The IACSP’s Counter-Terrorism Journal V19N1

IACSP Q&A With: Benjamin Runkle, The Author Of “Dead Or Alive”

School Shootings:

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Training For The Unthinkable Active Shooters A Significant Threat To Homeland Security SEAL Team Six: The Linda Norgrove Hostage Rescue Threat Assessments: How We Could Have Saved The Benghazi Consulate

Spring Issue Vol. 19, No. 1, 2013 Printed in the U.S.A. IACSP.COM

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Vol. 19, No. 1 Spring 2013 IACSP Director of Operations Steven J. Fustero Associate Publisher Phil Friedman

Page 16

School Shootings: Training For The Unthinkable

Senior Editor Nancy Perry Contributing Editors Paul Davis Thomas B. Hunter Joshua Sinai

by Ken Smithgall

Book Review Editor Jack Plaxe Research Director Gerry Keenan Conference Director John Dew

Page 38

Communications Director Craig O. Thompson

SEAL Team Six And The Linda Norgrove Hostage Rescue,

Art Director Scott Dube, MAD4ART International Psychological CT Advisors Cherie Castellano, MA, CSW, LPC

by Dr. Thomas B. Hunter

Counterintelligence Advisor Stanley I. White South America Advisor Edward J. Maggio Homeland Security Advisor Col. David Gavigan

Page 6

SITREP

Page 8

Cyberwar Spotlight: Mobile, Authentication, And Healthcare, by David Gewirtz

Page 12

Sun Tzu And The Art Of Cyber Warfare, by MAJ Kerry V. Roberts

Page 16

School Shootings: Training For The Unthinkable, by Ken Smithgall

Page 20

The Active Shooter: A Significant Threat To Homeland Security, by Dr. Joshua Sinai

Page 26

Flashing Red: How Could The Benghazi Consulate Have Been Saved, by Leo Labaj

Page 32

Lashkar-e-Taiba: Evolution Of A Transnational Threat, by Thomas Henkey

Page 38

SEAL Team Six And The Linda Norgrove Hostage Rescue, by Dr. Thomas B. Hunter

Page 44

Police Armored Rescue Vehicles In A Time Of Global Security Concerns, by Bob O’Brien, Jim Weiss and Mickey Davis

Page 48 Tactical Sniper Rifles: An Overview Of The Stalker System, by Christopher Drake Page 54 Secure Driver: Using Reference Points To Gain More Precision, by Sean McLaine

Emergency Management Advisor Clark L. Staten Tactical Advisor Robert Taubert Hazmat Advisor Bob Jaffin Security Driver Advisor Anthony Ricci, ADSI Cyberwarfare Advisor David Gewirtz Cell Phone Forensics Advisor Dr. Eamon P. Doherty IACSP Advisory Board John M. Peterson III John Dew Thomas Patire Cherie Castellano, MA, CSW, LPC Robert E. Thorn Southeast Asia Correspondent Dr. Thomas A. Marks European Correspondent Elisabeth Peruci

Page 56 Counterterrorism Bookshelf, by Dr. Joshua Sinai Page 60 Among Enemies: Counter-Espionage For The Business Traveler, by Luke Bencie Page 62 IACSP Q&A With Benjamin Runkle, The Author Of Wanted Dead Or Alive: Manhunts

Personal Security Advisor Thomas J. Patire

From Geronimo To Bin Laden, interview by Paul Davis

Middle East Correspondent Ali Koknar National Sales Representative Phil Friedman, Advertising Director Tel: 201-224-0588, Fax: 202-315-3459 iacsp@aol.com Tactical Sales Representative Scott Dube, MAD4ART International Tel: 757-721-2774, scott@mad4art.com

THE JOURNAL OF COUNTERTERRORISM & HOMELAND SECURITY INT’L is published by SecureWorldnet, Ltd., PO Box 100688, Arlington, VA 22210, USA, (ISSN#1552-5155) in cooperation with the International Association for Counterterrorism & Security Professionals and Counterterrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation. Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher.

The opinions expressed herein are the responsibility of the authors and are not necessarily those of the editors or publisher.

Editorial correspondence should be addressed to: The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, PO Box 100688, Arlington, VA 22210, USA, (703) 243-0993, FAX (703) 243-1197. Membership $65/year, add $10 for overseas memberships. Postmaster: send address changes to: The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, PO Box 100688, Arlington, VA 22210, USA. Web site: www.iacsp.com

PHOTO CREDITS: Reuters, Army.mil, Navy.mil, istockphoto. com, shutterstock.com and authors where applicable.

Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

Vol.19, No.1

SITREP

W

orld Trends & Forecasts

In the Central African Republic a new rebel alliance seized key towns in the north and east, including Sibut, only 185 kilometers from capital Bangui, and currently controls about a third of the country. Chadian troops arrived mid-month to help contain the rebels, and regional leaders later announced the deployment of additional troops. The UN has begun evacuating staff, and the U.S. government has called for its citizens to leave.

Violence escalated in Syria’s civil conflict, with reports of spiraling civilian death tolls and displacement.

