these funds may make their way to al Qaeda or affiliated groups. The
Palestinian groups and Hizbollah, which have raised large amounts of money domestically, present
different issues that are beyond the scope of our investigation.
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at an understanding of some basic operational facts that were readily available—such as
the knowledge that al Qaeda relied on fund-raising, not Bin Ladin’s personal fortune. The
CIA’s inability to grasp the true source of Bin Ladin’s funds and the methods behind
their movement hampered the U.S. government’s ability to integrate potential covert
action or overt economic disruption into the counterterrorism effort. The lack of specific
intelligence about al Qaeda financing frustrated policymakers, and the intelligence
deficiencies persisted through 9/11.
Other areas within the U.S. government evinced similar problems. The then-obscure
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Treasury organization charged by law with
searching out, designating, and freezing Bin Ladin assets, lacked comprehensive access
to actionable intelligence and was beset by the indifference of higher-level Treasury
policymakers. Even if those barriers had been removed, the primary Bin Ladin financial
flows at the time, from the Gulf to Afghanistan, likely were beyond OFAC’s legal
powers, which apply only domestically.
A number of significant legislative and regulatory initiatives designed to close
vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system failed to gain traction. Some of these, such as
a move to control foreign banks with accounts in the United States, died as a result of
banking industry pressure. Others, such as a move to regulate money remitters, were
mired in bureaucratic inertia and a general antiregulatory environment.
The U.S. government had recognized the value of enlisting the international community
in efforts to stop the flow of money to al Qaeda entities. U.S. diplomatic efforts had
succeeded in persuading the United Nations to sanction Bin Ladin economically, but such
sanctions were largely ineffective. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, necessary partners in any
realistic effort to stem the financing of terror, were ambivalent and selectively
cooperative in assisting the United States. The U.S. government approached the Saudis
on some narrow issues, such as locating Bin Ladin’s supposed personal wealth and
gaining access to a senior al Qaeda financial figure in Saudi custody, with mixed results.
The Saudis generally resisted cooperating more broadly against al Qaeda financing,
although the U.S. government did not make this issue a priority in its bilateral relations
with the Saudis or provide the Saudis with actionable intelligence about al Qaeda fundraising
in the Kingdom. Other issues, such as Iraq, the Middle East peace process,
economic arrangements, the oil supply, and cutting off Saudi support for the Taliban,
took primacy on the U.S.-Saudi agenda.
The net result of the government’s efforts, according to CIA analysis at the time, was that
al Qaeda’s cash flow on the eve of the September 11 attacks was steady and secure.
Where are we now?
It is common to say the world has changed since September 11, 2001, and this conclusion
is particularly apt in describing U.S. counterterrorist efforts regarding financing. The U.S.
government focused, for the first time, on terrorist financing and devoted considerable
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energy and resources to the problem. As a result the United States now has a far better
understanding of the methods by which terrorists raise, move, and use money and has
employed this knowledge to our advantage.
With an understanding of the nature of the threat and with a new sense of urgency, the
intelligence community (including the FBI) created new entities to focus on, and bring
expertise to, the area of terrorist fund-raising and the clandestine movement of money.
These entities are led by experienced and committed individuals, who use financial
information to understand terrorist networks, search them out and disrupt their
operations, and who integrate terrorist-financing issues into the larger counterterrorism
efforts at their respective agencies. Equally important, many of the obstacles hampering
investigations have been stripped away. The current intelligence community approach
appropriately focuses on using financial information, in close coordination with other
types of intelligence, to identify and track terrorist groups rather than to starve them of
funding.
The CIA has devoted considerable resources to the investigation of al Qaeda financing,
and the effort is led by individuals with extensive expertise in the clandestine movement
of money. The CIA appears to be developing an institutional and long-term expertise in
this area, and other intelligence agencies have made similar improvements. Still, al Qaeda
financing remains a hard target for intelligence gathering. Understanding al Qaeda’s
money and providing actionable intelligence present ongoing challenges because of the
speed, diversity, and complexity of the means and methods for raising and moving
money; the commingling of terrorist money with legitimate funds; the many layers and
transfers between donors and the ultimate recipients of the money; the existence of
unwitting participants (including donors who give to generalized jihadist struggles rather
than specifically to al Qaeda); and the U.S. government’s reliance on foreign government
reporting for intelligence.
Since the attacks, the FBI has improved its dissemination of intelligence to policymakers,
usually in the form of briefings, regular meetings, and status reports. The creation of a
unit focusing on terrorist financing has provided a vehicle through which the FBI can
effectively participate in interagency terrorist-financing efforts and ensures that these
issues receive focused attention rather than being a footnote to the FBI’s overall
counterterrorism program. Still, the FBI needs to improve the gathering and analyzing of
the information developed in its investigations. The FBI’s well-documented efforts to
create an analytical career track and enhance its analytical capabilities are sorely needed
in this area.
