My first step in my seven-point plan to revitalize our anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist finance (AML/CFT) efforts is to develop a plan. Step two is to hold agencies/departments/and management accountable for implementing our national strategy. As described in my last blog, our 2007 National Anti-Money Laundering Strategy has been mostly ignored. Likewise, most concerned agencies and departments that I am familiar with all have “Five Year Plans.” The plans articulate clear and concise goals which the agencies and departments pledge to accomplish. These plans also play an integral role in the formation of budgets.
In 2006, my first book Hide & Seek: Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and the Stalled War on Terrorist Finance was published (Potomac Books). The final chapter in the book is called “Steps Forward.” The steps were prescient and just as timely today. One of the steps was headed, “The Federal Work Force is Crying out for Accountability.” I will quote just a few sentences from the pages I wrote under accountability; “The present federal workplace culture, which allows managers to shirk responsibility, encourages the intellectual and moral cowardliness that contributed to September 11. At the time this book is being written, much of the original leadership of al Qaeda has been destroyed. They are gone. However, some culpable federal managers in place before September 11 remain. While America’s adversaries are learning and adapting, many failed federal management syndromes continue (preoccupation with turf; lack of imagination; fixation on form over substance; dearth of common sense, groupthink, etc.).”
Congress is equally responsible. It has increasingly ignored its important oversight duties. An easy and well over-due “fix” is to hold simple hearings. Call federal managers and directors before the appropriate oversight committees and simply ask them to articulate what they have done to fulfill the promises their agencies made in the 2007 Anti-Money Laundering Report. If that is too difficult, Congressional staffers should write pointed letters to the concerned departments and agencies asking the same tough questions. For example, “Agency X, you promised to do this and that in the 2007 Strategy Report and your xxx Five Year Plan. Show us the proof that you accomplished what you stated you would do. If not, why not.” I volunteer to help Congressional staff peer through and decipher the agency double talk and misleading statistics that are so commonly used in response to these types of queries.
Congress should then hold the concerned managers accountable and slash the departments’ and agencies’ budgets for not fulfilling their promises. That will get their attention.
In 2006, my first book Hide & Seek: Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and the Stalled War on Terrorist Finance was published (Potomac Books). The final chapter in the book is called “Steps Forward.” The steps were prescient and just as timely today. One of the steps was headed, “The Federal Work Force is Crying out for Accountability.” I will quote just a few sentences from the pages I wrote under accountability; “The present federal workplace culture, which allows managers to shirk responsibility, encourages the intellectual and moral cowardliness that contributed to September 11. At the time this book is being written, much of the original leadership of al Qaeda has been destroyed. They are gone. However, some culpable federal managers in place before September 11 remain. While America’s adversaries are learning and adapting, many failed federal management syndromes continue (preoccupation with turf; lack of imagination; fixation on form over substance; dearth of common sense, groupthink, etc.).”
Congress is equally responsible. It has increasingly ignored its important oversight duties. An easy and well over-due “fix” is to hold simple hearings. Call federal managers and directors before the appropriate oversight committees and simply ask them to articulate what they have done to fulfill the promises their agencies made in the 2007 Anti-Money Laundering Report. If that is too difficult, Congressional staffers should write pointed letters to the concerned departments and agencies asking the same tough questions. For example, “Agency X, you promised to do this and that in the 2007 Strategy Report and your xxx Five Year Plan. Show us the proof that you accomplished what you stated you would do. If not, why not.” I volunteer to help Congressional staff peer through and decipher the agency double talk and misleading statistics that are so commonly used in response to these types of queries.
Congress should then hold the concerned managers accountable and slash the departments’ and agencies’ budgets for not fulfilling their promises. That will get their attention.
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