The Department of Defense’s Role in
Combating Transnational Organized Crime
William F. Wechsler and Gary Barnabo
T
ransnational organized crime (TOC) is altering the face of national security and changing
the character of the battlespace. Loose networks of criminals operate across international
boundaries with impunity, and their actions are more violent, deadly, and destabilizing
than in any previous time. Once viewed primarily through the lens of law enforcement as
drug cartels, transnational criminal organizations now engage in a web of overlapping illegal
activities, from cybercrime to trafficking in persons, money laundering, and distribution of
materials for weapons of mass destruction. As the power and influence of these organizations
have grown, their ability to undermine, corrode, and destabilize governments has increased.
The links forged among criminal groups, terrorist movements, and insurgencies have resulted
in a new type of adversary: hybrid, ever-evolving networks that are criminal, violent, and, at
times, politically motivated and blend into the landscape of a globalization-dominated world.
Hybrid networks adapt their structures and activities faster than countries can combat their
threats. These adversaries have become the new normal, compelling governments toward
integrated, innovative approaches to countering the growing dangers posed by transnational
organized crime.
The Character of Transnational Organized Crime
For decades, drug trafficking was the dominant lens through which the United States viewed
TOC. In the 1970s and 1980s, the flow of illicit narcotics into the United States was deemed
a major risk to the health and safety of Americans, and the government expended massive
resources to curtail both the supply of and the demand for illegal drugs. Supply side reduction
strategies emphasized degrading the capabilities of Western Hemisphere drug-trafficking
organizations—highly capable, violent, centralized, and hierarchical organizations often led
by charismatic kingpins. Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel, for example, were emblematic
of the type of threat facing the United States.
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The drug-trafficking organization–centered paradigm for understanding the threat from TOC
was already anachronistic by the 1990s as the character of transnational criminal groups began
changing in three critical ways. First, drug-trafficking organizations diversified their activities.
Taking advantage of the hallmarks of globalization such as open borders, rapid increases in
the volume and speed of global trade, and the dissemination of technology tools, criminal organizations
that once dealt almost exclusively in narcotics began trafficking in small arms and
light weapons, people, counterfeit goods, and money, while continuing to ship vast quantities of
drugs along an expanding set of transportation routes. These groups recognized the additional
profits and operational flexibility that a broader range of trafficking activities could provide.
Second, transnational criminal organizations harnessed new methods of doing business.
Criminal groups began penetrating the licit global marketplace, subverting and distorting legitimate
markets and economic activity. These groups became adroit at harnessing information
technology tools, seizing the opportunities presented by the accelerating velocity of information
flows, the proliferation of online money transfer, and the general anonymity of virtual
exchange to increase the scale and scope of their activities while spreading or reducing the risk
of detection. Cyberspace is now a central arena for TOC: it enables vital elements of criminal
transactions, such as communications and financial exchange, at low risk. Moreover, the increased
virtual nature of some transnational criminal organizations has created deep overlaps
and synergies between legal and illegal activities: the same networks that facilitate legitimate
international business transactions are used for crime. Consequently, it is increasingly difficult
for governments to identify, target, and degrade the activities of transnational criminal groups.
Third, the structure of transnational criminal organizations changed. Reflective of globalization’s
trends, centralized criminal groups have, in many cases, yielded to dispersed networks
of criminal agents. They have become loose, amorphous, highly adaptable networks that are
decentralized and flat, and emphasize ad hoc partnerships defined by the opportunity of the
moment rather than top-down, command-and-control hierarchies. These characteristics have
rendered transnational criminal organizations more flexible and agile than the government
agencies chartered with degrading or defeating them. In the context of the Department of
Defense (DOD), criminal networks cut across geographic combatant commands, which are
responsible for the employment of military capabilities in distinct regions. Criminals who
operate across multiple combatant commands present challenges for DOD in synchronizing
its efforts to understand and address their activities. These realities demand new approaches
that are networked, whole-of-government, and adaptable.