Bringing jihadist fund-raising prosecutions remains difficult in many cases. The inability
to get records from other countries, the complexity of directly linking cash flows to
terrorist operations or groups, and the difficulty of showing what domestic persons knew
about illicit foreign acts or actors all combine to thwart investigations and prosecutions.
Still, criminal prosecutors now have regular access to information on relevant
investigations, and the Department of Justice has created a unit to coordinate an
aggressive national effort to prosecute terrorist financing.
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In light of the difficulties in prosecuting some terrorist fund-raising cases, the
government has used administrative blocking and freezing orders under the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) against U.S. persons (individuals or entities)
suspected of supporting foreign terrorist organizations. It may well be effective, and
perhaps necessary, to disrupt fund-raising operations through an administrative blocking
order when no other good options exist. The use of IEEPA authorities against domestic
organizations run by U.S. citizens, however, raises significant civil liberty concerns
because it allows the government to shut down an organization on the basis of classified
evidence, subject only to a deferential after-the-fact judicial review. The provision of the
IEEPA that allows the blocking of assets “during the pendency of an investigation” also
raises particular concern in that it can shut down a U.S. entity indefinitely without the
more fully developed administrative record necessary for a permanent IEEPA
designation.
The NSC’s interagency Policy Coordinating Committee (PCC) on terrorist financing has
been generally successful in its efforts to marshal government resources to address
terrorist-financing issues in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, although its success
likely resulted more from the personalities of its members than from its structure. As the
government’s response to the problem has evolved over time, the NSC is better situated
than an agency or a stand-alone “czar” to take the lead in forming an interagency
strategic and operational response to terrorist financing.
The attacks galvanized the international community to set up a near-universal system of
laws, tied to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, to freeze the assets of
terrorists and their supporters. The United States pursued an ambitious course of highly
visible asset freezes of terrorists, terrorist supporters, and terrorist-related entities. The
State Department embarked on a course of intense diplomatic pressure to ensure that the
asset freezes were truly international. Multilateral institutions, such as the Financial
Action Task Force, began to develop international antiterrorist finance standards for
financial institutions.
Saudi Arabia is a key part of our international efforts to fight terrorist financing. The
intelligence community identified it as the primary source of money for al Qaeda both
before and after the September 11 attacks. Fund-raisers and facilitators throughout Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf raised money for al Qaeda from witting and unwitting donors and
divert funds from Islamic charities and mosques. The Commission staff found no
evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or as individual senior officials
knowingly support or supported al Qaeda; however, a lack of awareness of the problem
and a failure to conduct oversight over institutions created an environment in which such
activity has flourished.
From the 9/11 attacks through spring 2003, most U.S. officials viewed Saudi cooperation
on terrorist financing as ambivalent and selective. U.S. efforts to overcome Saudi
recalcitrance suffered from our failure to develop a strategy to counter Saudi terrorist
financing, present our requests through a single high-level interlocutor, and obtain and
Terrorist Financing Staff Monograph
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release to the Saudis actionable intelligence. By spring 2003 the U.S. government had
corrected these deficiencies. Not just a more effective U.S. message but more especially
al Qaeda operations within the Kingdom in May and November 2003 focused the Saudi
government’s attention on its terrorist-financing problem, and dramatically improved
cooperation with the United States. The Saudi government needs to continue to
strengthen its capabilities to stem the flow of money from Saudi sources to al Qaeda. 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.
The domestic financial community and some international financial institutions have
generally provided law enforcement and intelligence agencies with extraordinary
cooperation, particularly in providing information to support quickly developing
investigations, such as the search for terrorist suspects at times of emergency. Much of
this cooperation, such as providing expedited returns on subpoenas related to terrorism, is
voluntary and based on personal relationships. It remains to be seen whether such
cooperation will continue as the memory of 9/11 fades. Efforts within the financial
industry to create financial profiles of terrorist cells and terrorist fund-raisers have proved
unsuccessful, and the ability of financial institutions to detect terrorist financing remains
limited.
