Text 20832, 73 rader
Skriven 2006-06-28 15:53:00 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: Manufactured indignation
================================
From DefenseTech:

Bush administration officials have been lining up to condemn 
The New York Times for revealing a program to track financial transactions as
part of the war on terrorism. But if the Timesƒ€Ö revelation about a program to
monitor international exchanges 
is so damaging, why has the administration been chattering 
about efforts to monitor domestic transactions for nearly 
five years?

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, many journalists ƒ€ö including 
this one ƒ€ö were briefed by U.S. Customs officials on Operation 
Green Quest, an effort to roll up terrorist financiers by 
monitoring, among other things, "suspicious" bank transfers 
and ancient money lending programs favored by people of 
Middle Eastern descent.

I interviewed Marcy Forman, director of Green Quest, at her 
Washington offices in December 2001, when I was a writer 
for Government Executive magazine. Our meeting was sanctioned 
by Customs' public affairs office, and came at a time when 
the White House was eager to talk about all the work federal 
agencies were doing to hunt down terrorists. Forman told me 
the kinds of people, transactions, even locations that the 
government was targeting. (These are details, it should be 
noted, that the recent Times piece did not reveal.) Among 
the potentially sensitive items Forman told me, which were 
published:

ƒ€œOperation Green Quest is focusing on the informal, largely 
paperless form of money exchange known as hawala, which is 
Arabic for ƒ€˜to change.ƒ€Öƒ€�

ƒ€œFew undercover agents can penetrate Middle Eastern communities 
and money laundering rings because they look like outsiders and 
don't speak the languageƒ€|. As a result, Green Quest has to be 
more clever, by setting traps on the Internet and working to 
flush currency traffickers out of their hiding places.ƒ€�

ƒ€œTreasury and FBI investigators have identified hawala as a 
means by which the alleged Sept. 11 terrorists may have received 
money from overseas.ƒ€�

ƒ€œGreen Quest investigators, who've spent their careers 
dismantling money laundering rackets, were blindsided by 
the existence of the system. ƒ€˜Most of us couldn't spell 
hawalaƒ€Ö before Sept. 11,ƒ€Ö Forman said.ƒ€�

ƒ€œThe agencies' [involved in Green Quest] cooperative efforts 
have recently culminated in raids of alleged money laundering 
operations that aid suspected terrorist networks.ƒ€�

ƒ€œGreen Quest also wants to lower the threshold at which bank 
deposits and electronic funds transfers must be documented. 
Dropping the ceiling from $10,000 to $750, Forman said, may 
force money traffickers to try to get their cash out of the 
country by hand. They would then be subject to capture by a 
beefed-up cadre of Customs Service officers at border 
crossings, airports and seaports.ƒ€� 
[end]

These incompetent sons of bitches politicize everything.  
Nothing is sacred to these lying bastards.  And their 
everpresent bootlicking toadies eat it up like the fools they 
are.

Consummate Corruptables, the conservative wing of the Republican 
Party, working diligently to bring down the America of 
The Founders.

... George W. Bush, WORST  PRESIDENT  EVER!!
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