Together, these shifts have generated a more threatening set of challenges to national and
international security. Transnational criminal organizations co-opt government officials and
elites, corrode the legitimacy of government institutions, and increasingly have the propensity
and ability to use national infrastructures to further their activities. In some cases, these groups
threaten and challenge the state’s control of its territory. Guinea-Bissau in Africa is on the verge
of becoming a narco-state. Transnistria, a region of Moldova controlled by a separatist regime,
has been deeply penetrated by organized crime. And closer to home, certain governments in
the Western Hemisphere are increasingly challenged to preserve citizen security from the
insidious effects of criminal organizations, such as corruption and large-scale violence.
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Criminal networks are increasingly merging, blending, and cooperating with other
nefarious and violent nonstate actors including terrorist organizations and insurgent movements.
Crime is used to finance terrorism and is often how insurgencies raise revenue to
pay individual cadres. Terrorists and insurgents can tap into the global illicit marketplace to
underwrite their activities and acquire weapons and other supplies vital to their operations.
Criminals, in their search for profits, will turn almost anywhere for revenue. The net effect is
a crime-terror-insurgency nexus.
Examples of this nexus abound. As of November 2011, the Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) had linked 19 of the 49 organizations on the State Department’s list of Foreign
Terrorist Organizations to the drug trade.
1 Similarly, in 2010, 29 of the 63 organizations on
the Justice Department’s Consolidated Priority Organization Targets list, which includes key
drug trafficking and criminal organizations, had associations with terrorism.
2 In January 2012,
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper concluded that “Terrorists and insurgents will
increasingly turn to crime and criminal networks for funding and logistics, in part because of
U.S. and Western success in attacking other sources of their funding. The criminal connections
and activities of Hezbollah and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb illustrate this trend.”
3
Global crime networks coalesce with members of radical political movements in ungoverned
border regions in Central and South America; similar blending has occurred in the Balkans.
The crime-terror-insurgent nexus is changing the global security landscape and, more
importantly for DOD, is also altering the character of the battlespace. In Afghanistan, the
Taliban and a variety of criminal networks often operate in lockstep; illicit activities are an
important funding stream for the Taliban and its offshoots. Moreover, drug incomes corrupt
politicians, alienating populations who then become vulnerable to the messages of the Taliban
and its ilk. Crime and corruption thus perpetuate the Afghan insurgency and threaten coalition
forces’ ability to consolidate security gains and establish conditions for long-term stability. Of
direct concern to DOD are the criminal networks that provide the materials and financial
and logistical support for improvised explosive devices, which are among the most significant
threats to U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan.
More generally, hybrid criminal-terror-insurgent threats are forcing DOD to adapt its approaches
to conflict and adjust the type and level of resources it deploys around the world. War
against nebulous, networked threats that operate at the seams of war, instability, and peace; blur
the illicit and licit; and simultaneously display the characteristics of criminals, terrorists, and
insurgents requires DOD to think innovatively about how it plans, organizes, and operates.
A New Impetus for Combating Transnational Organized Crime
Largely because of the changing character of transnational criminal organizations, the national
security threats posed by TOC have expanded and become more dangerous. This finding is at
the core of the Obama administration’s July 2011
Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized
Crime
, which concludes that “criminal networks are not only expanding their operations, but
they are also diversifying their activities. The result is a convergence of threats that have evolved
to become more complex, volatile, and destabilizing.”
4 In a clear articulation of the U.S. Government’s
position, the strategy declares that transnational organized crime poses “a significant
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threat to national security.”
5 It directs the government to “build, balance, and integrate the tools
of American power to combat transnational organized crime and related threats to national
security—and to urge our foreign partners to do the same.”
6
The strategy is a call to action: it compels the U.S. Government, including DOD, to reframe
and refocus its efforts in combating TOC. Importantly, the strategy addresses organized
crime and drug trafficking as increasingly intertwined threats, laying the foundation for a broad
approach to global crime that rightfully retains a core focus on counternarcotics but widens
the aperture by recognizing the diversification of global criminal activity and its relationship
with other irregular threats.
