*EPF411 03/14/2002
Text: World Community Must Fight Terrorism, Justice Official Says
(Horowitz remarks at anti-terrorism conference in Thailand March 12-15) (3130)

To fight back is the only option the world has in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, says a top U.S. Justice Department official.

Michael E. Horowitz, chief of staff at the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, said the September 11 terrorist attack the United States suffered was just one of a string of terrorist attacks inflicted worldwide.

Horowitz gave the keynote address at a regional counter-terrorism conference held in Bangkok March 12-15. The conference was cosponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice and the International Law Enforcement Academy in Thailand.

"We knew from prior attacks suffered by other nations that this (September 11) was not a one-time event," Horowitz said. "Thus, the only real option was to fight back, to summon all our strength and all our resources, and to devote ourselves to better ways to identify, disrupt, and dismantle terrorist networks."

The world community, he said, has made the choice to fight terrorism. "Since September 11, through the deliberate campaign of terrorist disruption, tighter security, and the preventative arrest and detention of lawbreakers, the world has grown stronger -- and safer -- in the face of terrorism," Horowitz said.

But he cautioned against growing complacent. "We have the terrorists on the run, and there are fewer and fewer places left for them to hide. They now fear us far more than we will ever fear them," Horowitz said. The future of civilization depends on maintaining security against terrorists, he said.

More than 30 law enforcement officers from 11 Asia-Pacific countries participated in the event. Conference participants discussed cooperative measures nations can take to stop terrorists and to mitigate the impact of any future terrorist attack through the adoption of routine and special threat assessments. They also explored ways to better share intelligence information.

Other conference topics included enhanced immigration and customs capabilities, money laundering and other financial crimes.

Following is the text of Horowitz's remarks:

(begin text)

Keynote Address by Michael E. Horowitz,
Chief of Staff, Criminal Division
U.S. Department of Justice

1. Introduction

Thank you Joe for that kind introduction and thank you General Watcharopol and Director Lloyd for inviting me to give the keynote address before such a distinguished group on this important topic. Let me begin by extending to you a special greeting from U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft. We in the Department of Justice truly appreciate your dedication to the fight against terrorism and, in particular, your outstanding support and solidarity with the American people since the horrific attacks of September 11. On behalf of your friends in America, I am honored to be here to express our thanks.

We come together for this conference because the menace of terrorism knows no borders: geographic or political. Terrorists are motivated not by nationalism or by ideology, but by hate -- hatred of the kinds of values that we all share. On September 11, terrorists' hatred motivated them to kill innocent people from 78 different nations. Unfortunately, innocent citizens in many other nations of the world community also have suffered from the fury of terrorism. The events of September 11 once more taught us how vulnerable every nation is to terrorism. But if these attacks initially evoked fear, they ultimately resulted in a renewed and strengthened determination among the world community to fight this scourge. And that is why we are here this week -- to reaffirm our resolve, to further strengthen our ties, and to share our ideas on the tools available to us in the collective fight against this barbarism.

During this conference, we will discuss, among other things, measures we can all take (a) to stop the terrorists and to mitigate the impact of any future terrorist attack, such as through the adoption of routine and special threat assessments; (b) to better share intelligence information; (c) to enhance our immigration and customs capabilities; and (d) to disable the funding of terrorist organizations by vigorously investigating and prosecuting money laundering and other financial related crimes. I am confident that during this conference, through our exchange of ideas and discussions of our experiences, we will find common solutions to the very significant challenges we all face.

2. Issues for the Conference

Let me try and address some of the themes for this conference by giving you an overview of some of the difficult lessons law enforcement in my country has learned as the result of the September 11 attacks, and some of the steps we have taken as a result.

The US law enforcement response to the attacks began the instant terrorists guided passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At that moment, our nation began the largest, most comprehensive investigation and international manhunt in history. Our priority was then and remains today singular and over-riding: to prevent terrorists from striking again.

US law enforcement, intelligence, and military officials are working cooperatively with our counterparts around the world - including most if not all of you in this room -- to identify, locate, disrupt, and dismantle terrorist cells. And those efforts have born fruit. In December, the US indicted Zacarias Moussaoui for directly conspiring with Usama Bin Laden and the 19 hijackers to murder thousands of people on September 11. In January, Richard Reid was charged with attempting to take down an airplane with a concealed bomb, and John Walker Lindh, an American citizen, was charged with providing support to terrorists by fighting with them against Americans abroad.

In addition to bringing these criminal charges, we learned in the course of the investigation that despite our strong efforts to fight terrorism over the years, we remained vulnerable to further attack and needed to take swift corrective action, which we have done. For example, we now know that many of the 19 hijackers were in the US for months -- and some even years -- prior to the attack, and that they moved throughout the US without suspicion. Indeed, their very goal was to blend into our communities, despite the fact that some were in our country illegally.

