Summer 2004

Forum Links Organized Crime and Terrorism

By Barbara Porter

“Deadly Networks: The Nexus between Organized Crime and Terrorism” was the title of a recent forum exploring whether organized crime and terrorists may be linked in new efforts that could threaten national security. The 7th floor conference room of 1957 E St. provided the backdrop for the conference co-hosted by the Elliott School of International Affairs (ESIA), the GW Homeland Security Policy Institute and the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the National Defense University.

Kimberley Thachuk, visiting professor at ESIA, said the idea for the conference was to take a multi-disciplinary approach to a new and emerging threat. “The separation of terrorist activity from criminal activity is not conducive to understanding the multifaceted and dynamic nature of either,” Thachuk said. “It is precisely the fluid and often overlapping characters of both types of transnational actors that poses a threat to us… it is time for a new ‘security packaging’ …which will allow for all of the various threats to national security to be placed on a ‘security continuum’ along which there are gradations of threats that can and must be dealt with by all the tools in the government’s tool kit.”

Valerie McNevin of the World Bank called organized crime and terrorists a “recipe for a relationship.” Experts agreed terrorists needed the infrastructure that organized crime in many cases can provide while organized crime could benefit from the financial ties terrorists have built to fund their assaults. All advised that intelligence and law enforcement focus more on the financial links between these two groups and on identity theft and other financial crimes that are moving their objectives forward.

In combating this potentially deadly teaming, ESIA’s National Security Archives Fellow Rhea Shiers advised intelligence communities to exploit the crossover points between the groups, to focus on the financial activities, to build strong psychological profiles of leaders at all levels of the organizations and to use the Internet as the terrorists themselves have done. “The terrorists are using the Internet for their purposes,” Shiers said. “While it is not a panacea, the exploitation with this technology can be used for our benefit in getting the word out against some of these terrorist groups and activities.”

GW Associate Vice President for Homeland Security Frank Cilluffo said the value in this conference was in bringing together government, academic and private sector experts to discuss this issue. “This is cross-cutting, multidisciplinary thinking that needs to be explored linking diplomatic, law enforcement and intelligence communities in a reasonable discussion that can ultimately make us better prepared.”

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