Pubdate: Fri, 30 Nov 2001
Source: Orange County Register (CA)
Copyright: 2001 The Orange County Register
Contact:  http://www.ocregister.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/321
Author: Judge James P. Gray
Note: Judge Gray is a Orange County Superior Court judge and is the 
author of "Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: 
A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs."
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

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.
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MAP posted-by: Josh