February 8, 2024 • 15 mins
America’s use of sanctions has grown by almost 1,000% since 9/11. So why isn’t Congress giving the office in charge of them more resources?
Today on the Big Take DC podcast, host Saleha Mohsin talks to John Smith, a former director of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, and Bloomberg National Security editor Nick Wadhams about OFAC’s scrappy operation and why lawmakers aren’t giving it more to work with.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
About two hundred yards from the White House, there's a
nondescript government building. Inside is a tiny agency that happens
to be one of the most powerful in the world.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
It's been called the most important agency that no one
has ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
It's called OPHAK, the Office of Foreign Assets Control. It
also goes by another name, the Sanction's Office, and that
was John Smith, one of its previous directors. This office
influences how trillions of dollars move around the world. Right now,
the list of the US's economic sanctions runs over two
(00:36):
thousand pages.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
There are dozens of sanctions programs Russia, Ukraine, regions like
Iran or Syria or North Korea, Cuba, so many others.
So all of that is handled by these approximately three
hundred people.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Three hundred people.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The cost to fund the entire agency that is o
FAC is probably less than even a single tank or
aircraft would be. By many many factors.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
It feels like every day the White House announces and
the media broadcasts news of fresh economic sanctions. The United
States is reinstating some sanctions on Venezuela, more sanctions against Russia.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Today, imposing financial sanctions on four Israeli nationals, for their estates.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
You think that the federal government is pouring money into
the office that oversees them, but it's not, and that
has consequences for national and even global security and the
US government's ability to actually enforce sanctions from Bloomberg's Washington Bureau.
This is the Big Take DC podcast. I'm your host
Sleiah Mosen. During the Trump administration, when John Smith was
(01:53):
running OPHAK, I was desperate to talk to him, but
he knew better than to talk to me. I was
a reporter covering US Treasure Department really closely, and I
was obsessed with everything his office was doing and finding
out the sanctions that they were working on before anyone else,
because knowing that can tell you a lot about how
the White House is thinking about foreign policy.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Sanctions have been called the alternative between words and war,
between military boots on the ground on the one hand,
or just mirrored diplomacy on the other.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Let me take a second to explain just how sanctions work.
We live in a world that runs on dollars literally,
so when the US wants to put pressure on a
foreign business, a government, or even a person, it uses
the dollar as leverage.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
So, for example, Russia's war in Ukraine. O fax actions
and sanctions actions have frozen in the hundreds of billions
of dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
OFEK is the kind of DC office that tends to
pop up on the radar from time to time, but
only in significant moments. After nine to eleven, President George W. U.
Bush launched the global War on Terror with sanction.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Today we have launched a strike on the financial foundation
of the global terror network.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
The tanks came later.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Bush promised to follow the money that enabled terrorists to
take down the World Trade Center. He wasn't the first
to view sanctions as a foreign policy tool. The US
dabbled in them in the fallout from the American Revolution,
so they're literally in our country's DNA. But OPHAK was
born later.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It got its start in World War Two to help
implement and enforce the US response to Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
When I covered the Treasure Department, I worked really closely
with my colleague Nick Watdams. While I was looking at
sanctions from the economic angle, he was focused on national security.
He's now an editor at Bloomberg.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
This is something that's become basically the go to tool
of first resort for the un US government as a
way to flex its muscle overseas, and OFIX sits at
the very center.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
In the twenty years since nine to eleven, the number
of entities the US has sanctioned has skyrocketed by almost
one thousand percent, but the office that manages them O
FAC it's grown by just one hundred or so people.
At least that's as far as I can tell from
my sources, since Treasury doesn't disclose that publicly. It now
has some three hundred lawyers and financial investigators to comb
(04:30):
through troves of classified and public data, all in the
name of serving American foreign policy goals. But that increase
is hardly enough to keep up with the increasing reliance
on the office.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Seemingly every lawmaker now basically has a sanctions package in
their back pocket that they want to unveil against whoever
it might be.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Economic sanctions have become so important to the US government
that in twenty twenty two, right after Russia invaded Ukraine,
President Joe Biden talked about them very beginning of his
State of the Union address.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
We're cutting off Russia's largest Bank to the international financial system,
preventing Russia's Central Bank from defending the Russian rubule, making
putin six hundred and thirty billion dollar warfund worthless. We're
choking Russia's access.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
I remember that moment. I've covered sanctions for years, and
it's the first time I've heard a president talk about
them in such a high profile speech.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
US sanctions are powerful because the US economy is so powerful.
