September 11: The 20-Year Journey

The ACAMS Today magazine is a quarterly publication for career-minded professionals in the financial crime detection and prevention fields and it is an exclusive benefit for ACAMS members. The ACAMS Today is dedicated to keeping members up to date on the latest anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing challenges, legislative, regulatory and international developments in financial crime prevention and practical solutions to compliance problems.

This article covers the history of 9/11 and its continued impact on the anti-financial crime industry. It took more than two years to plan and execute the 9/11 attacks. Even with two years of touch points, the transactional activity of the hijackers was unremarkable and not suspicious. The article goes through the history as far back as the first World Trade Center bombing, meetings between Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden throughout the 1990s, and all the elements required to plan the actual attack. The article also delves into the terrorist threat environment post-9/11, a shift from an organizational to individual-centric threat environment, one that is more decentralized and leaderless.