In the last few months, we have seen far more evidence that Al Qaeda is shifting from moving its money through institutional-based transfer systems, such as banks, front companies and even wire transfers, to much more practical and harder-to-detect methods....

.... most terrorism financiers do the opposite of the drug barons. Instead of laundering their money, they keep it away from institutions that create a paper trail. They use criminal activities, like cigarette smuggling, credit card fraud and check forgery, to raise cash, then ship the money overseas or have a courier deliver it. Thus, a new black market has been created, and the goal is to keep the money invisible, not by washing it, but by hiding it.

....Besides hand-to-hand cash transfers, the authorities say terrorists have embraced more daring and unorthodox methods to raise and move cash — credit-card fraud, cigarette smuggling, transferring cash into gems, gold and diamonds, and counterfeiting everything from 20-euro notes to baby formula.

Investigators worry about how little they know about the enormous amount of cash swirling around the terrorist world these days.

Van Natta, Jr. is unusually sketchy on his sources for his theory--with a few exceptions, he relies on unidentified experts, investigators and officials. He mostly pushes the Administration's unsubstantiated claims that its failure in the terrorist asset-seizing program is due not to its inability to find the money, or the chance that there is no such huge store of funds, but rather, to the terrorists' hiding their money through routine crime. And Van Natta, Jr. never connects the dots to Lichtblau's article on using the Patriot Act or other terror laws for non-terror crimes.

We'll do it for him: The Administration has let us all know they always intended to use the Patriot Act in non-terror cases and that they have and will continue to do so. Expecting a backlash, they now put out the word that Al Qaeda and other terror organizations are hiding cash in petty criminal activities. The only way to stop the terrorists now is to increase the use of terror powers for non-terror crimes. This, they will argue, is why Congress should pass laws like Rep. Tom Feeney's H.R. 3037, the "Antiterrorism Tools Enhancement Act of 2003" ( analysis here) and Sen. Orrin Hatch's The Victory Act which redesignates many drug crimes as "narco-terrorist offenses" and then grants extra power in the executive branch to combat them. Like more sneak and peek searches, wiretaps, subpoenas and asset seizures without the judicial oversight required by the Constitution in traditional criminal cases.

This is just so transparent. The Administration feeds one reporter about why it is within its rights to use the Patriot Act to investigate non-terror crimes. It feeds another on its speculation that it hasn't seized more terrorist money with money laundering laws because the money isn't being laundered, it's being hidden through routine crime. Ergo, the Administration will claim next, we need more terror laws to go after routine, non-terror crimes. Terror laws that allow the Justice Department to bypass the Fourth Amendment and its required judicial oversight.