Fighting reached new levels of intensity in Damascus, particularly in southern suburbs where regime airstrikes and clashes between regime and opposition forces in Palestinian-dominated Yarmouk left scores dead and prompted tens of thousands to flee. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria warned that the conflict was escalating and becoming increasingly sectarian.

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The dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands escalated as China sent surveillance aircraft into airspace over the disputed islands. Japan responded by sending eight fighter jets, and made a formal diplomatic protest. Its defense minister said this was the first intrusion of Japanese airspace by China since 1958. Japan’s new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to take a tough line and said there is “no room for negotiation”.

North Korea says it will launch more long-range rockets and conduct its third nuclear test, saying that it would build up its capability of striking the United States after the United Nations’s expansion of sanctions against North Korea.

The North’s threat was the boldest challenge its new, untested leader, Kim Jong-un, has posed at his

country’s longtime foe, the United States, and its last remaining major ally, China, and rattled governments in Northeast Asia that are undergoing sensitive transitions of power.

Deteriorating Situations • Central African Republic, China/Japan, North Korea, Syria Improving Situations • None Unchanged Situations • Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Bosnia, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Georgia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India (non-Kashmir), Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan), Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, North Caucasus (Russia), Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Philippines, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Somalia, Somaliland, South Sudan, Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor Leste, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe.

Conflict Risk Alert • Central African Republic Source: http://www.crisisgroup.org

DHS Develops Active Shooter What You Can Do Course DHS has developed an Independent Study Course titled Active Shooter: What You Can Do. This course was developed to provide the public with guidance on how

to prepare for and respond to active shooter crisis situations.

Upon completion of Active Shooter: What You Can Do, employees and managers will be able to: • Describe the actions to take when confronted with an active shooter and to assist responding law enforcement officials; • Recognize potential workplace violence indicators; • Describe actions to take to prevent and prepare for potential active shooter incidents; and • Describe how to manage the consequences of an active shooter incident.

• The online training is available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency Emergency Management Institute.

For more information go to: http:// www.dhs.gov/activeshooter

Inside ‘Plan X:’ The Pentagon’s Plan For Cyberweapon Central The Pentagon plans to bring warfare into the 22nd century, creating a new system to “map” the digital battlefield of cyberspace, defining a playbook for deploying cyberweapons and designating a management facility in Arlington, Va. to bring it all together.

It’s called Plan X, and it makes one thing very clear: Cyberwar is the future. At the end of last year Pentagon research arm DARPA -- short for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- released a document called “Foundational Cyberwarfare (Plan X) ,” a 52-page outline of how to fight a cyberwar. Its heart is a new map of cyberspace, a real-time rendering

of the world of computers and how they connect -- switches, bridges, nodes and so on. It then seeks “support platforms” DARPA’s Plan X could be seen as support in this critical area.

Source: Foxnews For the full DARPA Report visit: www.darpa.mil

Malwarebytes Posts 2012 Report The Report summarizes how 2012 was the year when two things happened: 1) the world faced some of the most nefarious social engineering attempts ever seen in malware, and 2) there was a serious shift in how people became victims.

Malwarebytes intelligence analyst Adam Kujawa goes into detail in this report about the trends we saw such as a) Discovering the first state-sponsored malware found in the wild, b) “Assumed Guilt” Ransomware, c) Banker Trojans, d) RATs -- Remote Access Trojans, e) The Golden Age of Drive-By exploits, f) Malvertisements g) The hidden malware treasure trove of Wordpress, h) the BlackHole Exploit Kit and finally i) the Linux Web Server Kernel Malware.

He then provides 2013 predictions that detail items such as how he expects the criminals will come up with new creative methods of spreading malware, how toolbars for everyone can be a very dangerous trend, how BYO D is a very real security risk, how malware harvesting and testing will change and how all of this will cause a change in the way people use the internet and the countermeasures that can be used to ensure a safe internet environment.

For a PDF of this report visit: http://blog.malwarebytes. org/intelligence/2013/01/ cyber-threats-in-2012-looking-both-ways/

The Year in Review A Look At FBI Cases, Part 1 The FBI worked thousands of investigations during 2012, involving everything from extremists bent on terror to cyber thieves, financial fraudsters, and child predators. As the year comes to a close, they took a look back at some of the Bureau’s most significant cases.

Part 1 focuses on the FBI’stop investigative priority—protecting the nation from terrorist attack.

Working with local, state, federal, and international partners, we thwarted a number of potential attacks on U.S. citizens at home and abroad.

To read about some of the top terror cases of 2012, please visit: http://www.fbi.gov/ news/stories/2012/december/the-year-inreview-part-1/the-year-in-review-part-1c

IACSP Announcement If you are not currently receiving our monthly ENews Report, Please email me at: iacsp1@aol.com Thank you.

Steven J. Fustero Dir. Of Ops

Cyberwar Spotlight:

Mobile, Authentication, And Healthcare

By David Gewirtz

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M

obile Is Taking Over The World

Let’s start with mobile. Although mobile has been with us for quite a while, 2012 was pretty much the tipping point in mobile adoption, with nearly a billion people using smartphones. To put that in perspective, nearly a billion people have a general-purpose computer in their pocket with more power than the largest computers had in the 1980s. Nearly a billion people have constant network access and are moving around, so we have nearly a billion highly-connected, mobile, powerful computers roving the planet, changing locations constantly.

