Commissioner Robert Bonner and Green Quest Director Marcy Forman attended the signing, which took place in Washington, D.C., on September 4, 2002.

This groundbreaking agreement, called an "operative working arrangement," sets an international precedent: It allows investigators from Customs Operation Green Quest, the FBI's Terrorist Financial Review Group, and Switzerland's terrorist task force to serve in each other's organizations.

You could think of it as an academic exchange program, only bigger. Much bigger. And since it's devoted to pursuing terrorist activities, including and especially those of al Qaeda, its stakes are much, much higher.

Under the agreement, agents from Switzerland's investigative group, called Terror USA, will be assigned to Operation Green Quest and to the FBI's Financial Review Group, while agents from the two American agencies will be assigned to Terror USA. Since the signing, two U.S. Customs agents were detailed to Switzerland for six weeks, and two Swiss agents were detailed to Washington for the same amount of time.

The arrangement is not only historic, it's practical: unlike international treaties, which require Senate ratification, this one entails no particular international legal rights or obligations.

As transportation and telecommunications keep shrinking our planet, and whole continents can be leapt with a single mouse click, the good guys from all nations are becoming as dependent upon each other as police forces are in neighboring counties.

This new operative working arrangement leverages that growing interdependence by allowing countries to share each other's law enforcement information in real time, without the redundancy of effort that would otherwise be involved.

It is also another instance of the Customs Service's commitment to finding non-traditional ways of sharing information among, and cooperating with, international law enforcement agencies, especially those with cities that serve as key financial centers.