We also discovered that the planning for the attacks was not limited to the US, but was conducted worldwide. And again this planning was largely done without fear of detection and disruption, despite the substantial flow of people and money across many international borders.

Another revelation from the September 11 investigation was that, although we were gathering large amounts of critical intelligence on terrorist activity, we were not properly sharing it with those who needed access to it and we were not effectively analyzing it. As you know, there are multiple federal law enforcement agencies in the US that collect information relevant to the fight against terrorism -- the FBI, Customs Service, State Department, Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Naturalization Service, to name a few. Moreover, most of our day-to-day law enforcement activity in the US is conducted by state and local police. And there are literally thousands of state and local law enforcement agencies, all of which are repositories of valuable information. Additionally, vital information gathering that is undertaken by our intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, and by our foreign counterparts. It was quickly evident that just gathering information is of no use if we were not properly sharing it with one another so that it could be effectively analyzed. Quite simply, we were information rich but analytically poor.

Finally, we determined that despite all the advances we had made through the years in fighting money laundering, the funding of terrorist organizations was being conducted in a way that largely avoided detection. And we simply did not have all the tools we needed to stop it.

So how do we solve these problems? Well, if I had all the answers we really wouldn't need to gather for this conference, would we? And, of course, there are no easy or perfect solutions. But let me briefly mention some of the actions my country has taken. And I know your governments have also taken significant actions to address these problems. The real essence of this conference is the exchange of ideas, and the opportunity to compare what solutions have worked best so that we can learn from one another.

3. New Policy Issues/Actions

As an initial matter, Attorney General Ashcroft has embarked on a wartime reorganization of the Department of Justice. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, which is part of the Justice Department, is being restructured to better perform its service and border security responsibilities. We have a 3,000 mile border to our north with Canada and a roughly 2,000 mile border to our south with Mexico. Prior to September 11, much of our border security focused on narcotics smuggling. But now we will also need to focus substantial resources on our northern border, to prevent individuals associated with terrorist organizations from coming into the US.

The FBI, under Director Mueller, is undergoing a historic reorganization to put the prevention of terrorism at the center of its law enforcement and national security efforts. In order to deny entry into the US of persons suspected of being terrorists and to locate, detain, prosecute, and deport terrorists already in the US, we created the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force. We have waged a deliberate campaign of arrest and detention to remove from the US suspected terrorists who have otherwise violated our laws.

In addition, the Customs Service and Border Patrol have been at their highest state of alert. All vehicles and persons entering the US are subjected to the highest level of scrutiny. Working with the State Department, we have imposed new screening requirements on certain applicants for non-immigrant visas. Additionally, our Congress has included in this year's budget substantial money for a new entry/exit visa database and tracking system. Over 300 million non-citizens move in and out of our country every year. While we warmly welcome guests, we also think that once their permission to remain in the US has expired, they must observe our laws and leave our country. Yet the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that about 40% of the illegal aliens in the US are those who came in legally as guests, and have chosen not to leave as required. That is why an entry/exit database and tracking system is under development. Our government - like many of yours -- also has designed a new tamper-resistant visa and upgraded US passports to prevent photo substitution.

With regard to intelligence sharing, our Congress passed legislation in October that enables us to more efficiently share law enforcement information with our intelligence community. We have created a national task force at the FBI to centralize control and information sharing in our investigation. This task force has investigated hundreds of thousands of leads, conducted hundreds of searches, interviewed thousands of witnesses, and obtained numerous court-authorized surveillance orders. Our prosecutors and agents also have collected information from, and shared evidence with, countries throughout the world, including throughout Asia.

One of the areas where we've expanded the investigation has been with the assistance of the Defense Department, through the examination of documents and interrogation of witnesses seized in Afghanistan. We have, along with the military, put in place a procedure to assure that we scrutinize every document and every other piece of evidence that comes out of Afghanistan, to determine whether it has any intelligence value.

Outside Washington, we are forging new relationships of cooperation with state and local law enforcement. The Attorney General has created Anti-Terrorism Task Forces -- one in each of our federal prosecuting offices - to integrate the communications and activities of local, state, and federal law enforcement.

Additionally, President Bush established the Office of Homeland Security. This Office was created to engage every level of government, every private enterprise and every citizen to help prevent, prepare for and defend against terrorist attacks and threats. Among other responsibilities, the Office has been tasked to coordinate all federal government terrorist prevention and protection activities within the U.S., and work with state and local governments.

Finally, let me turn to our efforts to disrupt terrorist financing, which I personally believe is likely to be our most effective tool - both domestically and internationally -- in the war on terrorism. After all, money is the lifeblood of terrorists, and therefore we must do all we can to starve them of that life-sustaining nutrient. Of course, all of us involved in the fight against terrorism knew that was the case even before September 11, and it led to the development of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. The Convention obligates parties to create criminal offenses specific to terrorist financing, and to extradite or submit for prosecution persons engaged in such offenses.