Talk about a target of opportunity for bad guys!

Worse, since most users are far from technically astute, we have nearly a billion mobile machines operated by people without the training to protect them. We have nearly a billion people downloading apps, playing games, trying to get bargains, making credit card transactions, visiting questionable online resources, and generally living their lives through these mobile devices.

Mark my words: these things will be trouble.

In particular, Android devices will become targets of all sorts of nasty malware, from little, mobile botnet nodes to victims of ransomware (where owners are locked out of their own phones until a ransom payment is made).

User Accounts Are No Longer Secure Next is the growing problem of authentication, or how users log into their various services, cloud-based and otherwise.

Today, by far the most common method of authentication is user name and password.

That means the only thing standing between you and the bad guys is a user name (usually your email address, so they already have one factor), and a password.

Passwords, of course, are notoriously weak because users need to remember them. It’s much easier to remember “smootchie” than it is to remember “AR^USis!J$HLw6^MtQf@”. And so, most users use “password”, “123456” and “12345678”. Some users, who are going for a more creative approach

Worse, since most users are far from technically astute, we have nearly a billion mobile machines operated by people without the training to protect them.

Now that these data sets are in criminal hands, they’ve been subject to very detailed analysis. The result is that hackers now have a much better idea of not only individual user names and passwords, but how most people think about constructing user names and passwords.

This gives an enormous edge to those who are building password cracking tools, because those tools now have the inherent knowledge about how computer users pick their security keys.

When it comes to healthcare, we probably have the best chance for overall success, because most healthcare IT is in the hands of companies, rather than individual users. While companies and practitioners may be loath to make changes to their systems yet again, they at least can be reasoned with, especially when it comes to issues of liability and regulatory compliance.

Healthcare Security Is Very Unhealthy Perhaps the biggest problem we’re likely to face in the coming year is security in the healthcare arena. With regulations requiring more organizations (and smaller practices) to start using electronic health records, those records are now vulnerable to hacking. Health records are a fertile ground for identity theft, providing a tremendous storehouse of information, often to the point of even including scans of drivers licenses and social security cards.

Unfortunately, a study by the Washington Post in December determined that healthcare providers are among the least prepared to provide security to their systems, at the very same time that their records are going online, and at the same time that medical devices are being hooked up to the Internet.

Not only, then, are records vulnerable, so are patients. WashPo sited an example where patient defibrillators and insulin pumps were open to hacks, where a researcher was able to use a specialized search engine to gain access to a patient’s wireless glucose monitor.

Where We Go From Here use “abc123”, “qwerty”, “monkey”, “letmein”, “dragon”, “111111”, and “baseball”.

Some are a little more romantic, as in “iloveyou” or haven’t been as successful in love, as in “trustno1”.

Sadly, in 2012, millions of user name and password combinations have been stolen as a result of breaches and hacks into very large organizations.

10

So where do we go from here? Each of these areas will need beefed up security.

Mobile is perhaps the biggest challenge, because of the vast numbers of users.

Apple may have the right idea by limiting how applications can interact with each other. But because the Android operating system is free, it’s the one that will be running on the most phones,

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especially low-cost ones, and -- probably not coincidentally -- it also has numerous security vulnerabilities. Even if Android were updated right now with advanced, required security features, there would be millions of vulnerable phones in the wild.

When it comes to authentication, the best approach is to add additional factors.

Rather than just logging in with a user name and password, more and more users will be asked to confirm their login via either a mobile phone (ah, see where this gets problematic?) or via a specialized authentication device.

And, finally, when it comes to healthcare, we probably have the best chance for overall success, because most healthcare IT is in the hands of companies, rather than individual users. While companies and practitioners may be loath to make changes to their systems yet again, they at least can be reasoned with, especially when it comes to issues of liability and regulatory compliance.

So, while the Mayan apocalypse didn’t happen on December 21, 2012, we are still facing serious threats in the cyber-realms, none of which are going to go away with the changing of the Mayan calendar (or any amount of wishful thinking).

As has become my pattern in ending these missives to you, I must once again share the phrase, “Oh joy”.

About the Author David Gewirtz is the director of the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute and editor-inchief of the ZATZ technical magazines. He regularly writes commentary and analysis for CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, and has written more than 700 articles about technology. David is a former professor of computer science, has lectured at Princeton, Berkeley, UCLA, and Stanford, has been awarded the prestigious Sigma Xi Research Award in Engineering, and was a candidate for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Letters. He is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for IACSP. David’s personal Web site is at DavidGewirtz.com Read his blog at CNN Anderson Cooper 360 for politics, policy, and analysis. Read his blog at CBS Interactive’s ZDNet Government where tech meets politics and government. Or Follow him on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz

Sun Tzu And The Art Of Cyber Warfare

By MAJ Kerry V. Roberts

12

Rear Admiral Mike Brown, deputy assistant secretary for Cyber Security and Communications, briefs the media on Cyber Storm III exercise at the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) located just outside Washington in Arlington, Virginia on September 24, 2010. U.S. national security planners are proposing that the 21st century’s critical infrastructure -power grids, communications, water utilities, financial networks -be similarly shielded from cyber marauders and other foes. The ramparts would be virtual, their perimeters policed by the Pentagon and backed by digital weapons capable of circling the globe in milliseconds to knock out targets.

