The Money Man In the Terror Fight

Levey Helps Lead Treasury Efforts

Stuart A. Levey has a hand in initiatives against money laundering and weapons of mass destruction. He is the senior Treasury official overseeing the program that taps a database of financial records in search of terrorist transactions. (By Chris Greenberg -- Bloomberg News)

Last summer, Stuart A. Levey, the Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, was about to depart Libya for Turkey when his travel plans abruptly came to a halt. At the airport, Libyan officials directed Levey to an aircraft idling on the runway.

Aboard, Levey and his aides found themselves inside the private plane of Moammar Gaddafi surrounded by what one official described as an "homage to Austin Powers." Outfitted with shag carpeting, gold-plated safety belts and wide, white leather seats, the plane took off on an unscheduled flight from Tripoli to the coastal town of Sert.

An hour later, Levey's team was in black sedans speeding across miles of empty desert toward Gaddafi's man-made oasis. "It was like being in some kind of James Bond movie," Levey recalled in a recent interview. "There was a pool and a pond, a couple large tents and Gaddafi sitting out in a cabana, under an umbrella."

Levey was wearing a suit and tie. The Libyan leader was wearing track pants, a fishing cap and orange sunglasses. The surprise meeting was their first, and much was riding on Levey's impressions: He had just spent several days assessing whether Libya should be taken off the list of states that sponsor terrorism. They two men spoke for an hour -- Gaddafi from prepared remarks, Levey off the cuff.

It must have gone well. A few days later, the State Department announced that Libya was coming off the terrorism list, 18 years after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, took 270 lives, most of them American.

Levey is not the first head of the Treasury Department's unusual intelligence branch, but he is the most influential. At 43, the Harvard Law School graduate has a strong hand in many of President Bush's top foreign policy and national security initiatives, from counterterrorism to money laundering to weapons of mass destruction. He is the senior Treasury official overseeing a classified program that taps a global database of confidential financial records in search of terrorist transactions.

Revelations about the program in newspaper reports last month led to a stream of Republican condemnations of the press. But none came from Levey: Described by friends as mild-mannered and good-humored, Levey made his disappointment over the reports strongly known without resorting to attack. It is a style that separates him from some within the administration he serves while bringing him closer to others.

Deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch had not heard of Levey during Bush's first term. Now he relies more and more on Levey, who attends several high-level national security meetings a week chaired by Crouch.

"Stuart is really thorough, and committed to turning over all the rocks and making sure that things are done in the proper way," Crouch said. "And when he says he'll do something, he does."

He said that Levey must "convince not only other people in the government but other people in the world" to buy into new financial pressures on al-Qaeda and on unfriendly governments.

It is a task that Levey has grown into. In the 1990s, he was a white-collar criminal defense attorney in the boutique Washington firm of Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, with friends and colleagues on both sides of the political aisle.

Jamie S. Gorelick, who worked with Levey at the law firm before she served as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton, called him a close friend. "Stuart is a loyal Republican, but he would not let politics color or direct a judgment that he would otherwise make," she said.