So we can expect the mutinational syndicate of gun runners, money launderers and drug dealers to come crashing down any minute now? Right?
Yeah, right!
How many people actually went to prison for all of those Swiss bank accounts?
I suspect that actually competent and well-heeled operators like that aren’t getting shafted by the slumville Western Union and Check Cashing joint. They can afford to bank with HSBC.
I’d bet money (the CIA knows how much) that this op is almost entirely aimed at diaspora communities in the US who are making remittances to assorted undesirable locations, hives of scum and villainy, and ethniclashistan franchises.
Somalis, say, live in the US in fair numbers; but Uncle Sam is pretty convinced that some of them are basically kicking back their paychecks to Al Shabab. (In general, I suspect that they think anything going through Western Union is shady; but anything done through Hawala is probably handled by Osama Muhammed al Jihad himself… Al-Barakat got seriously hammered over that post 9/11, despite a dearth of ‘evidence’) Same deal with Tamils; back when the LTTE was still a going concern. (Not the Irish, though, Agents Patrick, Sullivan, and McMurphy, have been drinking undercover at the Starry Plow for the past couple of months, and are 100% sure that Boston is not a source of IRA funding…)
I suspect that the CIA won’t say no to a drug dealer, if they happen to catch one; but if your money laundry service is paying Western Union fees, it may be time to find a new one.
Foreign only - not domestic. It’s a good thing the intelligence community is so respectful of the Chinese wall separating the two.
Turns out that PayPal, Amazon and Google are ALSO tracking all of your expenditures, too.
Do any of those corporations perform extrajudicial executions?
Paypal does.
Treasury also collects information about financial transfers - for instance, banks are required to report any transfers of $10K or more, and are encouraged to report lower quantities. Purpose is primarily to make sure that money that might be taxable doesn’t get away unnoticed.
If the CIA’s really monitoring Western Union, when are they going to take down the Nigerian 419 scammers?
[citation needed]
The case for Bitcoin gets stronger by the minute!
Perhaps the CIA created Bitcoin… 
You mean the CIA? It sounds like they’re doing just fine.
Given all the scrutiny that this kind of thing has had over the years, I’d expected this (well, perhaps not the CIA, but fiscal regulatory types) was the case from the 1990s on.
Actually wouldn’t put it past them.
The original Chinese wall didn’t work because the emperor didn’t pay the guys guarding the doors properly.
Whenever I hear phrases like ‘there is is a Chinese wall between our foreign and domestic operations’ I just assume that one has wide open gates too.
Same goes for the wall between the investment and merchant divisions of any bank.
Congratulations. You killed that metaphor but good.
I think you reinforced the metaphor. A Chinese Wall separates two territories and is a barrier only to the extent those on each side respect it.
I just love how teh CIA is secretly Independent Entity, with shadowy and probably illegal goals. Also - USA is out of Afghan, but teh CIA is staright ahead with the Opium production.
Hey, black budgets don’t grow on trees, y’know?