To match Special Report USA-CYBERWAR/ REUTERS/Hyungwon Kang

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I

n a scene from the 1973 martial-arts action film “Enter the Dragon,” Bruce Lee presents the modern viewer with an intriguing microcosm of how the Chinese would employ cyber warfare in the future based on the dictums of the definitive Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu. Lee is on a Chinese junk in Hong Kong harbor bound for an island where “Han,” the mysterious arch-nemesis of the film, is hosting an underground martial arts tournament. While Lee gazes across the water, he is interrupted by a commotion on the deck where he observes an Australian brute harassing a Chinese sailor struggling with baggage. The boorish westerner approaches Lee and brazenly demands to know his martial arts style. Lee smiles and replies, “My style? I call it…the art of fighting, without fighting.”

Puzzled by his response, the Australian asks for a demonstration. Luring him into his psychological ploy, Lee insists they need more space and suggests they take a rowboat to a nearby island. After the foolish westerner steps in first, Lee springs the trap by extending the line out as far as it will go and allowing the boat to founder in the waves.

He then hands the line to the delighted Chinese crewmen the westerner had previously been harassing.

Lee’s defeat of the westerner without fighting typifies the philosophy of Sun Tzu in two ways. First, Sun Tzu declared the achievement of political and psychological victory without commitment to a physical contest to be the acme of skill: “Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting. The highest form of warfare is to attack the enemy’s strategy itself…”

Second, Sun Tzu emphasized using your opponents’ own strength against him and refusing to wage the contest on his terms but on those of your choosing: “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”

Lee achieved both of these objectives. Sizing up the Australian, Lee used his opponent’s arrogance and pride against him. By emphasizing a contest

of wills and suppressing his own urge to demonstrate his physical skill, Lee obviated his opponent’s size and strength, rendering it moot. The Chinese approach to cyber warfare in the future will be similarly infused with the philosophy of Sun Tzu. Before one can properly analyze how open source Chinese military documents abundantly bear out this truth, however, it is important to come to a common understanding of both cyberspace and the American approach to cyber warfare.

The Department of Defense defines cyberspace as “a global domain within the information environment consisting of the interdependent network of information technology infrastructures, including the internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers.”

Cyberspace thus encompasses physical hardware (computers, routers, switchers) software operating systems, and the information that flows over the internet (a physically intangible

domain) and the electromagnetic spectrum in a wireless capacity. Nearly every aspect of our society, from private to public sector, social media to financial transactions, and federal departments and government agencies charged with regulating, securing and defending the American economy and society, is dependent upon cyberspace to function. American use of cyberspace is inextricably linked to the vast international cyberspace, tying in with the global information grid and economy and creating vulnerabilities that can be exploited by America’s economic competitors and geopolitical strategic foes in an increasingly multi-polar world.

Having understood the nature of cyberspace, how does one define cyber warfare? According to defense analyst Richard Clarke, cyber war refers to “actions by a nation state to penetrate another nation’s computers or networks for the purpose of causing damage or disruption.” Clarke’s definition and the American categorization of cyberspace as a new domain of warfare, along with landpower,

seapower, and airpower, reflect a thoroughly Western military ethos. The American way of war conforms to the philosophy of Clausewitz and Jomini, subordinating the political and psychological to the physical aspects of war and emphasizing it as “politics by other means.”

In other words, political and “soft-power” solutions such as diplomacy and economic sanctions having failed, warfare then enters a consummate “military” sphere. History demonstrates the American tendency to overwhelm our enemies with sheer mass and technology.

Even our counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks have been heavily oriented around counter-IED and electronic warfare systems employed by conventional and unconventional forces.

The American-Western orientation to warfare has led the intelligence community and Departments of Homeland Security and Defense to employ terms such as “cyber-geddon” and “cyber pearl harbor.” Such

terms imply only an event comparable to 9-11 will motivate the public and private sectors to secure cyberspace and ward off threats to our economic well-being. In my opinion, this view reflects strategic “mirror-imaging,” super-imposing our biases and assumptions upon our potential foes’ strategic intentions. Our view of war is thoroughly western: linear, disruptive, spectacular, and confined to a specific and limited duration.

The Chinese view, based on the philosophy of Sun Tzu, views war in a holistic, ongoing sense. Matters of war and peace, economic expansion and contraction exist in symbiosis.

Rather than engage in a cyber “war” based on our understanding, the Chinese will seek to avoid our military strength entirely. A single, spectacular cyber attack—a cyber pearl harbor—would not serve Chinese interests and would disrupt their dependent relationship upon the American economy. Undoubtedly, the Chinese would share the view offered by Thomas Friedman in his seminal economic treatise, The World is Flat, that globalization has raised the price of war to a new level and should cause countries to consider carefully and rationally whatever goals military action could afford vice diplomacy.

