FOLLOW THE MONEY

Halt Terrorists' Cash Flow By Making Sale Of Illicit Drugs Unprofitable

One of the overwhelmingly difficult things we face when confronted
with a tragedy of the magnitude and complexity of Sept. 11 is
frustration that we as individuals cannot think of anything
constructive to do about it. Well, this time we can. Remember the
advice that "Deep Throat" purportedly gave to Woodward and Bernstein
to "follow the money" during the Watergate investigation? That advice
holds true on the financing of terrorism as well.

The key is still the money. Fanaticism without funding is far less
dangerous. Terrorists like Osama bin Laden are almost always in the
business of selling illicit drugs, and they launder huge amounts of
money from that trade in order to finance large parts of their
operations. This is nothing new, of course, because repressive
regimes and terrorist and revolutionary groups around the world have
been using money from illicit drug sales to finance their bloody
deeds for decades.

These include Fidel Castro and Muammar Kaddafi's governments in Cuba
and Libya, the late Ayatollah Khomeini's government in Iran, and the
former governments of Manuel Noriega and Erich Honecker in Panama and
East Germany. The government of Bulgaria has used the sale of drugs
effectively in its attempts to dislodge the government of neighboring
Turkey.

Many of the civil wars in Afghanistan and Lebanon were fought over
who would control the vast profits from the production, refining and
distribution of hashish, heroin and cocaine. The Shining Path in Peru
and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrilla movements
are almost completely financed by the sale of illicit drugs, and both
the Serbs and the Kosovo Liberation Army financed much of their
black-market gun purchases by drug trafficking. So if we really want
to do something significant to reduce the danger of terrorism in our
country and around the world, we must reduce the financing for that
terrorism.

Unfortunately, there is presently a movement to try to accomplish
this by further intruding upon our civil liberties by having banks
increase their surveillance of their customers' financial
transactions in order to "crack down" on drug-money launderers. But
we have tried that and it doesn't work. Billions of dollars in
profits stimulate amazing creativity, and this always keeps the drug
traffickers and money launderers a few steps ahead of the regulators.

Trying to decrease the financing of terrorism by further increasing
government intrusions into private transactions is like trying to
stop a waterfall by standing under it with a bucket. You can fill up
lots of buckets, but you cannot do anything to shut off the flow.
Instead, if we really want to deal a major blow to bin Laden and
other terrorists around the world, we should repeal drug prohibition.

Let's put our heads together and find a way to de-profitize the sale
of these illicit drugs. Some positive results have been obtained by
several programs in Western Europe, and we should investigate and
utilize some of those programs. This is critical, because it isn't
the drugs themselves, it is the prohibition of drugs that is the
Golden Goose of terrorism. Although alcohol continues in some cases
to be dangerous and addictive, repealing alcohol prohibition
seriously reduced the funding for violent gangsters like Al Capone
and Bugsy Siegel.

We can do the same thing with terrorists like bin Laden. When we
finally see and understand the direct connection between illicit drug
sales and terrorism, we will repeal our laws of drug prohibition that
have funneled so much money into the forces of fear and destruction
that all civilized people despise. And this we can do.