Counterterrorism

Oct. 2 found Francis Taylor, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, in Brussels providing a classified briefing to NATO leaders that tied al Qaeda to the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. After the briefing, NATO adopted a resolution of solidarity among its members in the war against terrorism. Dec. 6 found Taylor in Beijing, where he was negotiating anti-terrorism plans with the Chinese government. Thirteen days later, on Dec. 19, Taylor appeared in Asuncion, Paraguay, discussing counterterrorism measures with officials of that country,Argentina and Brazil, whose tri-border area is the home of several international terrorist organizations.

The globe-trotting Taylor has the incredible task of overseeing efforts to track down terrorists, who have a whole world to hide in, before they reach the United States or attack Americans overseas. The great impact of his foreign policy job on domestic security is a given in the post-Sept. 11 world. To root out the 50 known al Qaeda cells-and the many unknown cells-lurking in all corners of the world, Taylor coordinates U.S. counterterrorism policies in financial, diplomatic, law enforcement and military circles on every continent, juggling the concerns of U.S. federal agencies, foreign governments and international organizations.

"We have what amounts to a coalition of coalitions, with some nations forging ahead to deny terrorists access to banking systems, for example, and other nations more active in other areas," Taylor said in the November edition of the State Department journal, U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda . "Our challenge will be to hold the coalitions together until the campaign is successful."

At home, Taylor sits atop interagency working groups that deal with counterterrorism policy, including the Technical Support Working Group, which designs gadgets, software and training courses to improve the government's ability to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.

Taylor, a retired general, was sworn in on July 13, 2001, after 31 years in the Air Force, where, most recently, he headed the Office of Special Investigations.

Pasquale D'Amuro
Assistant Director for Counterterrorism
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Justice Department
(202) 324-4886

FBI Director Robert Mueller, confirmed just five weeks before Sept. 11, reorganized the upper ranks of the nation's premier law enforcement agency after the terrorist attacks. Gone is a single deputy director. In his place are four executive assistant directors-one for criminal investigations, one for administration, one for law enforcement support services, and one for counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

Beneath the executive assistant directors are 18 assistant directors, including Pasquale "Pat" D'Amuro, assistant director for counterterrorism.

D'Amuro is one of the FBI's most experienced investigators of terrorism. Bred as an agent in New York-until recently the center of anti-terrorism work at the bureau - D'Amuro oversaw investigations and prosecutions in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 TWA Flight 800 explosion, the 1998 African embassy bombings and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. D'Amuro headed New York's Joint Terrorism Task Force, a group of counterterrorism squads made up of investigators from the FBI, the New York Police Department, the Port Authority of New York, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

Given that resume, Mueller put D'Amuro in charge of the Sept. 11 investigation shortly after the attacks. The investigation put together a picture of the 19 hijackers and their movements up to the attacks that is relatively detailed, given the attackers' intense efforts to stay below the radar screen, and tied them to Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization. After leading the largest investigation in bureau history, D'Amuro will now make Washington his home and lead the FBI's most important mission: preventing terrorism and prosecuting terrorists.

D'Amuro's "investigative and leadership talents, refined by the experience of a 22-year career as a special agent of the FBI, make him well prepared to take on the challenge of directing the counterterrorism division during a critical period of reorganization and refocusing of the work of the FBI," Mueller said in January.

D'Amuro's job includes beefing up the bureau's data-mining prowess so the FBI can detect would-be attackers who use techniques similar to those of the Sept. 11 hijackers to avoid detection. Tracking financial activities and analyzing telephone traffic are among the key tools that D'Amuro's division must develop.

Juan Zarate
Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Terrorism and Violent Crime
Treasury Department
(202) 622-1466

Juan Zarate does not work for the Defense Department, but he plays a crucial role in the ongoing war on terrorism. Zarate, the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for terrorism and violent crime, coordinates the department's anti-terrorism efforts, including overseeing an intra-agency investigation of terrorist financing.

President Bush repeatedly has emphasized the need to tie terrorists to their funding as a key element of the ongoing war on terrorism. "We will direct every resource at our command to win the war on terrorism . . . every financial influence. We will starve the terrorists of funding," Bush said in the days following Sept. 11.

Zarate has spent the past several months carrying out that mandate. Working with the Customs Service; the Secret Service; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network; and the Internal Revenue Service, Zarate has searched businesses and charities that could serve as terrorist fronts for irregularities in trade pricing, studied the suspicious use of credit cards and monitored narcotics trafficking.

As Zarate told lawmakers in February, "Terrorist funding . . . is different than classic money laundering. In cases of money laundering, the proceeds of an illicit activity are laundered or layered in ways to make them appear legitimate, and the ultimate goal is usually the attainment of more money. With terrorist financing the source of the funding is often legitimate-as in the case of charitable donations or profits from storefront businesses-and the ultimate goal is not necessarily the attainment of more funds. The ultimate goal of terrorist funding is destruction."

