The Bush administration has scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations to save $12 million, a Congressional hearing was told on Tuesday.The Internal Revenue Service had asked for 80 more criminal investigators beginning in October to join the 160 it has already assigned to penetrate the shadowy networks that terrorist groups use to finance plots like the Sept. 11 attacks and the recent train bombings in Madrid. But the Bush administration did not include them in the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year. (My emphasis)
But we're trying very hard to dry up the terrorists' financing, don't you see? (Link from Suburban Guerilla via The American Street).
Posted by Linkmeister at April 3, 2004 10:36 AMOr, just maybe, the increase in FTE was not well justified by the agency. I used to work for the Fed's and sometimes requests are treated in a capricious manner, but other times they are taken seriously but denied because of insufficient justification.
The truth is we don't know why the increase in positions was denied. To associate with a lack of seriousness about terrorism is a bit of a leap, dontcha think? :)
Posted by: ruminator at April 3, 2004 12:23 PMUm, given the prior pattern of this Administration in which it pays lip service to doing something and then refuses to budget for it (see Afghanistan, the global AIDS fund, etc.) I don't think I'm overstretching too much. ;)
Posted by: Linkmeister at April 3, 2004 12:47 PM