Clandestine HUMINT - Support Services - Finance

Finance

Industrialized nations, with complex financial systems, have a variety of reporting systems about money transfer, from which counterintelligence potentially can derive patterns of operations and warnings of operations in progress. Money laundering refers to methods for getting cash in and out of the financial system without it being noticed by financial counterintelligence.

The need for money, and challenge of concealing its transfer, will vary with the purpose of the clandestine system. If it is operated by a case officer under diplomatic cover, and the money is for small payments to agent(s), the embassy can easily get cash, and the amounts paid may not draw suspicion. If, however, there will be large payments to an agent, getting the money still is not a problem for the embassy, but there starts to be a concern that the agent may draw attention to himself by extensive spending.

US security systems, about which the most public information is known, usually include a credit check as part of a security clearance, and excessive debt is a matter of concern. It may be the case that refusing to clear people with known financial problems has stopped a potential penetration, but, in reality, the problem may well be at the other side. Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and John Walker all spent more money than could be explained by their salaries, but their conspicuous spending did not draw attention; they were detected because variously through investigations of leaks that threw suspicion on their access to information. Suspicion did fall on Jack Dunlap, who had his security clearance revoked and committed suicide. Perhaps Dunlap was more obvious as a low-level courier and driver than the others, while the others were officers in more responsible positions.

The question remains if sudden wealth is likely to be detected. More extensive bank reporting, partially as a result of the US PATRIOT Act and other reporting requirements of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the latter established before 9/11, may make receiving payments easier to catch.

Additional requirements for bank reporting were in the PATRIOT act, and intended to help catch terrorists preparing for operations. It is not clear, however, if terrorist operations will involve highly visible cash transactions. The 9/11 operations cells were reported to have required somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 in operating funds, and there were indeed wire transfers in the $100,000 range. Still, the question remains if a relatively small expenditure, compared with the enormous amounts in the illegal drug trade, will draw counterintelligence/counterterrorist attention.

Wire transfers and bank deposits go through formal value transfer systems where there is reporting to government. Especially terrorist groups, however, have access to informal value transfer systems (IVTS), where there is no reporting, although FinCEN has been suggesting indirect means of detecting the operation of IVTS.

For clandestine networks where the case officers are under non-official cover, handling large sums of cash is more difficult and may justify resorting to IVTS. When the cover is under a proprietary (owned by the intelligence agency) aviation company, it can be relatively simple to hide large bundles of cash, and make direct payments.