October 31, 2005: One of the unseen, of necessity, efforts in the war on terror is the work done to track down, and stop, sources of income for terrorists. It is known that many Islamic terrorists operate on very tight budgets. There are some fund raising operations for terrorist groups, but many of them have disappeared as the United States began looking real hard, and leaning on governments (like Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States) that traditionally kept out of their subjects financial affairs, and fund raising activities. As a result, much of the Islamic terrorist funding is now coming from criminal sources, and often being spent in the criminal underworld as well. Islamic terrorists have long relied on smuggling, drugs, credit card fraud and other scams to raise funds. But this has backfired somewhat, in that dealing with gangsters puts them up against people who often get turned into informants for the police. Typically, a crook gets caught for some crime, and agrees to be an informer in order to reduce, or eliminate, their punishment. Sources like this have led to many Islamic terrorist operations. But now it appears that Islamic terrorists have found some allies in the criminal underground. There are some strange alliances as well. White supremacist groups have been doing business with Islamic radicals. These two groups share a hatred of Jews and the United States government, and it apparently is a case of the "enemy of my enemy is my friend." Nothing may come of this alliance, but it is disturbing that some of the criminal underground is willing to get involved with terrorism (outside of the kind often used against victims and rivals.)