Although efforts to seize terrorist funds have met with
some success, in July 2004, the 9/11 Commission asserted that the likelihood of being able to
continue freezing funds may diminish as terrorists seek increasingly more informal methods of
earning and moving money. The financial support of terrorism involves both earning funds, through
legal and illegal means, and the illicit movement of money to terrorist groups. The Commission
recommended that the U.S. government shift the focus of its efforts to counter terrorist financing
from a strategy based on seizing terrorist assets to a strategy based on exploiting intelligence
gathered from financial investigations. This report will be updated as events require.