Zarate, who reports to Kenneth Lawson, Treasury's assistant secretary for enforcement, has experience in investigating terrorism. As a prosecutor in the Justice Department's Terrorism and Violent Crime Section, Zarate assisted in investigating and prosecuting several terrorism-related cases, including the bombing of the USS Cole. Zarate, a California native, served as federal clerk in the Southern District of California, and is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. He's also written a book on U.S. foreign policy in Central America, Forging Democracy.

Julie Myers
Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Money Laundering and Financial Crimes
Treasury Department
(202) 622-1463

For at least two administration officials, homeland security is a family affair. Before joining the Treasury Department, Julie Myers already had friends in high places. Her uncle is Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Myers came to town, she moved in with the general and his family.

While Richard Myers fights terrorists on the battlefield, Julie Myers has turned her attention to targeting their funding and the illicit practices on which various other criminals thrive. Charged with implementing a national strategy to combat money laundering, Myers oversees a variety of law enforcement functions at Treasury that are designed to disrupt terrorist financing and preserve the integrity of U.S. markets. The 2001 USA Patriot Act, signed by President Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, put many of these new mechanisms in place.

Money laundering refers to the "cleansing" of illegally garnered funds by hiding them in legitimate bank accounts. Myers has plenty of experience sorting through dirty laundry. She most recently prosecuted financial criminals and narcotics traffickers as an assistant U.S. attorney, and before that she served as a deputy to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in his investigation of President Clinton's trysts with Monica Lewinsky.

Myers is philosophical, yet utterly realistic about the role of financial crime prevention in homeland security.

"There was a time . . . when some may have argued that money is nothing more than a medium of exchange-colorless and odorless, like some component of the atmosphere, conducive to life but morally neutral," she told an international gathering of financial regulators in Florida last March. "In the last two decades we have begun to disavow that notion."

Since the 32-year-old Cornell Law School graduate was barely in high school two decades ago, Myers' insight is especially remarkable. Treasury investigators believe that much of the money used to support terrorist training and attacks comes from illicit financial schemes, and Myers has clearly drawn that connection.

Ultimately, Myers hopes, new laws will help dismantle terrorists' financial resources and strengthen the nation's financial security.

James Gurule
Undersecretary for Enforcement
Treasury Department
(202) 622-0470

It's hard to find any homeland security officials who haven't been chasing, tracking or analyzing criminals and their deeds for some part of their career. More often than not, these officials have spent most of their professional lives doing it.

Long before he was targeting terrorists, James Gurule was busting narcotics traffickers. He began his career as a trial attorney with the Justice Department, and spent the next two decades crisscrossing the country on other federal and local assignments. Now the Treasury Department's undersecretary for enforcement, Gurule has turned his legal acumen to the task of breaking up the international financial rings that support Islamic fundamentalists.

Gurule oversees Treasury's Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, which coordinates the work of other Treasury and Customs Service divisions involved in financial law enforcement and investigation. Since the first weeks after Sept. 11, Treasury has identified more than 165 individuals and entities as "financiers of terrorism" and has blocked more than $34 million in assets.

Gurule says international cooperation is a key to targeting the money circles of militants. Treasury officials report that U.S. allies have blocked $70 million in assets in their countries. The help of Western European nations in disrupting money-laundering rings and illicit financial schemes that funnel money to Islamic organizations has been essential. But Treasury officials and their colleagues at the Customs Service, which oversees a financial crimes task force known as Project Green Quest, have had to rely on cooperation and intelligence from Middle Eastern nations as well.

Before joining Treasury, Gurule taught criminal law and litigation at the Notre Dame Law School. He was also an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, where he served as the deputy chief of the Major Narcotics and Forfeiture Division.

Marcy Forman
Director
Operation Green Quest
Customs Service
Treasury Department
(202) 927-0840

When she moved into her new office at the Customs Service's headquarters in Washington last October, Marcy Forman barely had any time to make herself at home. Framed certificates sat on the floor waiting to be hung. A half-opened suitcase rested next to her desk, not clearly indicating whether Forman was coming or going. But in the past nine months, Forman has probably found little time to do much else than focus on the singular passion that has driven her throughout her career: catching swindlers and smugglers.

Forman started out with Customs as an inspector in Dallas and moved on to supervise fraud and smuggling task forces at the agency. She chaired a joint Treasury- Justice working group on the black market peso exchange, one of the more notorious illicit money transfer networks. In the course of these pursuits, Forman became one of the government's most highly regarded financial crimes investigators.

Now, past is prologue as Forman has taken on her biggest challenge, leading Operation Green Quest, a multi-agency task force that seeks to "disrupt and dismantle" terrorist networks by going after their funding. The group is made up of experts and investigators from Treasury, the Secret Service, Justice and the Internal Revenue Service, to name just a few of its members.

Forman's second most daunting task, aside from catching terrorists, is, perhaps, keeping the nearly one dozen organizations working under her purview from getting their wires crossed. Forman says that inter-agency cooperation is essential to Green Quest's success. The task force is a commingling of modern intelligence, years of experience and old-fashioned investigation.

Forman is the task force's liaison with the top brass at the Treasury, Justice and State departments, as well as other law enforcement representatives with whom Green Quest is cooperating. Some of those international efforts involve intelligence-sharing and the deployment of "jump teams" of Treasury investigators who meet with foreign financial officials to develop leads for Green Quest to pursue.

