The Terror-Crime Nexus

By Celina Realuyo

Celina Realuyo is Professor of Practice at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University. She is a former U.S. diplomat, international banker with Goldman Sachs, foreign policy advisor under the Clinton and Bush Administrations, and State Department Director of Counterterrorism Finance Programs.

The reach of Latin American illicit trafficking networks extends well beyond the region, according to former U.S. diplomat Celina Realuyo, now a professor at the National Defense University. Realuyo spoke with The Cipher Brief about the nexus between crime and terror, noting that these networks – and the organized criminal groups that run them – are now tied to Hezbollah and other global terrorist groups. 

The Cipher Brief: How would you assess the threat of illicit trafficking networks in Latin America to U.S. national security?  What makes the U.S. an attractive operating environment for these criminal groups?

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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