Ranking US intelligence officials’ open expression of concern Wednesday that Islamist jihad terrorist organizations could be forming alliances with Central and South American narco-terrorists came as no surprise to veteran Intelligence Community (IC) counterterror and counternarcotics officials who regularly talk to HSToday.us.

Indeed. What the IC officials who spoke at the SOUTHCOM and Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association sponsored conference in Miami, “Drugs and the Americas: What Are the Challenges and the Global Impact?” disclosed neatly dovetails with a variety of still classified intelligence from the late 1980s and early 1990s that was made available to HSToday.us.

That intelligence clearly shows that even that far back terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the since defeated Abu Nidal Organization had made significant inroads toward establishing operational and financial conduits throughout the Americas – conduits that even twenty years ago had began to overlap with narco-trafficking infrastructure.

Consequently, the worries of intelligence officials twenty years ago about the intersection of terrorists and narco-trafficers is reason for alarm today, as IC officials have pointed out. ....