The US financial system is the avenue through which basically
every banking transaction gets done. So if you then say, okay,
you a foreign entity or a foreign person, we're not
going to give you access to the US financial system,
(05:47):
that person is essentially banished financially. They can't get a
credit card, they can't get a bank account, they can't
pay their employees, they can't buy goods. So suddenly they
are essentially ostracized from the entire global financial system.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Consider the action America took against Iran to rein in
its nuclear ambitions. In twenty seventeen and eighteen, the Trump
administration levied more than nine hundred sanctions on Iran related targets.
In Iran's economy shrunk around five percent in each of
those years. But in order for OPAC sanctions to have
the economic bite that they're known for, someone needs to
(06:25):
make sure they're being enforced.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
One thing I heard that OFAC really needs more money
for enforcement, like figuring out who's violating the sanctions and
bringing a case that would then help punish that entity
for not following the sanctions.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
OPAC works with other parts of the government to enforce sanctions.
For example, in twenty fourteen, OPHEK was part of a
case against France's largest bank, accusing it of violating sanctions
on Sudan, Iran, and Cuba. The bank pleaded guilty and
paid almost nine billion dollars to settle the matter. But
John Smith told me that this tiny office can't manage
(07:03):
all of this on its own.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It's implementing dozens upon dozens of sanctions programs, including some
of the most important to our US national security and
foreign policy, and it simply doesn't have the resources that
it needs.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Up next, what's stopping the federal government from giving this
small but mighty office more to work with. John Smith
used to run OPHAK, the US government's sanctions office.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
It is startling just how little money it takes to
run OPHAK.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
As it is today, and he told me that OPHAC
doesn't just run on an incredibly tight budget, but it
actually turns a profit for the.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
US OHFAC punches above its weight. Any dime that's given
to OPHAC will be magnified far beyond it's a money maker.
OPHAC has an enforced function where OPAC issues dozens of
enforcement actions. Those enforcement actions can come often in the
tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars a
(08:10):
year that goes to the General Treasury.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Remember that French bank I mentioned, the one that had
to pay billions of dollars for violating OPAC sanctions. Almost
half of that money went to a federal fund, an
account controlled by Congress. OPHAC did not get that money.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
That is different than many enforcement agencies where Congress's passed
laws that basically wants to encourage those enforcement agencies to
do more enforcement actions, and so Congress's pass laws that
allow certain enforcement agencies to keep the funds.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Basically, Congress hasn't given OPAC the resources to fully enforce
all of its sanctions programs, so instead it puts some
of that onus on the private sector.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
It doesn't actually we enforce the sanctions a lot itself.
It relies on banks.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
My colleague Nick told me that OFAK has tossed the
hot potato of enforcement over to businesses. One way it
does this is by leaving banks and other companies guessing.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
So they will issue a very ambiguous rule saying certain
types of financial transactions with a Russian company or a
type of Russian company will be banned. And then when
you look at that rule you're a lawyer looking for
exact language about that rule, it's extremely ambiguous and you
have no idea what's going on. And so the response,
if you're a lawyer for Citibank, you just say, Okay,
(09:35):
we're not going to get anywhere near the Russian economy.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
If there's one thing I've learned as a reporter at Bloomberg,
it'said investors in the business sector don't like uncertainty, especially
from the US government. But it seems like OFAC is
accidentally creating some of that.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
I had all sorts of conversations with people who would say,
we would go to OPHAK for advice saying, hey, you
guys issued this rule, clarify this rule for us, tell
us what what this actually means. And the response would
take like six months to a year. They would blame
that on underfunding because OPAC only had like two lawyers
working on a certain file, or they didn't have nearly
(10:13):
enough compliance people, or half the compliance people were out
on vacation or on leave, or they were sick or whatever.
