Al Qaeda has five principal sources of fundingthe personal wealth of Osama bin Laden, other wealthy individuals, principally located in the Persian Gulf area, front companies operated for profit, illegal activities, such as money-laundering or smuggling, and finally, charities, where inadvertent or intentional diversion of funds finances terror, not benevolent activities.
The problem appears to be unfortunately pervasive. I was sharing with the Deputy Secretary just a few moments before we came out, a visit I had yesterday from the U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of my State, and he was not visiting me on this subject.
I just asked him as a general matter of curiosity the kinds of things he was working on. And without prompting, he volunteered that he was working on a couple of open investigations involving the misuse of charities in the Northern District and the siphoning of funds from those charities to assist al Qaeda. And my response is that if it is going on in smaller counties in northern Indiana, it must be going on in a lot of places in addition to that, not just the large metropolitan areas. That may give you some indication of just the extent of the challenge that we face.
It is particularly galling and outrageous when funds generated in the United States by what I assume are predominantly legal and patriotic U.S. citizens, are being diverted to assisting attacks upon America and harming or, in some cases, as we have tragically learned, killing Americans.