Will these tactics help flush out or shut down the network? Experts are divided. Some say these efforts could drive the culprits and their money further underground. Others say the publicity will help unravel al-Qaida.  Wanted posters make terrorists go deeper, argues Duane Clarridge of Escondido, Calif., a former chief of the CIA's counter-terrorism unit.  Publicity lets the terrorists know how much the U.S. knows about them, he says.  Two Got Away Covert operations could have nabbed at least two people on the list, he says.  "I understand why the government wants to get the word out. It wants to announce there's big money for turning in these people," he said.  "But once names and faces appeared, those two either buried themselves in the local society or went to a country where they would be safer. If we had got the two, they might have led to others we want very much," Clarridge said.  

Recent reports in an international Arabic newspaper, Asharq al-Aswat, say that three men on the FBI's wanted list fled Iran for parts unknown since the list came out.  Why issue wanted posters for suspects who are overseas? "The FBI has offices in 44 countries and we hope that anyone who recognizes them will report it to us or go to a U.S. consulate or embassy," said Special Agent Jan Caldwell of the FBI's San Diego office.  The wanted posters make sense, says Col. (ret.) Stuart Herrington, a former U.S. Army counterintelligence officer and author of "Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catcher's World." "This campaign has many dimensions. It's military, political, financial, diplomatic and psychological. The wanted poster is part of that big picture. It can demythologize bin Laden both here and abroad," he said.  Fund Freeze "At home, we need to realize these guys are just criminals. And we need to remind the Islamic world that these guys are not martyrs or saints. We're trying to move him (bin Laden) off his pedestal as a Robin Hood with a beard and a turban," Herrington said.  The rewards could lure an al-Qaida agent to inform on his cohorts, Herrington says. "It's a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained," he said.  "Freezing the funds is the other part of the psychological and financial campaign, but it's complex. You could nuance this issue back and forth," he said.  "You could freeze the accounts and not announce it. Then, when they try to get the money, you could nail them. But if you don't freeze their money, it can disappear in a nanosecond, through an electronic transfer," Herrington said.

Both the wanted poster and the funds freeze are more feel-good tactics than good police work, according to Rowan Bosworth-Davies, a former Scotland Yard financial crime detective and now an international consultant.  Cold War View "Investigators would like the whole thing kept as quiet as possible. But modern policemen have to accept that the public demands more accountability," he said.  "President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have a propaganda war to win. They must show results at an early stage. That could be arrests or bank accounts frozen, or money seized. It all goes to building up a picture of governments doing something," Bosworth-Davies said. 

But Bosworth-Davies notes there's a downside to the public support effort.  "Cold War spooks say you should not give out any info you don't need to give out. The PR people say that 285 million people are suffering from psychological trauma. They want to see their government doing something. So it does feel-good things," he said.  Freezing funds is not going to make a difference to al-Qaida, Bosworth-Davies says. Whether it helps the investigation is a crapshoot.  "You could take out three accounts in a chain of accounts and that would make it harder to trace the flow. Or the information you get from the records of the frozen accounts could take you further," he said.  "But it's almost certain there isn't much money passing down these channels anyway. They'll have other conduits available to them and can switch operations whenever it suits them." 

Leaving accounts open can pay off, says Michael Kessler, a former chief of tax investigations for New York State and now head of Kessler International, a New York forensic accounting firm.  "If you leave an account open and monitor it, you can see the transactions taking place and collect intelligence," he said.  The Money Trail "The theory behind freezing is to put a crimp in the operation. But I am sure they have a lot of other accounts to fund terrorism. From experience, I would say they have set up companies to do imports and exports to generate funds," Kessler said.  Their accounts would not raise red flags, he says. "They could do just one or two transactions a year. The accounts might not even pay interest," he said. 

Identifying terrorism money is hard, says Nigel Morris-Cotterill, editor of the World Money Laundering Report in Brentwood, Essex, U.K. "Terrorism money doesn't move like dirty money from crime such as drugs and people trafficking," he said.  "Money that ordinary people give to a cause they believe in enters the banking system as clean money because it is clean money. What makes it illegal is what's done with it. We don't know how to identify clean money on its way to terrorists," Morris-Cotterill said.