Stephen Younger
Director
Defense Threat Reduction Agency
Defense Department
(703) 767-7883

Stephen Younger changed jobs last year. The longtime federal nuclear weapons designer went from developing weapons of mass destruction to predicting what types of deadly tools terrorists and hostile nations might use to attack the United States.

Younger heads the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir, Va. The Defense organization spends more than $2 billion annually to predict, defer and defend against threats posed by weapons of mass destruction. The agency's more than 2,000 military and civilian employees are not only responsible for predicting threats, but also for coming up with ideas about how to counter them (including what new technologies to develop). Additionally, the agency oversees international arms control agreements and reviews exports of U.S. technologies to ensure they won't be used to develop or produce weapons of mass destruction.

Younger told Newsweek in March that "everything we thought we knew was true turned out to be wrong" in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. But, he added, it is not uncommon for history-changing events to go unanticipated, noting the United States did not foresee either the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Younger said he is combining teams of scholars in art, literature, history, psychology, religion, economics and sociology with computer models to make sure the next attack is not a surprise. "We have 5,000 years of recorded history. Really, human beings haven't changed," he said.

Prior to taking over the agency Sept. 1, Younger oversaw the nation's nuclear weapons program as senior associate laboratory director for national security at the Los Alamos, N.M., National Laboratory. Younger began his career with the National Bureau of Standards in the early 1980s before transferring to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked as a nuclear weapons designer. He was the founder and first director of the Center for International Security Affairs at Los Alamos, where he created and oversaw cooperative programs with nuclear scientists and laboratories in the former Soviet Union.

James Clapper
Director
National Imagery and Mapping Agency
Defense Department
(301) 227-7300

One of the nation's most experienced intelligence experts is heading the Defense Department's newest intelligence agency. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper took charge of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency last September-just three days after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"So much for my impeccable timing," Clapper said in an interview in the agency's Web publication. "The expectations were that we would be making some changes, which normally happen when you have a new director. The crisis accelerated the pace of change."

NIMA was created in 1996 to centralize all digital imaging and mapping needs for the Defense Department and civilian agencies. Previously, no single agency was charged with that responsibility, and there was widespread concern that the federal government was not keeping pace with increasingly advanced information collection systems and digital technology.

Clapper said the agency could play a "huge role" in homeland security. "A lot of products and services could be overlaid in a homeland security context. Except that in homeland security, the customer base wouldn't necessarily be the military; rather, it would be the responder community," said Clapper, noting that "profound" policy and budget issues will have to be resolved as the agency takes on that role.

Most recently, the new director has focused his efforts on overhauling the agency's information technology operations. In December, NIMA signed one of the federal government's largest outsourcing deals-worth as much as $2.2 billion over the next 15 years-with joint venture corporation NJVC of Vienna, Va., to take over a host of the agency's information operations and upgrade its aging computer systems.

"This is a major step for NIMA to enhance world-class and cost effective IT/IS services to our customers. The contract places the agency in an excellent position to accelerate the incorporation of best commercial practices, while retaining the skills from our current workforce," said Clapper, adding that 600 agency workers are expected to leave NIMA as a result of the deal, but they will be given a chance to work for the contractor.

Clapper, who oversaw Air Force intelligence for Operation Desert Storm, has more than four decades of experience in the intelligence community. CIA Director George Tenet, who along with the secretary of Defense appointed Clapper to the post, has called the retired threestar general a "living legend" and has said his wealth of experience will be helpful in creating a full-service imagery and mapping agency.

Brig. Gen. Douglas O'Dell
Commander, 4th Marine
Expeditionary Brigade
Defense Department
(910) 451-7916

Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Douglas O'Dell heads the service's newly activated anti-terrorism brigade. O'Dell says the unit of 4,800 Marines and sailors will provide "vigilance with an attitude and the Marine Corps muscle to back it up."

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones called for the creation of the brigade as a way to merge existing anti-terrorism capabilities into one umbrella organization. The brigade will include three existing military units-the Marine Security Force Battalion, the Marine Security Guard Battalion and the Chemical, Biological Incident Response Unit-and a newly created anti-terrorism battalion. The command will help identify threats outside the United States, coordinate and provide anti-terrorism training to federal agencies, take actions to prevent the loss of American life and property overseas and support agencies seeking to reduce terrorist threats.

"This is evolving very rapidly," said O'Dell when the brigade was created last fall. "It is a capability we have on the ground today. We have the assets to deploy today, and we will grow this capability as we continue to train very aggressively for whatever threat may emerge." Eventually, the Marine Corps hopes to have anti-terrorism capabilities in every infantry battalion.

Jones has said the new unit shows the Marine Corps is moving forward to meet the challenges and opportunities resulting from the Sept. 11 attacks. The country's security forces units now have a "direct partnership with an organic air component, combat service element and infantry battalion, as well as a command element with dedicated planners, coordinators and liaison officers," Jones said when he created the new brigade.