Since the September 11 attacks and the defeat of the Taliban, al Qaeda’s budget has
decreased significantly. Although the trend line is clear, the U.S government still has not
determined with any precision how much al Qaeda raises or from whom, or how it spends
its money. It appears that the al Qaeda attacks within Saudi Arabia in May and November
of 2003 have reduced—some say drastically—al Qaeda’s ability to raise funds from
Saudi sources, because of both an increase in Saudi enforcement and a more negative
perception of al Qaeda by potential donors in the Gulf. However, as al Qaeda’s cash flow
has decreased, so too have its expenses, generally owing to the defeat of the Taliban and
the dispersal of al Qaeda. Despite our efforts, it appears that al Qaeda can still find money
to fund terrorist operations. Al Qaeda now relies on the physical movement of money and
other informal methods of value transfer, which can pose significant challenges for those
attempting to detect and disrupt money flows.
Understanding the difficulties in disrupting terrorist financing, both in the United States
and abroad, requires understanding the difference between seeing “links” to terrorists and
proving the funding of terrorists. In many cases, we can plainly see that certain
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or individuals who raise money for Islamic
causes espouse an extremist ideology and are “linked” to terrorists through common
acquaintances, group affiliations, historic relationships, phone communications, or other
such contacts. Although sufficient to whet the appetite for action, these suspicious links
do not demonstrate that the NGO or individual actually funds terrorists and thus provide
frail support for disruptive action, either in the United States or abroad. In assessing both
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the domestic efforts of the U.S. government and the overseas efforts of other nations, we
must keep in mind this fundamental and inherently frustrating challenge of combating
terrorist financing.
Case studies and common themes
The Commission staff examined three significant terrorist-financing investigations in
existence prior to September 11 in order to (a) understand U.S. efforts to stem al Qaedarelated
terrorist financing before the September 11 attacks, (b) trace the evolution of U.S.
policy and operations since the attacks, and (c) illustrate the problems and opportunities
in the area of terrorist financing. These case studies—a Somalia-based worldwide moneyremitting
organization with alleged ties to al Qaeda; two Illinois charities that allegedly
raised money for al Qaeda; and an international Saudi-based private charity, with ties to
the Saudi government, accused of being a conduit of terrorist money—have given the
staff insights into the larger problems and recommendations.
Al-Barakaat: The informal movement of money and its implication for
counterterrorist financing
Al-Barakaat (literally, “the blessing”), a money-remitting system centered in Somalia
with outlets worldwide, took shape after the collapse of the government and the banking
system in Somalia. The intelligence community developed information that Usama Bin
Ladin had contributed money to al-Barakaat to start operations, that it was closely
associated with or controlled by the terrorist group Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiya (AIAI), and
that some of al-Barakaat’s proceeds went to fund AIAI, which in turn gave a portion to
Usama Bin Ladin.
In the United States the FBI developed an intelligence case on the al-Barakaat network in
early 1999, and had opened a criminal case by 2000. Shortly after 9/11 al-Barakaat’s
assets were frozen and its books and records were seized in raids around the world,
including in the United States. Subsequent investigation by the FBI, including financial
analysis of the books and records of al-Barakaat provided in unprecedented cooperation
by the UAE, failed to establish the allegations of a link between al-Barakaat and AIAI or
Bin Ladin. No criminal case was made against al-Barakaat in the United States for these
activities. Although OFAC claims that it met the evidentiary standard for designations,
the majority of assets frozen in the United States under executive order (and some assets
frozen by other countries under UN resolution) were unfrozen and the money returned
after the U.S.-based al-Barakaat money remitters filed a lawsuit challenging the action.
The Illinois Charities: Domestic charities used to fund al Qaeda?
Two Illinois-based charities, the Global Relief Foundation, Inc. (GRF), and the
Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), have been publicly accused of providing
financial support to al Qaeda and international terrorism. GRF, a nonprofit organization
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with operations in 25 countries, ostensibly devoted to providing humanitarian aid to the
needy, raised millions of dollars in the United States in support of its mission. U.S.
investigators long believed that GRF devoted a significant percentage of the funds it
raised to support Islamic extremist causes and jihadists with substantial links to
international terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, and the FBI had a very active
investigation under way by the time of 9/11. BIF, a nonprofit organization with offices in
at least 10 countries, raised millions of dollars in the United States, much of which it
distributed throughout the world for purposes of humanitarian aid. As in the case of GRF,
the U.S. government believed BIF had substantial connections to terrorist groups,
including al Qaeda, and was sending a sizable percentage of its funds to support the
international jihadist movement. BIF was also the subject of an active investigation
before 9/11.
After 9/11 OFAC froze both charities’ assets, effectively putting them out of business.
The FBI opened a criminal investigation of both charities, ultimately resulting in the
conviction of the leader of BIF for non-terrorism-related charges. The Immigration and
Naturalization Service detained and ultimately deported a major GRF fund-raiser. No
criminal charges have been filed against GRF or its personnel.
