Washington,
April 24, 2007
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Chandra Harris
(770-210-5073)
Reps. Scott, Frank and Moore Introduce Counter-Terrorism Financing Coordination Act
Reps. David Scott (D-GA), Barney Frank (D-MA) and Gwen Moore (D-WI) introduced legislation today to force the Bush Administration to work together to help other countries dismantle terrorist financing networks and keep Americans safe. The Counter-Terrorism Financing Coordination Act, (H.R. 1993) will direct the Bush Administration to resolve turf wars and end bureaucratic infighting that have compromised the effectiveness of the U.S. government's efforts to assist other countries in the war on terrorism.
Specifically, the bill will require the Secretaries of State and Treasury to adopt recommendations of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) delineating the role of each agency in the delivery of counter-terrorism financing training and technical assistance to countries abroad. The Bush administration has been ignoring the problem for years, and has failed to resolve it after a GAO report released in 2005 discovered that these agencies lacked an integrated strategy to coordinate training and technical assistance efforts.
The GAO also reported that the two key agencies involved in these efforts, Treasury and State, cannot even agree with each other on their respective roles.
“Terrorists organizations continue to plot attacks against the United States. Their activities are funded through a world wide finance network. We need to be aggressive in shutting down terrorism funding sources. We can do this with better coordination and communication between financial regulators,” said Rep. Scott. “This important measure will help cut through bureaucracies to focus the efforts to cut off these funding streams and track down terrorist financiers.”
“We can stop terrorist organizations in their tracks by cutting off the financial networks that fund their activities,” said Rep. Moore. “This mission is far too important to allow the possibility that bureaucratic infighting may cause us to miss any potential opportunity to safeguard American lives. It is critical that we utilize every tool we have available and the Counter-Terrorist Financing Coordination Act will help ensure that federal agencies work together as seamlessly as possible.”
The "Counter-Terrorism Financing Coordination Act" will call for State and Treasury to enter into a Memorandum of Agreement that requires:
• A specific designation of each agency's leadership and role in the delivery of counterterrorism training and technical assistance;
• A dispute resolution methodology with specific and reasonable timeframes for resolving interagency disagreements; • The coordination of funding and resources for counterterrorism financing and anti-money laundering training and technical assistance, including the means for providing a transparent assessment of resources and a method for aligning those resources with the needs of vulnerable countries;
• Procedures for determining the appropriateness of the use of contractors and a system for evaluating their performance; and, • A process to measure the performance and results of counterterrorism training and technical assistance.
In addition, the bill makes Treasury more accountable to Congress by requiring more complete information on the nature and extent of how the agency tracks and blocks terrorist assets and provide performance measurements in an annual report to Congress.
