Interpol Issues in World Crime and International Criminal Justice CRIMINAL JUSTICE and PUBLIC SAFETY

Interpol Issues in World Crime and International Criminal justice CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND PUBLIC SAFETY Series Editor: Philip John Stead john Jay College of Criminal justice The City University of New York New York, New York ANTITERRORIST INITIATIVES John B. Wolf CRIME CONTROL: The Use and Misuse of Police Resources David John Farmer FEAR OF FEAR: A Survey of Terrorist Operations and Controls in Open Societies John B. Wolf INTERPOL: Issues in World Crime and International Criminal Justice Michael Fooner TREATING THE CRIMINAL OFFENDER Third Edition Alexander B. Smith and Louis Berlin Interpol Issues in World Crime and International Criminal justice Michael Fooner Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Fooner, Michael Interpol: issues in world crime and international criminal justice I Michael Fooner. p. em. - (Criminal justice and public safety) Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-4899-6977-4 ISBN 978-1-4899-7039-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-7039-8 1. International Criminal Police Organization. 2. Law enforcement-International cooperation. I. Title. II. Series. HV7240.F663 1989 89-8443 363.2'06'01-dc20 OP © 1989 Michael Fooner Originally published by Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York in 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher to HELEN, ANDREA, and LAURA Preface This book is the product of a wayward research scientist's effort to analyze a world crime-fighting organization that has puzzled three gen erations of scholars, law-enforcement officers, and legislators in Amer ica. That organization is Interpol. Traditionalists are at times mystified by how Interpol came into existence. It was founded in September 1923, five years after the end of World War I, when police chiefs from 20 countries met on their own initiative in Vienna, without authority or instructions from their govern ments, and formed the organization which today bears the name Inter national Criminal Police Organization-INTERPOL ("Interpol" for short). Its birth, without the usual formality of a treaty ratified by the member nations, may have been unconventional, but despite this breach of international protocol, governments in all parts of the world have, from the start, been treating it as a legitimate organization and joining. The men who founded it seem to have been endowed with skills not ordinarily attributed to policemen-in diplomacy, in management the ory, and in social philosophy. Strangely, in the United States, Interpol has at times been the object of negative official attitudes and of harsh congressional criticism, inter spersed with periods of benign neglect. More recently, the organization was able to achieve a vast improve ment in its image when it adopted more aggressive policies against terrorism and money laundering, two types of international crime that strike at the heart of civilized society's stability. Interpol has been de scribed as currently providing the "20th century's only new operational vii viii PREFACE approach for combating international terrorists,"l and its bold initiatives to confront money laundering2 have led a growing number of countries to adopt controls of their own. Because the methods commonly used by governments for combat ing terrorism in the 1980s are acknowledged failures,3 the Interpol approach may sooner or later receive increasing attention from policymakers. Additionally, because Interpol activities against money laundering have received the support of the United Nations as well as member countries, government intervention in traditional bank secrecy, which is often perceived as cloaking the proceeds of illicit drugs and firearms traffic, is likely to become the focus of lively controversy. 4 Presumably then, the present generation of scholars, law-enforce ment officials, legislators, and the public as well will have need of a guide to Interpol that will describe its origins, its perspectives, and its imperatives regarding the various types of international crime. This book is intended as such a resource. For over half a century, the American professional community has been generally cool toward Interpol, as well as neglectful of the study of its related subject matter-international crime. By and large, university criminal justice departments seem to have discounted these subjects as unimportant, trivial, esoteric, or unworthy of serious attention among the criminal justice disciplines. Even police and prosecutors have pro fessed little interest beyond individual cases. The general public, being afforded little access to authentic information about international law enforcement, has only been able to identify the subject with the antics of James Bond, the Man from U.N.C.L.E., and similar mythic heroes. The sharply critical congressional hearings on Interpol in the mid-1970s had two contrasting consequences: Interpol itself launched new and modernized assessments of issues and methods in world crime and justice, while the void at America's institutions of higher learning became more pronounced. Not only have international criminal justice and law enforcement been neglected at the universities, but so has con sideration of how and where these lines of study interface with such related academic disciplines as foreign affairs, international public ad ministration, international business administration, and international economics. Yet scholars in those disciplines cannot neglect much longer such aspects of international crime as laundered money, given the volume and pervasiveness of such money's influence in international affairs, along with its links to drug and firearms traffic and to terrorism. This book seeks not merely to present facts but also to extract con- PREFACE ix cepts from the information presented. Interpol itself has wrestled with crucial issues for two thirds of a century, and during that time, issues rose and receded, and were at times quite divisive before being re solved. However, history suggests there are no guarantees that an issue resolved has been resolved forever; thus, tracing the issues, as we pro pose to do here, may have a practical utility of helping to clarify prob lems in the future. It seemed logical to organize our treatment into chapters focused on a progression of issues: Interpol's identity (Chapters 1 and 2), its gover nance (Chapter 3), its organization (Chapters 4 and 5), the instruments adopted for its mission (Chapter 6), and the management pattern that has evolved in the operation of what we and others have called a complex and unique institution (Chapter 7). Perhaps some explanation of the genesis of this volume may help connect it with the need that it addresses. In November 1973, I pre sented a research paper, "The Vulnerable Society: Crisis in Technology, Terror, and Victimization," at the annual meeting of the American Soci ety of Criminology in New York. In it I drew attention to one of Interpol's original creations-the unique system of multinational police coopera tion-and suggested why that system was capable of reducing interna tional terrorism or at least bringing it under control. International terrorism as we know it today had broken out in the early 1970s, but Interpol was then very cautious about getting involved because of the political gambits terrorists were exploiting. Interpol is prohibited by its Constitution from entering matters that are political, military, religious, or racial in nature. In the 1920s and 1930s, Interpol had developed its multinational police cooperation system at a time when counterfeiting was a major international crime problem. My 1973 paper suggested that the same concept could and should be applied to terrorism. Subsequently, profes sional journals in the United States and Europe published the paper.s During the mid-1980s, Interpol decided to address international terrorism directly and did adapt its multinational cooperation system to fight it. Another of my research papers, "Interpol: Some Issues in the Reversal of U.S. Policy on International Terrorism, Drug Enforcement, and Money Laundering," presented at the 1985 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology in San Diego, endeavored to interpret this development. Having touched on events that occurred over a time span exceeding 50 years in presenting the evolution of present-day terrorism policy, it seemed logical to examine other criminological and criminal justice problems by referring to the issues encountered on the road from the organization's origins to the present. X PREFACE No one has ever taken the measure of world crime,6 nor of its major components, "domestic" crime and "international" crime. Domestic crime is the responsibility of the national or local police in each country where such offenses occur, but for international crime, there is no glob ally organized countervailing force other than Interpol. Interpol's mandate is the investigation and suppression of drug traf fic, money laundering, bank swindles, smuggling, traffic in illicit arms and stolen works of art, financial fraud, illicit electronic funds transfer, piracy of cassettes and videotapes, hijacking of planes and ships, theft, arson, and terrorism, and the tracking of fugitives from such offenses all exclusively on the international

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