A malware Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack to shut down the American financial sector or damage Industrial Control System – Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (ICS-SCADA) assets, for example, would invariably affect the Chinese economy and provoke American military retaliation, cyber and kinetic.However, as China flexes her military muscle and attempts to assume the role of regional hegemon and international power in the emerging multi-polar world,

14

she may very well adapt cyber warfare as a means of weakening competitors such as the United States.

This begs the question: how would the Chinese wield cyber as a tool of war? Chinese military documents reflect an approach to cyber warfare aligned with the philosophy of Sun Tzu and “death by a thousand cuts,” lengthening and broadening the scope of conflict without inviting immediate enemy retaliation. The Chinese will avoid direct confrontation implied in Clarke’s definition of cyberwarfare and will instead exploit the “soft underbelly” implied in the Department of Defense definition of Cyberspace. Our economic dependence on cyberspace and our open, democratic society based on the preeminence of civil liberties and individualism, while affording great economic strength, also presents our greatest vulnerability. The basis of “Information Confrontation Theory” published by the Beijing based Military Science Publishing House, emphasizes the merging of strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war and information and cyber operations to target the “public ideology, political structure, economic structure, and technological capacity” of the country. Chinese “Information Confrontation Theory” reveals how, in their view, while information warfare may “prevent bloodshed or deaths with its peculiar technology, information-warfare strikes will make comprehensive, three-dimensional, and alldirectional impacts and arouse extensive panic among the civilians of the hostile country, thus scoring the result of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

The Chinese will seek to dominate what they term the “commanding heights” of “cyber network information space, the electromagnetic information space, and the psychological information space.” Essen-

tially, the Chinese will employ cyber in the same sense that Lee used his wits to defeat the Australian on the psychological plane without engaging him on the physical plane.

Cyber, like no other domain, enables the Chinese to employ the classic Sun Tzu strategy of avoiding strength and striking at weakness by employing all the aspects of national power— duplicitous diplomacy, economic espionage, peacetime military maneuvers to feign build ups and threats—and expanding when the enemy contracts and contracting when the enemy expands to ultimately exhaust and defeat her foe over time. This will likely play out over the space of several years or decades as the Chinese seek to steal economic and intellectual property and launch malware attacks on U.S. companies, slowly ramping up the level of cyber warfare imperceptibly but more intensely while the American economy is mired in corporate taxes and over-regulation and stifled by the expanding federal entitlement system and mounting debt. The Chinese may very well enlist other competitors such as Russia and Iran in this strategy, employing economic encirclement in the same manner Reagan bankrupted the Soviet economy and hastened the demise of monolithic Communism in the late 1980s.

Having explored the Chinese approach to Cyber warfare, what should the United States do in response? Conventional wisdom would hold the Chinese view is correct: our constitutional liberty based system of limited government prevents us from implementing a national cyber defense strategy imposing mandatory security and regulatory standards on the private information technology domain.

However, our liberties are not an obstacle; rather, they are our greatest strength. Curiously, the Chinese, more than any other competitor, know America stands at a critical

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juncture of history where our national obsession is promoting economic equality at the expense of political liberty and individual initiative.

Race, class, and gender issues dominate our national political discussion, as opposed to encouraging the entrepreneurship and innovation necessary to promote technological development in the cyber and informational technology realms and providing economic incentives necessary to maintain America’s competitive edge in an increasingly ruthless, multi-polar world. Instead of wringing our hands over an impending “cyber pearl harbor,” we need to be looking for the “cyber sputnik” moment to spur our nation into action and inspire a new generation of American “cyber-warriors” and cyber strategic thinkers.

An American “cyber sputnik moment” would ignite the national pride to disrupt the rampant theft of billions of dollars worth of intellectual and commercial property in cyberspace—just as the real sputnik in the 1950s steeled the resolve of a generation to counter Soviet satellite and missile technology and put Americans on the moon in the 1960s.

About the Author Major Kerry Roberts is a Strategic Planner assigned to U.S. Army Cyber Command at Fort Belvoir, VA. He has been involved in numerous cyber planning efforts and is a recent graduate of the Joint Advanced Cyber Warfare Course.

Endnotes: Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011) 28. http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Art of War. United States, Department of Defense Joint Staff, Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (Washington: Defense Department, 2010) 77.

Richard A. Clarke, Cyber War (New York: Harper and Collins, 2010) 6.

Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005) 536. Xinki Duikang Long, Information Confrontation Theory (Beijing: Military Science Publishing House, 2007) 18.

Long, 19. Long, 48.

School Shootings: Training For The Unthinkable

By Ken Smithgall

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t was a warm spring day when a father and his son walked into the office of an Elementary / Middle School. The father was very upset because his son had been suspended for fighting at school. The School Administrator was very familiar with this family as they had several incidents involving this child in the past. The office staff tried to calm the father and called for the Principal. As the Principal arrived at the office, the father appeared to become more agitated and angry. After attempting to calm the father and sensing no resolution, the Principal called for the School Resource Officer (SRO).

This scenario set the stage for an active shooter exercise designed for Marion County Public Schools to fulfill their Safe Schools Grant. An exercise planning team was comprised of representatives from the public school system, Sheriff’s Office, Fire Rescue, County Health Department, local hospitals and the exercise contractor (Trident Consulting Group llc.). The primary objectives for the exercise were to evaluate the local elementary schools response to an active

shooter, their lock down procedures and integration into the ICS system as well as the district wide response from administrative staff. Secondary objectives were reserved for the first responders and hospitals which included On Site Incident Management, Law Enforcement Response, Pre Hospital triage and treatment, and Hospital Surge Protocol.