Transnational criminal organizations are the essence of a networked threat. Not only are
criminal entities themselves networked, but they also rely on support networks—transportation,
financial, human capital, logistics, and communications—to enable their activities. It
follows that U.S. Government efforts to combat organized crime should emphasize counternetwork
approaches. Disrupting networks, particularly those associated with financial flows—
vital enablers of any criminal activity—through multifaceted targeting of key network nodes,
be they individuals, institutions, or even specific trafficking routes, can have a broad positive
impact on degrading criminal organizations. Employing these counternetwork approaches,
however, requires the government to assume the characteristics of a network, integrating the
capabilities of diverse interagency stakeholders and adjusting approaches as rapidly as the adversary
changes tactics. Only when our policy responses and actions in the field are as adaptive
as the threat will we see true progress against transnational organized crime.
DOD’s Supporting and Evolving Role
DOD supports law enforcement, other U.S. agencies, and foreign partners in combating
transnational organized crime. The U.S. Government and its partners address transnational
criminal threats primarily through law enforcement channels, capacity-building efforts, diplomacy
with key partner states, intelligence and analytical efforts, and the use of innovative policy
tools such as counterthreat finance capabilities. Because it is in a supporting role, DOD rarely
leads these efforts, but it offers unique capabilities and resources that strengthen overall U.S.
Government approaches against criminal networks. As the threat has morphed, however, there
have been important instances of law enforcement agencies supporting DOD operations. The
Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell, for example, is run by law enforcement entities and provides
direct support to military operations in Afghanistan. Support that cuts both ways—from
DOD to law enforcement and from law enforcement to the military—is a strategically important
evolution in how the U.S. Government organizes to combat TOC.
The Department of Defense can provide intelligence and equipment to support law
enforcement efforts against transnational criminal organizations. DOD’s focus, however,
has typically been on counternarcotics missions—historically in the Western Hemisphere
and over the past decade in Afghanistan and the surrounding region. As described above, the
nexus among criminals, terrorists, and insurgents is increasingly visible as our adversaries forge
hybrid organizational and operational models, suggesting that counterterrorism initiatives in
the future should incorporate a greater emphasis on combating the nexus with TOC.
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Combating Transnational Organized Crime
Moreover, the traditional emphasis on counterdrug missions will also continue to shift
due to the blurring of illicit narcotics production and trafficking and other forms of transnational
crime. Criminal networks that traffic in drugs more often than not also deal in small
arms, light weapons, precursor chemicals, people, or bulk cash. This is certainly the case of
organized crime groups such as Los Zetas, the Sinaloa Cartel, and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13),
which operate across the Western Hemisphere and have tentacles reaching into Europe and
Asia, and the illicit networks that crisscross Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia.
Not all transnational criminal organizations undertake the full spectrum of illegal activity,
but it is increasingly rare to see major crime groups confine their business strictly to one type
of criminality.
Spectrum of Support
The evolution of many drug-trafficking organizations into diversified criminal groups has
driven a shift in DOD’s mission focus. The Department now provides support to law enforcement,
other U.S. Government agencies, and foreign partners across a spectrum of operations
and activities: military-to-military assistance, capacity-building and training to partner states,
intelligence support to law enforcement, support to the development of institutions that convene
interagency stakeholders in whole-of-government approaches to combating the national
security threats TOC present, and, as a last resort, direct military action against terrorist or
insurgent groups that also engage in crime. DOD is not often the most visible government
agency combating transnational organized crime, and this is entirely proper for a Department
in a supporting role. But the lack of attention it receives for its efforts against TOC does not
diminish the importance of its contributions.
The extent and success of DOD support in the fight against TOC are best understood
through examples at various points on the spectrum.
Military-to-Military Support
In the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia faced a full-blown challenge to the viability of the state.
Several armed criminal-insurgent groups waged an active campaign against the government,
engaging in major terrorist attacks, kidnapping, extortion, and all phases of the drug trade. In
the late 1990s, there was widespread belief that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) would seize Bogota. For 20 years, Colombian drug-trafficking organizations exported
cocaine to the United States in staggering quantities, and it appeared almost impossible to
make a dent in the drug trafficking and organized crime emanating from that country.
