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Operation Green Quest

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Operation Green Quest was a United States Customs Service-sponsored interagency investigative unit formed in October of 2001, and concerned with the surveillance and interdiction of terrorist financing sources.

Synopsis

Led by the U.S. Customs Service, and included agents and analysts from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Federal prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department's Criminal Division also formed an integral part of Operation Green Quest. The director of Operation Green Quest was a senior special agent from U.S. Customs and the deputy director is a senior special agent from the IRS.

According to Customs, by its fourth month of operation Operation Green Quest had initiated more than 300 probes into terrorist finances, seizing about $10.3m in smuggled US currency and $4.3m in other assets. Its work resulted in 21 searches, 12 arrests and four indictments.[1]

SAAR network raid

Its most spectacular operation of was March 20, 2002 raid 19 interrelated business and non-profit entities in Herndon, VA associated with an umbrella corporation known as the SAAR Foundation, looking for ties to the Al Taqwa Bank and the Muslim Brotherhood. No arrests were made and no organizations were shut down, but over 500 boxes of files and computer files were confiscated, filling seven trucks.

The raid would raise serious concerns of unfair persecution within the American Muslim community,[2] leading to an April 4, 2002 meeting (arranged by Grover Norquist) in which several notable Muslim figures, including Palestinian-American financier and Republican organizer Talat Othman and Islamic Institute head Khaled Saffuri were received Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as representatives of the Muslim-American community, and to voice complaints about the raid.

See also

References

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