They could not get an answer.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
John Smith believes there are real consequences to comically slow
policy responses and strapped budgets.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Every bit of time lost, every bit of use of
old technology means that were that much further behind those
that seek to evade sanctions so they can raise money
for terrorist attacks against US targets, against WMD related activities,
(10:49):
where bad actors are raising money for nuclear proliferation, against
counter narcotics efforts, where our sons and daughters and brothers
and sisters, mothers and fathers may be harmed.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
All this brings up a really important question. Do sanctions
even work?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Nothing works one hundred percent, but sanctions have been demonstrated
to work, but they take time. So for example, there
was a tough economic sanctions program in World War two,
but it wasn't sanctions alone that won that war. It
was the US military might and our strategic sense, and
sanctions played a role.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
We could do an entire episode on whether sanctions work
or not. It's really complicated and hard to measure. Take
the example of Russia. In the two years since its
invasion of Ukraine, the US has placed more than three thousand,
five hundred sanctions on Russian individuals, businesses, and even aircraft. Now,
Russia's economy is on track to strength by eight percent
(11:51):
in the next two years, but Russian manufacturing has actually
grown to support the war effort, so the country's GDP
is still growing. Smith did point to examples of sanctions working.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Sanctions played a role in the apartheid crisis. We weren't
sending troops to South Africa, but we included a global
coalition that said to South Africa, we will no longer
deal with you if you continue your apartheid regime and
that jurisdiction and they finally changed. With respect to Iran,
(12:23):
Iran said it would never negotiate over its nuclear program
until it did and until it came to the negotiating
table and we reached an agreement.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So if sanctions really can pack a punch, and OPAC
is the main body responsible for them, why has its
budget remained so low for so long. Smith told me
that it comes down to Congress, which determines public spending.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
You hear so much from members of Congress wanting more
sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China, across the board. Sometimes
sanctions bills may be among the only bipartisan things that
are passed through Congress. But while Congress may want more sanctions,
Congress may not actually want to fund what they want.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
In Congress, the Appropriations Committee decides what gets funding, but
different committees determine how it's spent. In the case of sanctions,
it's the Foreign Relations and Banking committees.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Sometimes I feel like there may be a disconnect between
those panels that are pushing for additional sanctions, mandated sanctions,
and those on the panels on the appropriations committees that
are actually deciding what funds to provide.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
But John Smith is still holding out hope that someday
someone in a government might start paying attention to this
underdog of an office.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I'm waiting for the administration or the Congress that says, well, wait,
this agency is making money for the US government. Let's
see what more they can do if we give them
more than a drop of the buck. And increase.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
To his mind, there's a lot at stake beyond the
walls of that nondescript office building right by the White House.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I think it's the question, should we be doing more
against human rights abuses and corruption around the world. Should
we be doing more to focus on terrorist activities and
support for terrorism around the world. The money sent to
OPHAC really has an outsized impact.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Bloomberg News. I'm Salaijah Mosen. This episode was produced by
Julia Press, Naomi Shaven, and Stacey Wong. It was fact
checked by Tiffany Choi. Alex Sugia and Blake Maples are
our mix engineers. Our story editors are Wendy Benjaminson and
Michael Shepherd. Nicole Beemster Bower is our executive producer. Sage
(14:51):
Bauman is our head of podcasts. If you like what
you heard, please be sure to subscribe, rate, and review
the show. It'll help other listeners find us. Thanks for
tuning in. I'll be back next week.
About two hundred yards from the White House, there's a
nondescript government building. Inside is a tiny agency that happens
to be one of the most powerful in the world.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
It's been called the most important agency that no one
has ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
It's called OPHAK, the Office of Foreign Assets Control. It
also goes by another name, the Sanction's Office, and that
was John Smith, one of its previous directors. This office
influences how trillions of dollars move around the world. Right now,
the list of the US's economic sanctions runs over two
(00:36):
thousand pages.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
There are dozens of sanctions programs Russia, Ukraine, regions like
Iran or Syria or North Korea, Cuba, so many others.
So all of that is handled by these approximately three
hundred people.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Three hundred people.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The cost to fund the entire agency that is o
FAC is probably less than even a single tank or
aircraft would be. By many many factors.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
It feels like every day the White House announces and
the media broadcasts news of fresh economic sanctions. The United
States is reinstating some sanctions on Venezuela, more sanctions against Russia.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Today, imposing financial sanctions on four Israeli nationals, for their estates.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
You think that the federal government is pouring money into
the office that oversees them, but it's not, and that
has consequences for national and even global security and the
US government's ability to actually enforce sanctions from Bloomberg's Washington Bureau.
This is the Big Take DC podcast. I'm your host
Sleiah Mosen. During the Trump administration, when John Smith was
(01:53):
running OPHAK, I was desperate to talk to him, but
he knew better than to talk to me. I was
a reporter covering US Treasure Department really closely, and I
was obsessed with everything his office was doing and finding
out the sanctions that they were working on before anyone else,
because knowing that can tell you a lot about how
the White House is thinking about foreign policy.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Sanctions have been called the alternative between words and war,
between military boots on the ground on the one hand,
or just mirrored diplomacy on the other.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Let me take a second to explain just how sanctions work.
We live in a world that runs on dollars literally,
so when the US wants to put pressure on a
foreign business, a government, or even a person, it uses
the dollar as leverage.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
So, for example, Russia's war in Ukraine. O fax actions
and sanctions actions have frozen in the hundreds of billions
of dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
OFEK is the kind of DC office that tends to
pop up on the radar from time to time, but
only in significant moments. After nine to eleven, President George W. U.
