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.

Among them is former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Collection Charles Allen, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis and the department’s Chief Intelligence Officer.

Allen said Wednesday that known jihad terrorist organization operatives have been identified in Latin American countries as involved in fundraising and logistical support.

"The presence of these people in the region leaves open the possibility that they will attempt to attack the United States," Allen said, adding, “the threats in this hemisphere are real. We cannot ignore them."

Allen warned that the IC is concerned that Islamist terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah could form alliances with powerful Latin American narco-cartels to take advantage of these cartels’ infrastructure to launch new attacks on the homeland.

But secret intelligence from twenty years ago revealed that Hezbollah and other Middle East-based terrorist organizations had been operating, sometimes alongside narco-traffickers, that long ago.

Indeed. Last July, Michael Braun, assistant administrator and chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and a longtime participant in the DEA's counterterrorism efforts, stated that the nexus today between narco-trafficking and terrorism may be developing at light speed, but that it is hardly a new trend.

Braun stated that there have been numerous links between narco-traffickers and terrorist organizations identified by the IC over the last twenty-five years, which the classified intelligence reviewed by HSToday.us clearly confirmed.

Braun said of the forty-three officially designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), DEA has linked nineteen of them to some aspect of the global narco-trade, and believes that up to sixty percent of terror organizations are connected with narco-trafficking.

Agreeing with Braun is SOUTHCOM Commander, Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who wrote in the October 2008 Joint Force Quarterly, "global and regional terrorists rely on arms trafficking, money laundering, extortion, kidnap-for-ransom, and - above all - drug trafficking as their funding sources.”

Stavridis added, “today, enormous profits from selling illegal drugs create huge amounts of money to finance crimes against our society. This money assists rogue states and international terrorist organizations that are determined to build and use weapons of mass destruction.”

Summarizing Braun’s address to the Washington Institute for Near East Analysis, Institute research assistants said “terrorist organizations have chosen to participate in the narcotics market for several reasons. State sponsorship of terrorism is declining, and the Department of Treasury, Central Intelligence Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and FBI have done a very good job at identifying private donors and disrupting the flows of terror financing. “

In addition, the US “has worked with its allies and significantly disrupted Al Qaeda's ability to communicate with their cells and nodes around the globe. Partly for this reason, Al Qaeda has shifted from a corporate to a franchise leadership model in recent years.”

“Terrorist groups, therefore, are increasingly in need of new sources of funds,” and the “drug business fills this need perfectly.” And while “terror organizations do not, in general, require massive sums of money for their operations,” they still “must finance training, infrastructure needs, equipping their members, bribing local officials, recruiting, and logistics.”

The Al Qaeda-linked terrorists cell that carried out the horrific Madrid train bombing funded nearly the entire operation through the sale of illicit drugs, according to authorities in Spain and US intelligence officials.

Allen said terrorists could use well-established smuggling routes and narco-proceeds to assist terrorist organizations in clandestinely smuggling operatives - or even weapons of mass destruction – into the US.

Porter J. Goss, while DCI in early 2005, said at a congressional hearing that intelligence strongly suggested that Al Qaeda had considered infiltrating the US through the Mexican border.

Then DHS Deputy Secretary Adm. James M. Loy echoed Goss.

"Several Al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons,” Loy told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the time.

Classified CIA intelligence from twenty years ago shown to HSToday.us documented three “known” Palestinian terrorists who were to be smuggled into the US through Mexico from Panama. It’s not known, however, whether they were successful, as the Agency apparently lost track of them, according to the documents from back then that were made available to HSToday.us.

Today, though, HSToday.us has learned CIA counterterrorist operations against terrorist organizations in both Central America and Mexico are far more extensive than has been revealed publicly, and that the Agency has been working in Mexico for several years to track and secretly disrupt unidentified terror organizations’ operations.

A number of veteran intelligence officials and other analysts however question why Al Qaeda or any other organized terrorist group would risk a land penetration into the US from Mexico.