By Mark Anderson —

It’s not well known that the United States Treasury Department has what amounts to a war room. Its strategists dole out economic warfare much like the Pentagon’s strategists deploy physical military might around the globe.

On Thursday, September 10, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will meet in open session for a hearing on whether to confirm Obama nominee Adam J. Szubin of the District of Columbia as the “general” of that war room—or stated more clinically—as the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes. The hearing is slated to run from 10 a.m. to noon at 538 Dirksen Senate Office Building.

The Treasury position Szubin is seeking has, over the last 11-12 years, come under pro-Israeli influence, which runs the risk of hardwiring bias against Iran into this top Treasury post for imposing U.S. sanctions against Iran and monitoring the Persian state’s compliance with those sanctions.

That position is within the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. According to the Treasury Department, that position “marshals the department’s intelligence and enforcement functions with the twin aims of safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins and other national security threats.”







The Jewish Telegraph Agency correctly acknowledged, “Szubin . . . would, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate, be the third [consecutive] Jewish undersecretary in the role. . . . He would follow David Cohen, who early this year became deputy director of the CIA, and Stuart Levey, who shaped the office’s role in enforcing Iran sanctions as an undersecretary who straddled the Bush and Obama administrations from 2004-2011.”

Szubin, who’s a Harvard Law School graduate, has been a senior official in the sanctions enforcement regime since 2006, when he was named director of Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for Treasury. In 2004, at the age of 31, he was the senior legal and policy adviser to Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Szubin already is cutting his teeth for the new post which Obama nominated him for, as he’s serving as “acting” undersecretary—ever since Cohen’s ascent into the Central Intelligence Agency.

Individuals and organizations on the receiving end of sanctions during Szubin’s former OFAC post include Venezuelan officials and the El Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). Most recently, according to Treasury, “leaders in the terrorist group ‘Hezbollah,’” were targeted involving Szubin at his current post as “acting under secretary,” in cooperation with the Saudis.

In 2006, Hezbollah drove the Israeli military from southern Lebanon in a war that left Israel bloodied and humiliated. Since then the Israeli government has been agitating for war with Hezbollah and has tried repeatedly to assassinate its leaders. In Europe, Hezbollah is considered a Lebanese militia and not a terrorist organization.

AFP Roving Editor Mark Anderson covers the annual Bilderberg meetings and is chairman of AFP’s new America First Action Committee, designed to involve AFP readers in focusing intensely on Congress to enact key changes, including monetary reform and a pullback of the warfare state.