Over time, however, the political will among Colombian leaders, supported by a sustained
U.S. Government interagency effort, resulted in a remarkable impact against the FARC and
related criminal-insurgent activity in Colombia. DOD was a vital enabler of Colombia’s success,
helping its security forces overcome critical capability gaps. The Department’s sustained
counternarcotics and security assistance delivered military training, tactical and operational
support, capacity-building on intelligence sharing, and information operations, equipment,
and human rights training. The Department’s engagements assisted the Colombian military
in turning the tide against the FARC and other violent criminal groups that sought to capture
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the state. Colombia is now an exporter of security in the region, providing military training at
the request of regional and international organizations and collaborating with both neighboring
states and other countries as far afield as Turkey to share its lessons learned and provide
capacity-building assistance for combating narcotics and TOC, as well as citizen security,
peacekeeping operations, disaster response, and the strengthening of defense institutions. Its
special operations forces are now considered to be among the best of their kind in many circles.
The lessons learned from Colombia’s successes are regularly applied to U.S. Government efforts
in support of Mexico, Afghanistan, and other partners. DOD was just one U.S. Government
actor among many that provided support to Colombia, but its military-to-military collaboration
was a vital part of perhaps the first whole-of-government approach to combating TOC.
Building Partner Capacity
DOD’s capacity-building efforts with foreign partners are widespread. Capacity-building and
training of security forces, which serve a variety of national security objectives, are often areas
in which DOD has a comparative advantage vis-à-vis other departments and agencies. As
transnational criminal organizations expand their presence in regions such as West Africa and
Southeast Asia, the Department’s ability to support an ever-greater array of partner nations is
more and more valuable. DOD’s role in training, equipping, and in some cases operating alongside
partner countries’ security forces is the bedrock of building these states’ capacity to combat
TOC over the long term. DOD also partners with U.S. law enforcement agencies to support
the improvement of policing capacity in key partner states. Given resource constraints, support
for military-to-military and law enforcement capacity-building is in many cases a particularly
effective use of limited resources. It amounts to a long-term investment and provides partner
countries with the skills and tools that allow them, rather than the United States, to assume
the burden of combating TOC in and around their territory.
The impact of DOD initiatives is clear in numerous cases. In Indonesia, a sprawling
archipelago across which multiple criminal organizations and terrorist groups operate, Joint
Interagency Task Force–West (JIATF-W) activities have increased the capacity of Indonesian
security forces to fight a broad range of transnational threats including criminal organizations
trafficking in narcotics and precursor chemicals and terrorist and insurgent movements seeking
safe space from which to operate. JIATF-W support to Indonesia’s National Narcotics Board
has resulted in the construction of facilities at a counternarcotics academy used by various
elements of the Indonesian security forces. In Liberia, a strategic location in a region that has
experienced growth in trafficking and transnational crime, DOD support has focused on
capacity-building in two principal areas: maritime security (primarily through rebuilding the
Liberian Coast Guard) and support to the newly formed Transnational Crime Unit. United
States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) supported the renovation of a Liberian Coast
Guard base of operations, which included construction of a boat ramp/launch facility, floating
pier, and security fence. In addition, USAFRICOM has sponsored attendance by Liberian
Coast Guard personnel at various U.S. Coast Guard training courses that support Liberia’s
maritime security operations.
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Military Intelligence Support to Law Enforcement
Network mapping has become widely recognized as a key enabler in combating transnational
organized crime. Criminal organizations use multiple, overlapping transportation, logistics,
and financial networks to do business. Financial networks are particularly vital since money
is central to all criminal activities. Consequently, DOD has expanded its military intelligence
support to law enforcement on counterthreat finance initiatives that seek to identify, penetrate,
and exploit the critical nodes in the complex financial systems that enable global illicit networks.
DOD recognizes that countering the financial flows that facilitate trafficking groups, criminal
organizations, terrorists, and insurgents will produce cascading positive effects across the range
of networks these nefarious actors use.