As the exercise played out, the father pulled a handgun from his waist and shot the two office

staff members then attempted to shoot the Principal. In the meantime the son pulled out an assault rifle from a bat bag and attempted to make his way on to the school grounds to retrieve his younger sibling. The School Resource Officer arrived and was able to neutralize the threat before it could escalate. This was noted in the After Action Report as a positive action as having a School Resource Officer assigned to schools can reduce or stop these types of incidents. The exercise was

then reset and the scenario continued as originally written, that the son would make his way through the school engaging targets of opportunity then barricade himself in his siblings’ class room.

As the School Resource Officer pursued the young gunman, he encountered injured students throughout the hall ways. (Local ROTC students volunteered to play the part of students and victims) At the same time the school was placed in lock

As the exercise played out, the father pulled a handgun from his waist and shot the two office staff members then attempted to shoot the Principal. In the meantime the son pulled out an assault rifle from a bat bag and attempted to make his way on to the school grounds to retrieve his younger sibling.

down, teachers secured their doors and huddled their students in back corners of the class rooms.

One teacher advised she could hear the bad guy trying to open the door while the screams of injured were heard in the background.

The gunman made it to his siblings’ classroom and barricaded himself with hostages in the class. Additional zone units arrived and assisted with securing the building and classroom.

An Incident Command Post was established by law enforcement and the Assistant Principal was assigned to assist and represent the school.

The Principal was insuring that the school was in lock down and directing the operations of his staff, making proper notifications to the school district for response and trying to assist wounded staff and students. Additional resources were requested including the SWAT team and Fire Rescue. Within several minutes a command officer from Fire Rescue was on scene and a unified command was established.

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Once the SWAT team arrived on scene, teams were assigned to relieve the inner perimeter zone units providing security. Additional SWAT team personnel removed the injured from the hallways to a secured area within the school. This area provided cover for Fire Rescue teams to move the injured out to a medical sector for field triage and treatment. A transport officer was identified and provided the information to local hospitals on the number of wounded that would be transported to each hospital.

The hospitals initialized their

emergency surge protocols and started working on moving and or discharging patients.

As the exercise played out, the young gunman attempted to flee the building and engage the officers. The threat was neutralized and secured. The remaining classrooms were searched by the SWAT team and students were escorted out of the building and searched. The exercise ended and everyone reported for the “Hot Wash”.

Teachers secured their doors and huddled their students in back corners of the class rooms. One teacher advised she could hear the bad guy trying to open the door while the screams of injured were heard in the background. The gunman made it to his siblings’ classroom and barricaded himself with hostages in the class.

Additional zone units arrived and assisted with securing the building and classroom.

Lessons Learned During the After Action Report for the exercise, issues are identified that are both positive and areas for improvement.

Both can be considered lessons learned and should be relayed to the participants of the exercise as well as the planners for the agencies involved. This exercise evaluated the Marion County Public Schools active shooter response and the emergency responder’s actions against several of the capabilities listed on FEMA’s Target Capability List. Some of the key observations from the exercise evaluators during this exercise included; • Very good job by the Administrative team in attempting to de-escalate the parent. Prior to the shooting, they attempted to move him to a private setting, away from students, staff and the public.

• Very prompt announcement and emergency notification of the code red lockdown. Staff, 911, and School Board Risk Management were all notified in a timely manner.

• No person was assigned to notify any teachers outside or without communications equipment.

• Excellent response to the IC by the Office of Risk Management. From time of notification to arrival was approximately 40 minutes. Had access to information needed by IC (FISH maps, Response guide, laptop, etc.).

• SRO initial response was timely. Had this been an actual event it most likely would not have progressed past the front office.

• Initial patrol responders took immediate action. Once the probable location of the suspect was relayed to them by the SRO, the first responding units used available equipment, ballistic shield, to advance to location and secure it until SWAT arrived.

School shootings are very emotionally charged incidents.

Confusion will reign very early and throughout this type of incident. Communities need to be prepared for this type of incident to occur and it is by planning, training and exercising that both school officials and responders can be better prepared to face this type of incident should it every occur in their community.

About the Author Ken Smithgall is the President and CEO of Trident Consulting Group llc. Mr. Smithgall has spent his career serving the public in both law enforcement and fire rescue fields. Mr. Smithgall has chaired several emergency preparedness committees and served on the State of Florida’s Domestic Security Task Force. He can be reached at ksmithgall@ tridentconsultinggroup.org

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The Active Shooter

A Significant Threat To Homeland Security

By Dr. Joshua Sinai

People light a candle at a memorial for those killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, December 23, 2012. REUTERS/Andrew Burton

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n the morning of December 14, 2012, around 9:30am, a gunman forced his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the Sandy Hook village of Newtown, Connecticut and proceeded to kill twenty children and six adult staff members, after which he killed himself. The gunman, later identified as Adam Lanza, aged 20, had previously killed his mother at their nearby Newtown home. The total death toll was 28, including the perpetrator, with several others treated for injuries.