The cases of BIF and GRF illustrate the U.S. government’s approach to terrorist fundraising
in the United States before 9/11 and how that approach dramatically changed after
the terrorist attacks: the government moved from a strategy of investigating and
monitoring terrorist financing to actively disrupting suspect entities through criminal
prosecution and the use of its IEEPA powers to block their assets in the United States.
Although effective in shutting down its targets, this aggressive approach raises potential
civil liberties concerns, as the charities’ supporters insist that they were unfairly targeted,
denied due process, and closed without any evidence they actually funded al Qaeda or
any terrorist groups.4 The BIF and GRF investigations highlight fundamental issues that
span all aspects of the government efforts to combat al Qaeda financing: the difference
between seeing links to terrorists and proving funding of terrorists, and the problem of
defining the threshold of information necessary to take disruptive action.
Al Haramain: International charities and Saudi Arabia
Al Haramain Islamic Foundation is a Saudi Arabia–based Islamic foundation. It is a
quasi-private, charitable, and educational organization dedicated to propagating a very
conservative form of Islam throughout the world. At its peak, al Haramain had a presence
in at least 50 countries with estimates of its total annual expenditures ranging from $30 to
$80 million. The government of Saudi Arabia has provided financial support to al
4 Legal actions taken by the aggrieved parties have been largely unsuccessful either because, as in the case
of al-Barakaat, the government unfroze assets, or because of the highly deferential standard of review
afforded to the President in the exercise of his Commander in Chief powers under IEEPA. The issue is not
whether the government had the power to conduct the actions that it did. Rather, the issue is whether,
based on the nature and quality of the evidence involved, and the threat of likely harm, the government
appropriately exercised those powers against U.S. persons.
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Haramain in the past, although that has perhaps decreased in recent years. At least two
Saudi government officials have supervisory roles (nominal or otherwise) over al
Haramain.
Since at least 1996 the U.S. intelligence community has developed information that
various al Haramain branches supported jihadists and terrorists, including al Qaeda. Since
9/11 high-level U.S. officials have considered their options regarding al Haramain. As of
January 2003 the U.S. government was concerned that personnel in 20 of al Haramain’s
offices, including personnel within Saudi Arabia, were aiding and abetting al Qaeda and
its affiliated terrorist groups.
In March 2002 the U.S. and Saudi governments froze the assets of the Somali and
Bosnian offices of al Haramain and, simultaneously, submitted these names to the United
Nations for international listing as terrorist supporters. The United States has raised al
Haramain’s involvement in terrorist financing with the Saudi government repeatedly, in
different forms and through different channels, since 1998, but most effectively since
2003. The Saudi government has made some moves to rein in the charity since May
2003, including replacing the executive director of al Haramain, announcing the
shutdown of all overseas branches of al Haramain, and changing its relevant laws and
regulations. Some of these actions proved to be ineffective and, as a result, the U.S. and
Saudi governments froze the assets of four additional branch offices of al Haramain in
January 2004 and five additional branch offices in June 2004. The U.S. government took
additional action against the U.S. entities in February 2004 and against the former
executive director in June 2004. It remains to be seen whether the Saudis have the
political will to develop the necessary capabilities to stem the flow of funds to al Qaeda
and its related groups and to sustain these efforts over the long haul.
We completed our investigation of al Haramain in early June 2004. Subsequently, the
Saudi government announced that it would dissolve the al Haramain Islamic Foundation
and that a new Saudi charity commission would “take over all aspects of private overseas
aid operations and assume responsibility for the distribution of private charitable
donations from Saudi Arabia.” We have not assessed the state-of-play or impact of these
actions. They are moving targets and it is difficult to come to any final conclusions about
the status of al Haramain. Regardless, we believe the discussion in this chapter tells an
important story about U.S.-Saudi cooperation on terrorist financing in the post 9/11
period from which important lessons can be drawn.
Terrorist Financing Staff Monograph
13
Findings
The funding of the hijackers
* The 9/11 plot cost al Qaeda approximately $400,000–500,000, of which
approximately $300,000 was deposited into U.S. bank accounts of the 19
hijackers. Al Qaeda funded the hijackers in the United States by three primary and
unexceptional means: (1) wire transfers from overseas to the United States, (2) the
physical transport of cash or traveler’s checks into the United States, and (3) the
accessing of funds held in foreign financial institutions by debit or credit cards.
Once here, all of the hijackers used the U.S. banking system to store their funds
and facilitate their transactions.
* The hijackers and their financial facilitators used the anonymity provided by the
vast international and domestic financial system to move and store their money
through a series of unremarkable transactions. The existing mechanisms to
prevent abuse of the financial system did not fail. They were never designed to
detect or disrupt transactions of the type that financed 9/11.
