In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
I.R.S. Request for More Terrorism Investigators Is Denied
WASHINGTON, March 30 - The Bush administration has scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations to save $12 million, a Congressional hearing was told on Tuesday.
The Internal Revenue Service had asked for 80 more criminal investigators beginning in October to join the 160 it has already assigned to penetrate the shadowy networks that terrorist groups use to finance plots like the Sept. 11 attacks and the recent train bombings in Madrid. But the Bush administration did not include them in the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year.
The disclosure, to a House Ways and Means subcommittee, came near the end of a routine hearing into the I.R.S. budget after most of the audience, including reporters, had left the hearing room.
It comes as the White House is fighting to maintain its image as a vigorous and uncompromising foe of global terrorism in the face of questions about its commitment and competence raised by the administration's former terrorism czar, Richard A. Clarke, and its first Treasury secretary, Paul H. O'Neill.
Representative Earl Pomeroy, a North Dakota Democrat whose question to a witness about one line on the last page of a routine report to Congress prompted the disclosure, said he was dumbfounded at the budget decision.
"The zeroing out of resources here made my jaw drop open," Mr. Pomeroy said. "It just leaps out at you."
Stopping the money flow will do so much more to stop terrorism than any particular war or arrest would. It is cost efficient, it is effective, and unfortunately for the security of America, boring. Bush does not want to get into the money flow story because too many of the names involved are part of his business history. That is the sad truth (see a posting below from a few days ago about Bush and BCCI).
- rob 2:11 PM - [PermaLink] -
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more coming...