Bush launched the global War on Terror with sanction.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Today we have launched a strike on the financial foundation
of the global terror network.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
The tanks came later.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Bush promised to follow the money that enabled terrorists to
take down the World Trade Center. He wasn't the first
to view sanctions as a foreign policy tool. The US
dabbled in them in the fallout from the American Revolution,
so they're literally in our country's DNA. But OPHAK was
born later.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It got its start in World War Two to help
implement and enforce the US response to Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
When I covered the Treasure Department, I worked really closely
with my colleague Nick Watdams. While I was looking at
sanctions from the economic angle, he was focused on national security.
He's now an editor at Bloomberg.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
This is something that's become basically the go to tool
of first resort for the un US government as a
way to flex its muscle overseas, and OFIX sits at
the very center.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
In the twenty years since nine to eleven, the number
of entities the US has sanctioned has skyrocketed by almost
one thousand percent, but the office that manages them O
FAC it's grown by just one hundred or so people.
At least that's as far as I can tell from
my sources, since Treasury doesn't disclose that publicly. It now
has some three hundred lawyers and financial investigators to comb
(04:30):
through troves of classified and public data, all in the
name of serving American foreign policy goals. But that increase
is hardly enough to keep up with the increasing reliance
on the office.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Seemingly every lawmaker now basically has a sanctions package in
their back pocket that they want to unveil against whoever
it might be.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Economic sanctions have become so important to the US government
that in twenty twenty two, right after Russia invaded Ukraine,
President Joe Biden talked about them very beginning of his
State of the Union address.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
We're cutting off Russia's largest Bank to the international financial system,
preventing Russia's Central Bank from defending the Russian rubule, making
putin six hundred and thirty billion dollar warfund worthless. We're
choking Russia's access.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
I remember that moment. I've covered sanctions for years, and
it's the first time I've heard a president talk about
them in such a high profile speech.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
US sanctions are powerful because the US economy is so powerful.
The US financial system is the avenue through which basically
every banking transaction gets done. So if you then say, okay,
you a foreign entity or a foreign person, we're not
going to give you access to the US financial system,
(05:47):
that person is essentially banished financially. They can't get a
credit card, they can't get a bank account, they can't
pay their employees, they can't buy goods. So suddenly they
are essentially ostracized from the entire global financial system.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Consider the action America took against Iran to rein in
its nuclear ambitions. In twenty seventeen and eighteen, the Trump
administration levied more than nine hundred sanctions on Iran related targets.
In Iran's economy shrunk around five percent in each of
those years. But in order for OPAC sanctions to have
the economic bite that they're known for, someone needs to
(06:25):
make sure they're being enforced.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
One thing I heard that OFAC really needs more money
for enforcement, like figuring out who's violating the sanctions and
bringing a case that would then help punish that entity
for not following the sanctions.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
OPAC works with other parts of the government to enforce sanctions.
For example, in twenty fourteen, OPHEK was part of a
case against France's largest bank, accusing it of violating sanctions
on Sudan, Iran, and Cuba. The bank pleaded guilty and
paid almost nine billion dollars to settle the matter. But
John Smith told me that this tiny office can't manage
(07:03):
all of this on its own.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It's implementing dozens upon dozens of sanctions programs, including some
of the most important to our US national security and
foreign policy, and it simply doesn't have the resources that
it needs.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Up next, what's stopping the federal government from giving this
small but mighty office more to work with. John Smith
used to run OPHAK, the US government's sanctions office.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
It is startling just how little money it takes to
run OPHAK.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
As it is today, and he told me that OPHAC
doesn't just run on an incredibly tight budget, but it
actually turns a profit for the.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
US OHFAC punches above its weight. Any dime that's given
to OPHAC will be magnified far beyond it's a money maker.
OPHAC has an enforced function where OPAC issues dozens of
enforcement actions. Those enforcement actions can come often in the
tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars a
(08:10):
year that goes to the General Treasury.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Remember that French bank I mentioned, the one that had
to pay billions of dollars for violating OPAC sanctions. Almost
half of that money went to a federal fund, an
account controlled by Congress. OPHAC did not get that money.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
That is different than many enforcement agencies where Congress's passed
laws that basically wants to encourage those enforcement agencies to
do more enforcement actions, and so Congress's pass laws that
allow certain enforcement agencies to keep the funds.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Basically, Congress hasn't given OPAC the resources to fully enforce
all of its sanctions programs, so instead it puts some
of that onus on the private sector.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
It doesn't actually we enforce the sanctions a lot itself.