A particular strength of DOD is integrating various forms of all-source intelligence to
facilitate a network-based approach to targeting. This is the approach used in the Afghan
Threat Finance Cell, through which DOD supports the DEA, Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Department of the Treasury, and other U.S. Government partners to identify insurgent
financiers, disrupt front companies, develop actionable financial intelligence, freeze and seize
illicit funds, and build criminal cases. These actions are vital to degrading and diminishing
the power of criminal-terrorist networks by enabling a judicial endgame—the prosecution
of adversaries, which often removes them from the battlefield for far longer than typical military-
led raids. The Afghan Threat Finance Cell is also designed to provide direct support to
the government of Afghanistan’s efforts to reclaim tainted money moving around the country,
which further undercuts the power of insurgent and terrorist networks. Importantly, these
types of approaches can be replicated and DOD’s experiences in Afghanistan have equipped it
with new tools, techniques, and institutional skill sets that add to the overall set of capabilities
the Department offers in support of law enforcement.
Direct Military Action with a Counter-Network Focus
In Afghanistan, DOD is taking direct action against a hybrid insurgent-criminal adversary in
partnership with law enforcement agencies and the government of Afghanistan. Over the past
10 years, there has been an evolution in how the Department thinks about and approaches
its missions there. DOD—and the interagency—have shifted from the paradigm that crime
oriented around narcotics production was an indelible feature of the national landscape but
disconnected from operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban, to a recognition that corruption,
narcotics production and trafficking, criminal organizations, and insurgency and terror are
mutually enabling and reinforcing and cannot be addressed in isolation. Ultimately, organized
crime and corruption threaten the viability of the Afghan state.
Consequently, DOD actions in Afghanistan emphasize counternetwork approaches:
attacking, degrading, and defeating the criminal networks that sustain the insurgency and
undermine the legitimacy and capacity of the Afghan government. Counterinsurgency,
counter–transnational organization crime missions, counterthreat finance activities, and capacity-
building efforts are part of an integrated U.S. Government effort led, in many cases, by
DOD. The Department’s role in the operation of the Afghan Threat Finance Cell is a critical
contribution to whole-of-government approaches to combating hybrid criminal-insurgent
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enemies in Afghanistan. The Interagency Operations Coordination Center, a joint U.S.–
United Kingdom center that provides law enforcement targeting support and operational
coordination for counternarcotics and counter–illicit networks operations in Afghanistan, is
a broader example of successful whole-of-government initiatives to counter organized crime
that also include the participation of key U.S. allies.
The Department of Defense has also adapted its policies in Afghanistan to address the
convergence of crime and insurgency more effectively. In 2008, DOD changed its policy to enable
U.S. forces to provide direct support to counternarcotics missions conducted by the DEA
and its Afghan counterparts. This shift in policy has led to a number of successful operations,
such as
Khafa Khardan, during which U.S. and coalition forces operating under the International
Security Assistance Force enabled 94 counterdrug operations by Afghan counterdrug
law enforcement units and their mentors in a 30-day period.
DOD possesses significant convening power outside of Afghanistan. Through organizations
such as the Joint Interagency Task Force–South ( JIATF-S) and JIATF-W, DOD
has brought key U.S. agencies together in pursuit of common objectives. These hubs of collaboration
facilitate fast and flexible responses to the range of threats posed by transnational
organized crime. They are prime examples of the government assuming the characteristics
of a network—essentially creating a network among myriad U.S. Government agencies in
one location—to combat a networked threat. While its traditional emphasis has been on
counternarcotics, particularly the interdiction of illegal drugs, JIATF-S is a resounding success.
In 2009, it accounted for more than 40 percent of global cocaine interdiction, and in the
past two decades it has deprived criminal organizations of nearly $200 billion in profits.
7 Its
success stems in large part from the long-term, sustained, and institutionalized integration
of effort among law enforcement, DOD, and intelligence. Indeed, it may be that DOD’s role
in establishing the institutional architecture that enables agencies to work together as part of
a unified, whole-of-government approach is actually the most significant contribution it has
made in the fight against transnational organized crime and related national security threats.
