Our Next Public Event: Compañeros de Armas ("Friends in Arms"): Chavez, FARC & South America

By Andrew Cochran

On Wednesday, March 19, at 10 am, I will moderate a panel titled, "Compañeros de Armas ("Friends in Arms"): Chavez, FARC & South America," in room 2200 of the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. Our panelists will be Douglas Farah, a security consultant who works primarily with the NEFA Foundation and U.S. government; Jonathan Winer, Partner at Alston & Bird L.L.P. and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement; and Steven Monblatt, former Deputy Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism at the State Department and former Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism at the Organization of American States. Doug and Jonathan are also Contributing Experts to The Counterterrorism Blog. The event is sponsored by the Counterterrorism Foundation, a tax-exempt nonprofit in Washington, DC.

Douglas Farah lived with his family in South America for most of his childhood. After graduating from college in the U.S. with a degree in Latin American studies, he began a distinguished 15-year career covering Latin America affairs, during which he received several coveted awards for outstanding reporting. He switched interests to West Africa in 2000, broke the story of al Qaeda's ties to diamond and weapons networks there, and discovered Viktor Bout's activities. So it is terribly ironic for Doug that Viktor Bout's recent arrest came during a sting by DEA agents posing as FARC terrorists. You can read his Counterterrorism Blog posts on his archive page.

Jonathan Winer was also chief counsel on the Senate Banking Committee for Sen. John Kerry during his investigation of the BCCI scandal in the early 1990s. He now represents domestic and foreign clients on regulatory and enforcement matters, includng complying with the USA Patriot Act, Bank Secrecy Act, and Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations. You can read his Counterterrorism Blog posts on his archive page.

Steven Monblatt is now co-Executive Director of the British American Security Information Council in Washington. He is a counter-terrorism professional with a broad geographic and over 30 years of substantive security experience in the U.S. and abroad. At the OAS, he built from scratch a Secretariat whose organization and programs have been recognized by the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Committee as a model for other regional organizations.

We would appreciate your RSVP to this e-mail address.

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