Drug cartels, al-Qaida linked by 1 key factor

Three months ago, Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense, warned that ISIS may try to infiltrate the United States via its southern border with Mexico. Now it appears the former Defense Department analyst's concern has become a reality.

Judicial Watch said its "Homeland Security" sources reported federal and state authorities arrested four ISIS terrorists in Texas. That was just a day after Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said on Fox News that at least 10 ISIS fighters had already been caught trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Maloof, now a senior staff writer for WND as well as Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin intelligence report, said in a July interview ISIS "may be working to infiltrate" the U.S. with help from transnational drug cartels.

"I had intelligence sources within the government tell me that there was evidence of such exchanges with the cartels and with the MS-13 people who are associated with the cartels," Maloof said. "That isn't to say ISIS was in touch with MS-13, but they were in touch with the cartels."

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Islamic terrorists and Latin American drug cartels are two very different groups. They don't share a common faith or ideology, and they don't work toward the same goal.

Yet Maloof said the Defense Department has known for years, at least since he worked there, that al-Qaida and the drug cartels have a strong relationship. The former analyst said it's not difficult to see why these two different groups have been able to work together over the years.

"It's money," Maloof said. "Making money. They don't care where the money comes from. Cartels have no ideology. It's not everyday Mexicans; it's not the Mexican government. Many people within the Mexican government are probably being paid off by the cartels to look the other way."

Maloof said ISIS was wise to seize the oil fields when it took over Iraq. ISIS now rakes in a bounty of oil revenue, and that is how it is able to pay off the cartels and MS-13 cells. He said those vast financial assets for ISIS could also allow it to attack the U.S. via proxies – sympathetic jihadists already in the U.S.

Maloof worries that the U.S. doesn't have the resources to deal with an ISIS proxy war.

"Frankly, a lot of law enforcement is not geared to deal with this," he said. "They don't have access to the intelligence, and if these lone wolves act the way that they do, the crime will have been committed before you're able to stop it in most cases, and I think that this is going to pose a potential problem, and it can really create instability in the United States."

Illegals coming into the U.S., who happen to have terror links, are not exactly new.

In 2005, Paul L. Williams, a former FBI consultant and author of "The al-Qaida Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime, and the Coming Apocalypse," told WND that al-Qaida had acquired nuclear weapons and smuggled them into the U.S. through Mexico.

Williams claimed Osama bin Laden paid MS-13, the notorious Central American street gang, between $30,000 and $50,000 for each sleeper agent smuggled across the border. The sleepers were also provided with phony identification, usually bogus matricula consular ID cards indistinguishable from Mexico's official ID, which allows holders to open bank accounts and obtain drivers' licenses in the U.S.

Also in 2005, FBI Director Robert Mueller informed a Senate committee that a man indicted for aiding Hezbollah had entered the U.S. illegally through Mexico.

"In Detroit, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani was indicted in the Eastern District of Michigan on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to Hezbollah," said Mueller, according to CNSNews.com. "Kourani was already in custody for entering the country illegally through Mexico and was involved in fundraising activities on behalf of Hezbollah."

In July 2012, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano admitted that terrorists sometimes cross the southern U.S. border with Mexico.

During a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., asked, "Is there any credible evidence that … terrorists are, in fact, crossing our southern border with the intent to do harm to the American people?"

Napolitano responded, "There have been … from time to time, and we are constantly working against different and evolving threats involving various terrorist groups and various ways they may seek to enter the country."

Maloof also acknowledged the problem that many terrorists have valid passports that allow them to fly into and out of the country legally.

He said plenty of Islamic jihadists have flown overseas to fight in the Middle East, only to return to the U.S. later. Maloof worries that these types of mobile terrorists are free to roam the U.S., recruiting supporters and convincing lone wolves to carry out attacks on behalf of ISIS.

"This has been the modus operandi of a lot of terrorist groups," he said. "You get in with local types, cultivate them, and then have them carry out the attacks, and this has been going on for many, many years in other parts of the world, and there's no reason it couldn’t happen here."