Entities such as the JIATFs are not easy to create, and success does not stem from standing
up an organization, calling it “joint,” and staffing it from across the interagency. Impact and
sustainability require a set of conditions, beginning with a clear overlap in vital interests so
that stakeholders see the value of enduring participation, and a shared commitment to unified
action around the issues affecting those interests. Next, it is critical to develop and implement
strong cross-organizational structures that bring order and discipline to execution of critical
tasks. Finally, the organization must be adaptive, adjusting its approaches based on evolutions,
transformations, and shocks to the “issue set” it is chartered to address. DOD leadership has
fostered these conditions in the JIATFs, turning them into highly effective interagency hubs
that are models for replication.
New Challenges and Paradigms of Support
Five years ago, the Mexican government directed its military to increase its traditional role
of supporting law enforcement while Mexico undertook reforms to strengthen police, the
judicial system, and related institutions. These measures were largely necessitated by Mexican
transnational criminal organizations’ diversification beyond drug trafficking into kidnapping,
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Combating Transnational Organized Crime
extortion, smuggling persons, and other crimes. As the Mexican government disrupted transnational
criminal organizations, these groups increasingly fought for market share, escalating
violence against one another, targeting Mexican security forces using military-like weapons,
tactics, and techniques, and endangering the civilian population in the process. Mexican
criminal organizations also expanded their operations into Central America and have reached
into the United States, penetrating cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Atlanta, far from the
border. The diversification of criminal activity and the increase in violence forced the Mexican
military to assume even more prominent roles, while simultaneously transforming themselves
to become more capable of protecting the public from hybrid, irregular threats.
The Way Forward
As the spectrum demonstrates, DOD tailors the type of support it provides to law enforcement,
other U.S. Government agencies, and foreign partners. Given the ever-evolving character
of transnational organized crime, this adaptability allows DOD to have significant strategic
impact in a range of circumstances. There are risks, however, of overextension and redundancy.
Providing support across a wide spectrum of efforts demands that DOD carefully prioritize
the specific activities it undertakes—a prescient requirement as resources shrink.
DOD has taken important steps toward setting clear priorities for its actions against
transnational organized crime. The Department’s Counternarcotics and Global Threats Strategy,
derived from national strategic and military guidance, is a key departure point for how
DOD combats transnational organized crime. But this strategy is not exhaustive. There are
manifestations of organized crime such as cybercrime, financial crimes, and state-sponsored
illicit activities that DOD has not yet fully integrated into its strategy and policy development.
Doing so will be critical to ensuring that the resources expended against criminal organizations
have maximum strategic impact.
The Department must also link its efforts against transnational organized crime with other
national security priorities. The strategies and policies created and implemented to combat
the threats posed by criminal networks should be connected to other focal points for DOD
and the U.S. Government—particularly cybersecurity, counterterrorism, counterproliferation,
building partner capacity, and strengthening governance. Holistic approaches that recognize
transnational organized crime not as a stovepiped problem but as a nefarious feature of the
global security environment that touches the whole world and impacts a multitude of vital
U.S. interests are the types most likely to succeed over the long term.
DOD understands that the most important prerequisite to success against transnational
organized crime is organizational flexibility and adaptability. As the character of transnational
criminal organizations continues to change and DOD and its U.S. Government partners hone
their understanding of the types of national security threats these groups pose, we must be
able to shift our strategies, priorities, policies, operations, and tactics for combating them. To
fail in our mission because DOD is unable to organize itself properly is unacceptable, yet it
remains a risk if we do not assume the characteristics of flexible, flat organizations.
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Notes
1
Statement of Derek S. Maltz, Special Agent in Charge of the Special Operations Division, Drug Enforcement
Administration, before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, and Crime,
November 17, 2011.
2
Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security (Washington,
DC: The White House, July 2011), 6.
3
James Clapper, Unclassified Statement for the Record on the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S.
Intelligence Community for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, January 31, 2012.
4
Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime, cover letter by President Barack Obama.
5
Ibid., 1.
6
Ibid.
7
Evan Munsing and Christopher J. Lamb, Joint Interagency Task Force–South: The Best Known, Least Understood
Interagency Success
, Strategic Perspectives No. 5, Center for Strategic Research, Institute for National Strategic
Studies (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, June 2011), 3.
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