* Virtually all of the plot funding was provided by al Qaeda. There is no evidence
that any person in the United States, or any foreign government, provided any
substantial funding to the hijackers.
* Exhaustive investigation by U.S. government agencies and the securities industry
has revealed no evidence that any person with advance knowledge of the 9/11
attacks profited from them through securities transactions.
Raising and moving money for al Qaeda
* Contrary to public opinion, Bin Ladin did not have access to any significant
amounts of personal wealth (particularly after his move from Sudan to
Afghanistan) and did not personally fund al Qaeda, either through an inheritance
or businesses he owned in Sudan. Rather, al Qaeda relied on diversions from
Islamic charities and on well-placed financial facilitators who gathered money
from both witting and unwitting donors, primarily in the Gulf region.
* The nature and extent of al Qaeda fund-raising and money movement make
intelligence collection exceedingly difficult, and gaps appear to remain in the
intelligence community’s understanding of the issue. Because of the complexity
and variety of ways to collect and move small amounts of money in a vast
worldwide financial system, gathering intelligence on al Qaeda financial flows
will remain a hard target for the foreseeable future.
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
14
Intelligence gathering on al Qaeda
* Within the United States, although FBI street agents had gathered significant
intelligence on specific suspected fund-raisers before 9/11, the FBI did not
systematically gather and analyze the information its agents developed. The FBI
as an organization failed to understand the nature and extent of the problem or to
develop a coherent strategy for confronting it. As a result the FBI could not fulfill
its role to provide intelligence on domestic terrorist financing to government
policymakers and did not contribute to national policy coordination.
* Outside the United States, the U.S. intelligence community before 9/11 devoted
relatively few resources to collecting financial intelligence on al Qaeda. This
limited effort resulted in an incomplete understanding of al Qaeda’s methods to
raise, move, and store money, and thus hampered the effectiveness of the overall
counterterrorism strategy.
* Since 9/11 the intelligence community (including the FBI) has created significant
specialized entities, led by committed and experienced individuals and supported
by the leadership of their agencies, focused on both limiting the funds available to
al Qaeda and using financial information as a powerful investigative tool. The
FBI and CIA meet regularly to exchange information, and they have crossdetailed
their agents into positions of responsibility.
Economic disruption of al Qaeda
* Before 9/11 the limited U.S. and UN efforts to freeze assets of and block
transactions with Bin Ladin were generally ineffective.
* Before 9/11 the Department of Justice had little success developing criminal cases
against suspected terrorist fund-raisers, despite a 1996 law that dramatically
expanded its power to do so. Because of the “wall” between criminal and
intelligence matters, both real and perceived, the prosecutors lacked access to the
considerable information about terrorist fund-raising in the United States
maintained in the FBI’s intelligence files.
* The United States engaged in a highly visible series of freezes of suspected
terrorist assets after 9/11. Although few funds have been frozen since the first few
months after 9/11, asset freezes are useful diplomatic tools in engaging other
countries in the war on terror and have symbolic and deterrence value. The use of
administrative freeze orders against U.S. citizens and their organizations may, at
times, be necessary but raises substantial civil liberties issues.
* Since 9/11 the FBI has recognized that its investigations of terrorist fund-raising
within the United States must have an endgame: to stop the funding or otherwise
Terrorist Financing Staff Monograph
15
disrupt the terrorist supporters. The Department of Justice has created a unit to
coordinate an aggressive national effort to prosecute terrorist financing and now
regularly receives information from the FBI about terrorist fund-raising in the
United States, which it lacked before 9/11. Still, prosecuting most terroristfinancing
cases remains very challenging.
* The financial provisions enacted after September 11, particularly those contained
in the USA PATRIOT Act and subsequent regulations, have succeeded in
addressing obvious vulnerabilities in our financial system. Vigilant enforcement is
crucial in ensuring that the U.S. financial system is not a vehicle for the funding
of terrorists.
* Financial institutions have the information and expertise to detect money
laundering, but they lack the information and expertise to detect terrorist
financing. As a result, banks and other financial institutions play their most
important role by obtaining accurate information about their customers that can be
provided to government authorities seeking to find a known suspect in an
emergency or investigating terrorist fund-raisers.
* Although the government can often show that certain fund-raising groups or
individuals are “linked” to terrorist groups (through common acquaintances,
group affiliations, historic relationships, phone communications, or other such
contacts), it is far more difficult to show that a suspected NGO or individual
actually funds terrorist groups. In assessing both the domestic efforts of the U.S.
government and the overseas efforts of other nations, we must keep in mind this
fundamental and inherently frustrating challenge of combating terrorist financing.
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