Douglas Farah is a visiting senior fellow at the Center for Strategic Research, Institute for National Security Studies at National Defense University, leading the Western Hemisphere Illicit Network Review project. His is also president of IBI Consultants, LLC. Farah specializes in field research and works as a consultant on security challenges, transnational organized crime and transnational gangs in Latin America. Farah frequently briefs senior military and government audiences and guest lectures at universities and has testified before Congress more than a dozen times. For the two decades before founding IBI Consultants in 2005, Farah worked as a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter for The Washington Post covering civil wars in Central America, conflict and organized crime in South America, diamond and gold wars in West Africa, and radical Islamic finances. He is the author of two books: (1) Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror; and (2) Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible (With Stephen Braun).