Since the 1970s, private Saudi citizens, Saudi government ministries, Saudi government charitable committees, and international Islamic charity organizations based in Saudi Arabia have provided financial and relief assistance to Muslims around the world. This has included the provision of assistance to individuals and groups engaged in or victimized by various nationalist and religious conflicts. Similar public and private Saudi efforts have financed religious education and proselytization programs in dozens of Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority countries. In places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kashmir, Kosovo, and the West Bank and Gaza, some of these activities appear to have provided financial or material support to individuals or groups actively involved in terrorism, armed violence, or the propagation of divisive religious ideologies. In 2007, the U.S. Department of State reported that, "Saudi donors and unregulated charities have been a major source of financing to extremist and terrorist groups over the past 25 years." Official U.S. government concerns about this trend were apparent prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which amplified public criticism within the United States of alleged Saudi involvement in terrorism or of Saudi laxity in acting against terrorist groups. Various critics have accused the Saudi government of directly supporting terrorism and of creating a permissive environment that has allowed funding to flow to terrorists and extremists. The final report released by the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission) indicates that the Commission "found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded [Al Qaeda]." The report also states, however, that Saudi Arabia "was a place where Al Qaeda raised money directly from individuals and through charities" and indicates that "charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship" may have diverted funding to Al Qaeda. The Bush Administration's statements on Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism policies have praised new Saudi efforts to combat terrorist financing, while generally confirming accounts that suggest that the activities of some Saudi entities and individuals have contributed to the spread of terrorism and extremism over time. In April 2008, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey told the Senate Finance Committee that the Saudi government is "serious about fighting Al Qaeda in the kingdom, and they do," and argued that Saudi officials' "seriousness of purpose with respect to the money going out of the kingdom is not as high." He added, "Saudi Arabia today remains the location from which more money is going to... Sunni terror groups and the Taliban than from any other place in the world." This report: reviews allegations of involvement by Saudis in terrorist financing together with Saudi rebuttals; discusses the question of Saudi support for Palestinian organizations and religious charities and schools ( madrasas ) abroad; analyzes recent steps taken by Saudi Arabia to counter terrorist financing (many in conjunction with the United States); and suggests some implications of recent Saudi actions for U.S. counterterrorism policy. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, numerous allegations have been leveled against the Saudi Arabian government and prominent Saudi citizens regarding financial support for international terrorist groups. Although many of the allegations fault the Saudi government for failing to act decisively to close down channels of financial support, some critics go so far as to accuse Saudi government officials of responsibility for the September 11 attacks through design or negligence and for the continuing threat posed by the perpetrators or by like-minded terrorist groups. Since September 11, U.S. government officials have welcomed "undeniable progress" in the Saudi Arabian government's efforts to combat terrorist financing, while maintaining concern that "wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia are still funding violent extremists around the world, from Europe to North Africa, from Iraq to Southeast Asia." The following are summaries of the more publicized post-September 11 reports of alleged Saudi involvement in terrorist financing. The final report released by the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States indicates that the Commission "found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded [Al Qaeda]." The report also states, however, that Saudi Arabia "was a place where Al Qaeda raised money directly from individuals and through charities," and indicates that "charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship," such as the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, may have diverted funding to Al Qaeda. (For more on this subject see 'Action Against Questionable Charity ' below.) Specifically, the report describes bin Laden's use of "the Golden Chain," an informal financial network of prominent Saudi and Gulf individuals originally established to support the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance movement in the 1980s. U.S. officials state that this network collected funds and funneled them to Arab fighters in Afghanistan, and later to Al Qaeda, using charities and other non-governmental organizations. According to the Commission's report, Saudi individuals and other financiers associated with the Golden Chain enabled bin Laden and Al Qaeda to replace lost financial assets and establish a base in Afghanistan following their abrupt departure from Sudan