The attorney general's move to crack down on money laundering by making it a crime to transport large sums of cash overseas infringes on civil liberties.

Money laundering has moved to John Ashcroft's A-list of things to address. At a recent conference on organized crime, the attorney general said he will be asking Congress to give him the tools to combat money laundering by broading law enforcement powers to confiscate criminal proceeds. What was not mentioned in his speech was how he intended to make the transfer of large quantities of "tainted" cash a crime without harming civil liberties in the process.

As much as our government hates to acknowledge it, carrying and moving cash, even great amounts, is not illegal. This is highly frustrating to some federal authorities. Because money is easily transferable and untraceable, it is the financial instrument of choice for the drug trade. According to Ashcroft, about a trillion dollars a year is laundered throughout the world, meaning the cash profits from drug dealing and other crimes are "scrubbed" through legitimate financial dealings and institutions so the money can be used in legal commerce.

This tide of cash is hard to stop. It's difficult to distinguish between bills obtained through legal means and those generated through drug dealing. You certainly can't tell simply by looking at them. So Ashcroft is suggesting that Congress give the department and those law enforcement agencies within it, such as the FBI and the DEA, extra power to confiscate money-on-the-move when they believe the cash is drug-related.

Ashcroft's suggestions come as responses to court rulings that have limited the department's ability to confiscate large stashes of money when they are found. But when you look more closely at the body of federal civil forfeiture cases, it's clear that law enforcement has been abusing this power for years and certainly shouldn't be granted additional discretion.

For example, Ashcroft wants to make bulk cash smuggling a crime. He wants to allow law enforcement to confiscate the money of anyone traveling overseas with $10,000 or more without reporting the money to the U.S. Customs Service. In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, said federal authorities could not keep the $357,144 they had taken from Hosep Bajakajian and his family as they were boarding a plane to Italy, simply because he had failed to disclose the transfer on the proper customs form. According to Thomas, that would result in an effective fine of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is disproportionate to the offense of failure to disclose, a crime that carried a top fine of $5,000.

Ashcroft's proposal would allow the government to take the money, because the crime would now be "smuggling" rather than a failure to disclose.

As it turned out, Bajakajian's money was from a perfectly legal source and was to be used to pay off a debt. Bajakajian hadn't filled out the proper form to alert the U.S. government to the cash packed in his suitcases because he had grown up as a member of the Armenian minority in Syria and didn't trust government. He thought it would be stolen by corrupt officials.

A bit of an irony there.

Eradicating money laundering is a worthy goal, but not at the risk of American freedoms. No one should be presumed a criminal simply because he is carrying legal tender. Last year, Congress passed the Civil Forfeiture Reform Act to rein in some of the worst forfeiture abuses by law enforcement. Yet, before the ink has dried on the statute books, Ashcroft wants to bring some of those abuses back.

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