According to the Center for Security Policy website’s headline story today:

It turns out that the [U.S.] Nation's leading public pension funds are heavily invested in some 400 publicly traded companies that do business with terrorist-sponsoring regimes -- providing them with lifeblood in the form of vital resources, high technology and cash. Cutting off such business could hurt the bad guys in material ways.

A study conducted by the Center revealed that the largest 100 American pension funds “invest between 15 and 23 percent of their portfolio in companies that do business in terrorist-sponsoring states,” which include North Korea, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Syria. For example, the Center claims that the California Public Employees Retirement System (“Calpers”), America's largest public pension fund, has approximately $17 billion invested in 201 companies doing business with terror-sponsors, while Rhode Island has about $400 million invested in 41 companies doing business with state sponsors of terrorism. The U.S. pension funds surveyed have approximately $188 billion total invested in these companies, according to the report.

Of the 400 companies which do business with state sponsors of terrorism, the Center specifically identified 12 companies, which it calls the “Dirty Dozen,” that “exemplify the various ways in which this behavior is helping prop up such governments and, thereby, enabling their ability to aid and abet terrorism.” Companies like Alcatel SA, BNP Paribas, Hyundai, and Siemens AG are part of this dozen.

According to money.cnn.com,

The report accused most public pensions of ignoring the issue of indirectly supporting terrorism and working to block scrutiny of their holdings.

"...the largest U.S. public pension funds have to date done nothing to address this major challenge," the report said. "A number of them have actively resisted efforts to educate them and their beneficiaries to the moral, strategic, and financial dangers entailed in investments exposed to global security risk."

The Center has set up a website, http://www.divestterror.org/ to encourage investors to pressure their pension funds to divest from companies doing business with terror-sponsors. The site provides a template letter which investors can send to local and state officials.

Getting $200 billion out of terrorist sponsoring countries would go a long way towards winning the war on terror.