Brickbats

Cuban Mission

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The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control is charged with investigating the finances of terrorist organizations. It's also tasked with enforcing America's economic embargo of Cuba. Want to guess which of those two duties is the higher priority? At the end of 2003, the office had just four full-time workers assigned to tracking the money of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein. It had 21 agents trying to enforce the Cuban embargo.