According to Time magazine, “The US was all set to join a global crackdown on criminal and terrorist money havens [in early 2001]. Thirty industrial nations were ready to tighten the screws on offshore financial centers like Liechtenstein and Antigua, whose banks have the potential to hide and often help launder billions of dollars for drug cartels, global crime syndicates—and groups like Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization. Then the Bush administration took office.”
[Time, 10/15/2001] After pressure from the powerful banking lobby, the Treasury Department under Paul O’Neill halts US cooperation with these international efforts begun in 2000 by the Clinton administration. Clinton had created a Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center in his last budget, but under O’Neill no funding for the center is provided and the tracking of terrorist financing slows down. Spurred by the 9/11, attacks, the center will finally get started three days after 9/11 (see October 2000-September 14, 2001). [Foreign Affairs, 7/2001; Time, 10/15/2001] Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will later claim that efforts to track al-Qaeda’s finances began to make significant headway in 2000, after Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin stepped down and was replaced by Larry Summers. But, Clarke will claim, “When the Bush administration came into office, I wanted to raise the profile of our efforts to combat terrorist financing, but found little interest. The new President’s economic advisor, Larry Lindsey, had long argued for weakening US anti-money laundering laws in a way that would undercut international standards. The new Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill, was lukewarm at best toward the multilateral effort to ‘name and shame’ foreign money laundering havens, and allowed the process to shut down before the status of Saudi Arabian cooperation was ever assessed.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 195-196]
12:00 p.m. September 11, 2001: Some Government Officials Leave the DaimlerChrysler Building and Return to the White House
A number of senior government officials who left the White House or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building when these buildings were evacuated return to the White House and join other senior officials in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), the bunker below the East Wing. [Sewanee Today, 2/24/2003; Bridgeland, 2012, pp. 5; LBJ Presidential Library, 9/3/2013] The officials were among dozens of government employees who went to the office of DaimlerChrysler in Washington, DC, after they were evacuated from the White House or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to it (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Anita McBride, the acting director of White House personnel, contacted the White House Situation Room and let officials there know who was with her at the DaimlerChrysler building, and arrangements were then made for a few senior officials to go back to the White House (see (Shortly After 9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Politico, 9/9/2011] These officials head from the DaimlerChrysler building to the White House around midday. [LBJ Presidential Library, 9/3/2013] They are escorted through downtown Washington by members of the Secret Service. [Lindsey, 2008, pp. 86; Crescent, 10/3/2011] The officials who go back to the White House include Nicholas Calio, assistant to the president for legislative affairs; Larry Lindsey, assistant to the president for economic policy; Albert Hawkins, secretary of Cabinet affairs; Clay Johnson, assistant to the president for presidential personnel; Tucker Eskew, director of the White House Office of Media Affairs; and Logan Walters, President Bush’s personal aide. [Draper, 2007, pp. 142; Crescent, 10/3/2011; Bridgeland, 2012, pp. 5] After arriving at the White House, the officials go to the PEOC, where they join Vice President Dick Cheney, members of the Cabinet, and other senior White House staffers. [Lindsey, 2008, pp. 86; Bridgeland, 2012, pp. 5]
