Douglas Farah is the International Assessment and Strategy Center’s Senior Fellow for Financial Investigations and Transparency. His work focuses on international criminal organizations and armed groups, including terrorism, terror finance, and proliferation. He has more than 25 years of experience in research and consulting on these topics, working with U.S. and European government agencies and military units, as well as the u.N. Criminal Investigative Unit in Bosnia. He is the author of Merchant of Death: Viktor Bout and the New World Order (2007).
He is the past Washington Post bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, and also for West Africa, where his discovery of ties between al Qaeda and Liberia’s Charles Taylor resulted in death threats that compelled him to leave.
Farah has often collaborated with NGOs including the World Bank, the Wilson Center, the National Endowment for Democracy, the U.S. Peace Institute, the Coalition for International Justice, the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, NEFA, Global Witness, CSIS, where he is an Adjunct Fellow. He has frequently given congressional testimony, including before the House Committees on Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, Oversight and Government Reform, and Homeland Security; and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is a regular commentator in the popular media. He holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies and a B.S. in journalism from the University of Kansas.