This incident was the seconddeadliest school shooting in United States history, after the April 16, 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, VA, in which 32 people were killed and 17 injured.

The mass murders in Newtown, CT, took place during one of the most violent years for active shooter events in the United States.

On September 27, 2012, on a late Thursday afternoon, around 4:30pm, a just-fired employee returned to his former place of employment, Accent Signage Systems, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and fatally shot four people, injuring four others, before killing himself. One of those injured later died.

The other people in the office building fled in panic. Among the victims was Reuven Rahamim, aged 61, the company’s Israeli-born founder and owner, Rami Cooks (also Israeli-born), aged 62, and Keith Basinski, a 50-year-old UPS driver who was making a pickup at the signage company when he was fatally shot.

The shooter, Andrew Engeldinger, aged 36, who had worked on a sign-engraving machine at the company since the late 1990s, had been reprimanded

Engeldinger was considered very smart, although “odd,” “very quiet,” and a loner who generally “kept to himself.” His parents told journalists that after being a high achiever in high school, their son stopped getting good grades. He “just didn’t have a lot of ambition anymore. He just dwindled,” they said. One of the reasons for such psychological decline, according to his parents, was their son’s “growing paranoia” over the years. Judging him to suffer from schizophrenia, in 2010 his parents sought to help him by enrolling in a 12-week class for families of the mentally ill, which he refused to attend.

for chronic tardiness and poor performance a week earlier.

The day of the shooting, he was called for a meeting with the company’s top managers to be held later in the afternoon.

Suspecting that he was about to be fired, prior to the meeting he went to his car, to retrieve a handgun. Once he was fired, Engeldinger pulled out his gun and proceeded to shoot the two managers and then moved through the building where he proceeded to select additional employees as his victims.

Later, police officers who searched his South Minneapolis home found another loaded 9mm Glock handgun, packaging for 10,000 rounds of ammunition, and other gun supplies. Engeldinger reportedly had practiced shooting at a nearby rifle and pistol range.

According to newspaper reports, Engeldinger was considered very smart, although “odd,” “very quiet,” and a loner who generally “kept to himself.”

His parents told journalists that after being a high achiever in high school, their son stopped getting good grades. He “just didn’t have a lot of ambition anymore. He just dwindled,” they said. One of the reasons for such psychological decline, according to his parents, was their son’s “growing paranoia” over the years. Judging him to suffer from schizophrenia, in 2010 his parents sought to help him by enrolling in a 12-week class for families of the mentally ill, which he refused to attend. He also reportedly spurned their attempts at any contact with him. His parents said they were legally powerless to have him committed to a psychiatric institution because he was an adult and had never physically exhibited violent behavior.

As he continued to work at the signage company, however, his psychological disorder would

manifest itself on numerous occasions in recent years. According to a manager at his company, he would become “belligerent,” then, following some guidance by his manager, would “straighten up for a while,” with such patterns continuously recurring. As explained by a mental health professional who served as a spokeswoman for his family following the shootings, “It’s not unusual when you’re isolat-

reprimanded and later fired.

Although these are preliminary and, at best, sketchy details about Engeldinger’s “mental” state (and are based on newspaper accounts, as opposed to a forensic psychiatric autopsy) what is striking about them is that they appear to characterize many of the individuals who become active shooters.

Specifically, these are common pre-incident warning signs that, while known to those who associate with such perpetrators, are not always reported to the appropriate authorities

nomenon of the “active shooter” is still poorly understood in many segments of society.

What is an “active shooter”?

The term “active shooter” can be defined several ways. In its basic definition, an active shooter is defined as an individual or a small group actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined space or populated area. The “active” component refers to the shooter’s continuing use of violent physical force while having unrestricted access to

Hassan (November 5, 2009: Fort Hood, Killeen, Texas, 12 killed and some 31 wounded), Jared Lee Loughner (January 8, 2011: Tucson, Arizona, 6 killed and 14 injured), Anders Breivik (July 22, 2011: Oslo, Norway, 8 killed; Utoya, Norway, 69 killed and 40 injured), James Holmes (July 30, 2012: Aurora, Colorado, 12 killed and 58 wounded), and Adam Lanza (December 14, 2012: Newtown, CT, 27 killed, and several injured), in all these cases the perpetrators displayed worrisome signs of potential risk to

What is an “active shooter”? The term “active shooter” can be defined several ways. In its basic definition, an active shooter is defined as an individual or a small group actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined space or populated area.

The “active” component refers to the shooter’s continuing use of violent physical force while having unrestricted access to as many additional victims as possible. He controls life and death until he stops at his leisure or is stopped by law enforcement.

ing yourself, which we know that he did, that eventually the only people you have left [are] your family and your co-workers, and often your paranoia translates to them,” which helps to explain his periodic belligerency towards his co-workers.

Such belligerency was also accompanied, according to his mother, by delusions and hallucinations of “a giant conspiracy that involved the government, the FBI, the police, people at work, people on the street….It involved everybody.”

All of this came to a violent head when Engeldinger was

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for preemptive disruption, whether through mental health counseling or law enforcement notification.

