CNNFN Lou Dobbs Tonight - Transcript

CNNFN

SHOW: LOU DOBBS TONIGHT

HEADLINE: LOU DOBBS TONIGHT; CNNfn

GUESTS: Sean O'Keefe, Charles Grassley

BYLINE: Lou Dobbs, Bill Tucker, William Schneider, Kitty Pilgrim, Lisa Sylvester, Bob Franken, John King, Jamie McIntyre, David Ensor, Christine Romans

BODY:
LOU DOBBS, CNNfn ANCHOR, LOU DOBBS TONIGHT: Tonight: The government has launched a huge program to photograph and fingerprint millions of foreign visitors. Critics, however, say it will do little to stop terrorists. Bob Franken will report.

DOBBS: The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee says the Treasury Department is not doing enough to stop the flow of money to radical Islamist terrorists. Senator Charles Grassley has criticized the Treasury Department's office of Foreign Asset Control for failure to force bank to impose sanctions against terrorist.

Senator Grassley is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and joins us tonight from Orlando, Florida.

Mr. Chairman, good to have you with us.

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY (R-IO), CHAIRMAN, SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE: Glad to be with you, Lou.

DOBBS: Senator, you have sent in your role as chairman of the committee, a letter to the office of foreign asset control.

Have they responded to your concerns and your questions?

GRASSLEY: No. And worse yet, there's been suggestions from the inspector general that they should have made some changes a couple years ago, recommendations made that haven't even been made. And it's kind of a case of the agency maybe not knowing what it doesn't know. And this is a very important agency, because it's the agency that, when it gets word of terrorist activity and the source of funding, it can freeze those funds. So it's really in the front line of our war against terrorism.

DOBBS: You in your letter say that there were at least two occasions when nine U.S. agencies identified terrorists before the office of Foreign Asset Control.

What do you propose should be done?

How can that happen?

GRASSLEY: Well, the U.N. and the European Union did identify bin Laden's brother-in-law, and froze his assets. Our own government recognized the organization that bin Laden's brother-in-law was connected with, froze the assets of the organization, but didn't freeze the assets of the individual, so there's a big loophole. We asked this agency when it came before our committee, if it needed any additional authority. And they told us it didn't need any additional authority. I think it does. But I would like to have the agency tell us what sort of authority it needs to stay on top of it. We're also finding that, according to these recommendations, that it really is operating in files that are paper, and old-fashioned, and not really the high-tech sort of record-keeping you need. In fact, our terrorists' enemies are using the highest tech, latest equipment against us. It seems like our own agency ought to have high-tech response and particularly the records that are needed.

DOBBS: And they are not demanding enough, in your judgment, of banks and other financial institutions to track and to stop the flow of this money?

GRASSLEY: That's another thing. They're not working with our regulatory agencies to keep on top of it. They're saying that certain laws would leave it to these banks to voluntarily give this information. We just can't wait for agencies that may know about activity reporting to us. We ought to be very aggressively pursuing it. And if they need additional legislative authority, that's what we're really asking them. They're taking kind of a copout saying, well, we're doing all we can do, because we're asking for voluntary compliance. In the war on terror, we can't wait for voluntary compliance.

DOBBS: Senator Chuck Grassley, we thank you very much for being with us here. And senator, we have invited Richard Newcom, the director of the office of Foreign Assets Control to join us. And we hope he will accept it tomorrow evening. We thank you for being here, sir.

GRASSLEY: I'm glad to be with you