Treasury's 'Chief Thug' Goes After Al-Qaeda

Daniel Glaser is a man with many titles. His official one is Assistant Treasury Secretary for Terrorist Financing. But his boss, Timothy Geithner, likes to call him something else: Treasury’s “chief thug.” He means it as a compliment. An intense, broad-shouldered lawyer, Glaser is known for his zealous efforts to track and seize the money al-Qaeda and other groups use to fund attacks around the world. Glaser prefers the title that South Korean newspapers bestowed on him a few years ago, when he was working with a Treasury team pursuing North Korea’s rogue nuclear weapons program: “The Missionary From Hell.” The Korean journalists meant it as a compliment, too. “I like that even better than chief thug,” Glaser says, “because missionary implies a core set of beliefs.”

While drone strikes and daring operations such as the raid that killed Osama bin Laden get the headlines, Glaser, 43, and his colleagues at the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence go after the world’s worst people in a less dramatic way: by choking off their means of support. They trace cash transfers, freeze bank accounts, and expose financiers and money launderers. The goal is to “gum up the works” and “isolate bad actors from the international financial system,” says David Cohen, the Treasury Under Secretary who leads the 42-person office.