But it become clear after September 11 that we in the US needed to take additional steps, so President Bush issued an Executive Order which (a) authorizes blocking assets of organizations and individuals linked to global terrorism, (b) prohibits transactions with terrorist groups, leaders, and corporate and charitable fronts listed pursuant to the Order, and (c) establishes the US's ability to block the US assets of foreign banks that fail to freeze terrorist assets and to deny these banks access to US markets. In addition, our Congress enacted legislation granting us authority to seize and forfeit terrorist assets, both foreign and domestic. The new law also made the smuggling of bulk cash across our border unlawful, added terrorism and other offenses to the list of racketeering offenses, and authorized the seizure of money subject to forfeiture in a foreign bank by authorizing the seizure of funds held in a US correspondent account. Other important provisions expanded our ability to prosecute unlicensed money transmitters, and provided authority for the service of administrative subpoenas on foreign banks for records of foreign transactions.

In addition, the FBI created a Financial Investigation Group to examine the financial arrangements used to support terrorist attacks. The Departments of Justice, Treasury and State are working together on that group to identify the financial infrastructure of terrorist organizations worldwide in order to curtail their ability to move money through the international banking system. The Group has succeeded in obtaining enormous amounts of information from around the world on bank accounts and financial transactions. While the analysis continues, through this financial information, we have established how the hijackers received their money, how and where they were trained to fly, where they lived and -- perhaps most significantly -- the names and whereabouts of persons with whom they worked and came into contact.

Using a combination of formal and informal mechanisms, the September 11 terrorists eluded the attention of regulatory, intelligence, and law-enforcement agencies. Among the mechanisms used by the terrorists were bank accounts, wire transfers of funds, and the use of credit cards. However, the amounts sent by wire transfer or deposited to accounts were often small sums that would normally escape scrutiny. In other instances, the terrorists relied upon hawalas to transfer money or on couriers to transport bulk currency.

The good news is that the international community has recognized these problems. In October, the Financial Action Task Force issued new recommendations on terrorist financing, which included a call upon all countries to criminalize the financing of terrorism and terrorist organizations, to freeze and confiscate terrorist assets, to report suspicious transactions linked to terrorism, and to impose anti-money laundering controls on non-traditional banking systems, such as hawalas. These recommendations were reaffirmed just last month at a Financial Action Task Force meeting in Hong Kong.

As a result of all of these efforts, the US and countries working with us, have combined to freeze over $80 million in terrorist-related assets. And we expect that amount to continue to grow. The amount of assets blocked underscores the importance of another measure - the critical need for international cooperation. I cannot emphasize enough how vitally important international cooperation is. After all, given the ease with which money can be moved internationally in today's world, no country can alone effectively stop terrorist funding because the moneys will simply be shifted to the country with the weakest laws. And I am very happy to report that, to date, the level of international cooperation has been unprecedented. Governments worldwide have blocked more than $46 million - over half of the total of $80 million -- and 147 countries and jurisdictions have blocking orders in place.

And so we must make sure that our bilateral and multilateral agreements, including our Mutual Legal Assistance Agreements and extradition treaties, are up to date and will allow us to fight this menace fully and effectively. It is an issue I know all of us in this room had to face, and I look forward during this conference to learning how we can better deal with those matters.

4. Conclusion

Let me close this address with some words of hope. Since those first terrible hours of September 11, the world has been faced with a choice as stark as the horrifying images of that day. One option was to call September 11 an aberration, to believe it could never happen again, and to live in a dream world that required us to do nothing differently. But of course, we knew from prior attacks suffered by other nations that this was not a one-time event. Thus, the only real option was to fight back, to summon all our strength and all our resources, and to devote ourselves to better ways to identify, disrupt, and dismantle terrorist networks.

The world community, I am pleased to say, has made the choice to fight terrorism. Since September 11, through the deliberate campaign of terrorist disruption, tighter security, and the preventative arrest and detention of lawbreakers, the world has grown stronger - and safer - in the face of terrorism. Due to your hard work and the work of your colleagues in law enforcement around the world, we have made a great deal of progress in a very short period of time. But we cannot - we must not - allow ourselves to grow complacent. We have the terrorists on the run, and there are fewer and fewer places left for them to hide. They now fear us far more than we will ever fear them. So let us use conferences such as this one to ensure that they will never again have an opportunity to flourish in our midst. Not only do our citizens expect us to provide that security, but the very future of our civilization depends on it.

Thank you again for the honor of addressing you and for the invitation to participate in this meeting.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

Return to Public File Main Page

Return to Public Table of Contents