Pubdate: Sat, 17 Nov 2001
Source: Bergen Record (NJ)
Copyright: 2001 Bergen Record Corp.
Contact:  http://www.bergen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/44
Author: Mitchel Maddux

DEA CHIEF HOPES TO PUT BRAKES ON FLOW OF MONEY TO TERRORISTS

NEWARK -- The head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says
the agency is increasing its focus on tracking the flow of drug money
in New Jersey, in an effort to intercept funds used to finance
terrorism overseas.

Asa Hutchinson, the DEA's administrator, said Friday that the agency's
anti-drug mission continues to be a vital national law enforcement
priority and has taken on new importance in the wake of the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks.

"Drug trafficking fuels violent groups, from insurgencies in South
America to terror groups in the Middle East," Hutchinson said in an
interview with The Record, during his visit to the DEA's Newark field
office. "We have to not only dismantle the trafficking organizations,
but also look at where the money goes. You cannot fight terrorism
without fighting drugs."

Hutchinson's visit to New Jersey comes after a busy stretch for DEA
agents here, many of whom were assigned to the terrorism probe
following the jetliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

DEA investigators have been trying to track money used by some the
hijackers, who either lived in or passed through Passaic County in the
months before the attacks.

In Paterson, DEA agents have questioned a number of check cashing and
wire remittance businesses in the Union Avenue neighborhood, where
several of the hijackers rented an apartment. Several business owners
said the agents showed them photographs of the 19 hijackers, examined
wire transfer records, and asked if any of the men had wired money
from Paterson to other locations, the owners said.

DEA officials confirmed that its agents discovered the nearby hotel
rooms and rental cars used by the men who hijacked a United Airlines
jet at Newark International Airport. The plane later crashed in a
field in western Pennsylvania.

In the wake of the terror attacks, the FBI and the U.S. Customs
Service have shifted much of their focus to anti-terrorism operations,
giving the DEA a larger role in combating the nation's drug problem.
But senior U.S. officials say that drug trafficking and terrorism are
often linked.

In testimony before a House subcommittee in Washington last month,
Hutchinson said that 70 percent of the world's supply of opium was
produced in Afghanistan. He said the drug trade in that southwest
Asian nation had flourished because of support given it by the
Taliban, the radical group that has sheltered Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden, whom U.S. officials blame for the Sept. 11 terror attacks,
has benefited from the drug trade, although the DEA has no evidence
that he played a role in it, Hutchinson told Congress. The sanctuary
Bin Laden enjoyed in Afghanistan was made possible by the Taliban's
reliance on illicit drug income, Hutchinson told the panel.

In an effort to follow the terror money trail in New Jersey, DEA
intelligence analysts have used expertise normally used in drug
investigations to analyze records of the hijackers' telephone calls,
DEA and FBI officials confirmed Friday.

Using a method known as "link analysis," DEA intelligence specialists
from Newark tracked relationships between the hijackers and others
they declined to identify, both in the United States and overseas,
officials said.

"Agents and intelligence analysts went down to Washington to brief the
FBI and other law enforcement agencies -- both foreign and domestic --
on the telephone-toll analysis that they made," said Anthony D.
Cammarato, special agent in charge of the DEA's Newark office.

Such methods allow investigators to find those who may have helped the
hijackers, to establish the hijackers' travel patterns, and can
potentially lead agents to other suspected cells of al-Queda, the
terrorist network associated with Bin Laden, officials said.

When DEA agents found that the hijackers of the Newark jet had stayed
in the Marriott Hotel at the airport, as well as at the Days Inn, they
also found "documentary evidence recovered from the search that proved
valuable during the investigation by the FBI," Cammarato said.

A law enforcement source has said this evidence was a pilot's flight
manual discarded in the trash can of a hotel room used by the alleged
hijackers. 
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