The Senate Banking Committee has been aware of this problem since the fall of 2001 but has declined to hold hearings, let alone actually produce a legislative response. All the committee members, regardless of party, get nice chuncks of campaign change from individuals in the companies that transfer the money, and as a result, nothing has been done and nothing will be done.
This is very interesting. It’s unfortunate that Congress put an end to the computer program (I don’t remember it’s name) that sifted through banking transactions, because we caught a lot of terrorists this way. I was at a trial where a Paki pleaded guilty to a scheme that was so complicated it was hard to follow in the courtroom. It involved getting several successive overvalued mortgages from a variety of fly-by-night mortgage companies. The defendant didn’t dream it up, but was a convenience store owner who had been pressured into it by other people in the Paki community.
The financing is very important to these groups, and it’s equally important to us to control it. The terrorists are very determined, and they can take anything, no matter how innocent, and turn it to their use. So the challenge is keeping the usefulness of something for non-terrorists, while being vigilant enough to spot when it is being used by our enemies.