Financial War on Terrorism: Grading U.S. Strategy for Combating the Financing of Terrorism

摘要

Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush quickly decided that the United States' response to that strike must entail all instruments of national power. He was focused on the financial element of fighting the terrorists, targeting their monetary means of waging their terror campaign. On September 23, 2001, he signed Executive Order 13224, 'Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions With Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, or Support Terrorists,' initiating the Global War on Terrorism using financial instruments of power some three days before the first CIA operatives set foot in Afghanistan. Initial post-9/11 efforts centered on a traditional regulatory money laundering strategy, primarily freezing or seizing terrorist funds. In July 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States recommended expanding the counter-finance focus to include exploiting intelligence gathered in financial investigations. While pre-9/11 and initial post-9/11 interagency efforts did not include Defense agencies in a significant way, the Department of Defense's (DoD) leading role in the GWOT and ongoing Iraq counterinsurgency and reconstruction missions have sharpened the military's focus on this asymmetric target set. After reviewing traditional U.S. activities to combat terrorist financing, this thesis proposes how the DoD can use threat finance exploitation to meaningfully support the overall effectiveness of U.S. strategy to disrupt terror financing and combat global terrorism. A bibliography of books, congressional testimony, DoD documents, electronic references, Federal Government documents, interviews, journal articles, monographs, newspapers, speeches, strategic documents, and United Nations documents is included.