Juan C. Zarate

Juan Zarate serves as chairman and co-founder of FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP), and chairman and co-founder of the Financial Integrity Network. He is also a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a senior national security analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and was a visiting lecturer of law at the Harvard Law School for eight years. 

Juan served as the deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism from 2005 to 2009, and was responsible for developing and implementing all aspects of the U.S. government’s counterterrorism strategy, including countering violent extremism and weapons of mass destruction. In this role, he was also responsible for U.S. strategy to address transnational threats, including international organized crime, hostage policy, and critical energy-infrastructure protection.

He was the first-ever assistant secretary of the treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes, where he led domestic and international efforts to counter terrorist financing, the strategic use of financial power against America’s enemies, and the global hunt for Saddam Hussein’s assets. He is also a former federal prosecutor who served on terrorism-prosecution teams prior to 9/11, including the investigation of the USS Cole attack in Yemen.

Juan sits on several boards, including those of the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center and HSBC’s Financial Systems Vulnerabilities Committee, as well as the Coinbase Board of Advisors, the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority, Northwestern Mutual, Boston Dynamics, and the George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.

He is author of Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare (2013), Forging Democracy (1994), and a variety of articles in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications. Juan is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and a former Rotary International Fellow at the University of Salamanca in Spain.