in 1996. These activities were facilitated in part, the report argues, by the "extreme religious views" that exist within Saudi Arabia and the fact that "until recently" Saudi charities were "subject to very limited oversight." Although the report highlights a series of unsuccessful U.S. government efforts to gain access to a senior Al Qaeda financial operative who had been detained by Saudi Arabia in 1997, the report credits the Saudi government with assisting U.S. officials in interviewing members of the bin Laden family in 1999 and 2000. The report argues that these meetings were integral to U.S. efforts to understand the role of bin Laden's personal wealth in the financing of Al Qaeda. As a result of this assistance, U.S. officials learned that Saudi government actions in the early 1990s had in effect divested bin Laden of his share of the bin Laden family fortune, leading Al Qaeda to rely thereafter on a "a core group of financial facilitators" based in the Persian Gulf "and particularly in Saudi Arabia" for funding. The report also credits Saudi government actions following the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh which "apparently reduced the funds available to Al Qaeda—perhaps drastically." An independent task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations has issued two reports that address terrorist financing and Saudi Arabia's alleged financial support for terrorism. The task force's October 2002 report strongly criticized what it asserted was Saudi financial support for international terrorist groups. For example, the report stated both in its summary and in the main body: "For years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for Al Qaeda. And for years, Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem." The authors argued that a connection between Saudi donors and Al Qaeda is logical for several reasons: Saudi Arabia possesses the greatest concentration of wealth in the region; Saudi nationals and charities were previously the most important sources of funds for the mujahideen [fighters against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan]; Saudi nationals have always constituted a disproportionate percentage of Al Qaeda's own membership; and Al Qaeda's political message has long focused on issues of particular interest to Saudi nationals, especially those who are disenchanted with their own government [emphasis added]. The report grouped Saudi Arabia with Pakistan, Egypt, and other Gulf states and regional financial centers as "source and transit countries," implying that donations to terrorist causes not only originate in these countries but also that donations from other countries pass through them en route to terrorist organizations. The Saudi government responded by charging that the report's allegations were based on "false and inconclusive information." A Treasury Department spokesperson reportedly described the report as "seriously flawed" because in the Department's opinion it did not describe new initiatives to combat terrorist financing adequately. The task force's second report, released in June 2004, updates the first report and chronicles the steps the Saudi Arabian government had taken to strengthen its financial, legal, and regulatory systems and to combat terrorist financing since late 2002. The report acknowledged the Saudi government's announcement of "the enactment or promulgation of a profusion of new laws and regulations and the creation of new institutional arrangements... intended to tighten controls over the principal modalities of terrorist financing." The report welcomed the steps and concluded that "on a comparative basis" Saudi Arabia had taken "more decisive legal and regulatory action to combat terrorist financing than many other Muslim states." The second report also identified several areas in which its authors argued that Saudi authorities could have done more to combat terrorist financing. It argued that additional action was essential "because of the fundamental centrality that persons and organizations based in Saudi Arabia have had in financing militant Islamist groups on a global basis." The report cited a lack of publicly available enforcement information as the basis for its questions about the Saudi government's commitment to implement its new terrorist financing laws and regulations. For example, the report specifically criticized the Saudi government's "failure to punish, in a demonstrable manner, specific and identified leaders of charities found to be funneling money to militant Islamist organizations." Saudi authorities claimed at the time to have prosecuted five individuals "for terror financing" and frozen the assets "of number of other individuals." In response to the second report's release, Adel Al Jubeir, then-foreign policy advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and chief Saudi spokesman, charged that the task force's conclusions were "politically motivated, ill-informed, and factually incorrect." A Treasury Department spokesperson reportedly agreed with the report's assertion that Saudi Arabia should take further steps to combat terrorist financing. In mid-August 2002, the families of more than 600 victims of the September 11 attacks filed a suit for approximately $1 trillion against three members of the Saudi royal family, a number of financial institutions and individuals, and the government of Sudan. The suit, which the Saudi media have described as an attempt to extort Saudi deposits in the United States, alleges that the defendants enabled the September 11 attacks to occur by making financial resources available to the perpetrators.