It relies on banks.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
My colleague Nick told me that OFAK has tossed the
hot potato of enforcement over to businesses. One way it
does this is by leaving banks and other companies guessing.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
So they will issue a very ambiguous rule saying certain
types of financial transactions with a Russian company or a
type of Russian company will be banned. And then when
you look at that rule you're a lawyer looking for
exact language about that rule, it's extremely ambiguous and you
have no idea what's going on. And so the response,
if you're a lawyer for Citibank, you just say, Okay,
(09:35):
we're not going to get anywhere near the Russian economy.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
If there's one thing I've learned as a reporter at Bloomberg,
it'said investors in the business sector don't like uncertainty, especially
from the US government. But it seems like OFAC is
accidentally creating some of that.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
I had all sorts of conversations with people who would say,
we would go to OPHAK for advice saying, hey, you
guys issued this rule, clarify this rule for us, tell
us what what this actually means. And the response would
take like six months to a year. They would blame
that on underfunding because OPAC only had like two lawyers
working on a certain file, or they didn't have nearly
(10:13):
enough compliance people, or half the compliance people were out
on vacation or on leave, or they were sick or whatever.
They could not get an answer.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
John Smith believes there are real consequences to comically slow
policy responses and strapped budgets.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Every bit of time lost, every bit of use of
old technology means that were that much further behind those
that seek to evade sanctions so they can raise money
for terrorist attacks against US targets, against WMD related activities,
(10:49):
where bad actors are raising money for nuclear proliferation, against
counter narcotics efforts, where our sons and daughters and brothers
and sisters, mothers and fathers may be harmed.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
All this brings up a really important question. Do sanctions
even work?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Nothing works one hundred percent, but sanctions have been demonstrated
to work, but they take time. So for example, there
was a tough economic sanctions program in World War two,
but it wasn't sanctions alone that won that war. It
was the US military might and our strategic sense, and
sanctions played a role.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
We could do an entire episode on whether sanctions work
or not. It's really complicated and hard to measure. Take
the example of Russia. In the two years since its
invasion of Ukraine, the US has placed more than three thousand,
five hundred sanctions on Russian individuals, businesses, and even aircraft. Now,
Russia's economy is on track to strength by eight percent
(11:51):
in the next two years, but Russian manufacturing has actually
grown to support the war effort, so the country's GDP
is still growing. Smith did point to examples of sanctions working.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Sanctions played a role in the apartheid crisis. We weren't
sending troops to South Africa, but we included a global
coalition that said to South Africa, we will no longer
deal with you if you continue your apartheid regime and
that jurisdiction and they finally changed. With respect to Iran,
(12:23):
Iran said it would never negotiate over its nuclear program
until it did and until it came to the negotiating
table and we reached an agreement.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So if sanctions really can pack a punch, and OPAC
is the main body responsible for them, why has its
budget remained so low for so long. Smith told me
that it comes down to Congress, which determines public spending.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
You hear so much from members of Congress wanting more
sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China, across the board. Sometimes
sanctions bills may be among the only bipartisan things that
are passed through Congress. But while Congress may want more sanctions,
Congress may not actually want to fund what they want.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
In Congress, the Appropriations Committee decides what gets funding, but
different committees determine how it's spent. In the case of sanctions,
it's the Foreign Relations and Banking committees.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Sometimes I feel like there may be a disconnect between
those panels that are pushing for additional sanctions, mandated sanctions,
and those on the panels on the appropriations committees that
are actually deciding what funds to provide.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
But John Smith is still holding out hope that someday
someone in a government might start paying attention to this
underdog of an office.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I'm waiting for the administration or the Congress that says, well, wait,
this agency is making money for the US government. Let's
see what more they can do if we give them
more than a drop of the buck. And increase.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
To his mind, there's a lot at stake beyond the
walls of that nondescript office building right by the White House.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I think it's the question, should we be doing more
against human rights abuses and corruption around the world. Should
we be doing more to focus on terrorist activities and
support for terrorism around the world. The money sent to
OPHAC really has an outsized impact.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Bloomberg News. I'm Salaijah Mosen. This episode was produced by
Julia Press, Naomi Shaven, and Stacey Wong. It was fact
checked by Tiffany Choi. Alex Sugia and Blake Maples are
our mix engineers. Our story editors are Wendy Benjaminson and
Michael Shepherd. Nicole Beemster Bower is our executive producer. Sage
(14:51):
Bauman is our head of podcasts. If you like what
you heard, please be sure to subscribe, rate, and review
the show. It'll help other listeners find us. Thanks for
tuning in. I'll be back next week.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com