Even more seriously, in a case of such potential high tension when an employee knows he is about to be fired, why didn’t the managers at his firing meeting take extra security precautions when confronting someone with his troubled mental state?

That such violent incidents where victims are needlessly killed and injured continue to proliferate with such frequency attests to the fact that the phe-

as many additional victims as possible. He controls life and death until he stops at his leisure or is stopped by law enforcement. He usually does not take hostages or intends to negotiate, often takes his own life, and while attempts at escape are unlikely, some shooters do surrender when confronted by law enforcement.

Interestingly, while most active shooter events, as exemplified by the Minneapolis incident, do not generate the sensationalist international headlines that were achieved by the shooting massacres by Major Nidal

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violence, with such warning signs not reported to the appropriate authorities.

Some of these active shooter perpetrators, such as Nidal Hassan and Anders Breivik, could also be considered as “terrorists,” since their wrathful rage was motivated by political objectives, as well.

Also, some terrorist attacks, such as the November 26 – 29, 2008 shooting and bombing attacks in Mumbai, India, could be considered as “active shooter” incidents, as well.

And in these attacks, like many active shooter events, civilians in hotels, a train station, and

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a Jewish community center were deliberately and continuously targeted by the attackers, with 164 people killed and more than 300 injured. Despite the wide publicity given such active shooter incidents, they continue to proliferate – not only in the United States, but overseas, as well. Even in a country with a robust security infrastructure such as Israel, on October 5, 2012, William Hershkovitz, aged 23, an American volunteer and intern at a hotel kitchen at the southern resort city of Eilat, who had been fired from his position the previous day, following a heated argument and a fight with a kitchen employee, grabbed a gun from a security guard who had tried to break up the fight and shot the employee, leaving three others suffering

from shock. Hershkovitz subsequently barricaded himself in the kitchen and was killed by an Israeli counterterrorism unit. In response to the fact that Hershkovitz’s worrisome behavior was known to his American volunteer cohort in Eilat, the Jewish Agency, which organizes these volunteer programs, immediately instituted a review of its protocols for accepting foreign volunteers into its Israel program.

In the United States, on December 11, 2012, at a shopping mall outside Portland, Oregon, around 3:20pm during the busy holiday shopping season, a gunman wearing a white hockey mask and a load-bearing vest opened fire with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle at the food court, killing two persons, injuring one, before killing himself.

Like many other active shooters, the gunman, later identified

New Haven Assistant Police Chief Thaddeus Reddish inspects an AK47 turned in during a gun buyback event in New Haven, Connecticut, in the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School December 29, 2012. REUTERS/Michelle McLoughlin

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as Jacob Tyler Roberts, aged 22, had no apparent connection between himself and his victims.

But like other active shooters, he did appear to lead a troubled life, including financial difficulties, prior to his shooting rampage.

And, as mentioned earlier, the Portland event was followed three days later by the catastrophic active shooter attacks in Newtown, CT.

known to the authorities, but no steps were taken to prevent him from accessing a firearm.

It is possible, in fact, to prevent many potential active shooter events. In a prominent example, in November 2012 a mother decided to turn her 20-year-old son to police authorities after discovering that he had purchased a pair of assault rifles and 400 rounds of ammunition.

Like other active shooters, Lammers shared a similar psychological profile. As explained by his mother, he was “very quiet,” “very much a loner,” “had a hard time making friends,” and “felt like he was a failure.” Interestingly, like some active shooters, Lammers had reportedly planned to turn himself in to police when they arrived at the scene of his envisioned shooting spree, as opposed to others who intentionally kill themselves when their massacres are terminated.

Attesting to the widespread phenomena of active shooting incidents, in a later incident which took place in early January 2013 in a village in southern Switzerland, a gunman opened fire from his apartment and killed three women and wounded two men, before police disabled the gunman by shooting him in the chest. The alleged assailant was an unemployed 33-yearold who had been treated for psychiatric problems in the past, so, like other incidents, he was

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The son, Blaec Lammers, had reportedly become infatuated with the Colorado shootings at a Batman movie opening and then began to collect weapons and ammunition to carry out a similar mass shooting at the showing of “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2” at a movie theater in Bolivar, Missouri. It is reported that he even planned to continue his shooting spree at a nearby WalMart because it would have provided him access to addi-

tional ammunition. Finally, like other active shooters, Lammers had spent time practicing his shooting skills at a gun range in Aldrich, Missouri.

Like other active shooters, Lammers shared a similar psychological profile. As explained by his mother, he was “very quiet,” “very much a loner,” “had a hard time making friends,” and “felt like he was a failure.”

Interestingly, like some active shooters, Lammers had reportedly planned to turn himself in to police when they arrived at the scene of his envisioned shooting spree, as opposed to others who intentionally kill themselves when their massacres are terminated.

With such active shooter incidents occurring so frequently in the United States and other parts of the world, it is crucial

to provide all those involved in public safety a comprehensive and systematic understanding of this threat and the protocols required to respond, manage and, if possible, prevent it.

It is also important for those involved in public safety to be proactive in implementing effective protective security measures at their facilities even during periods of calm, so as to avoid possible civil liability lawsuits against their companies in the aftermath of active shooter events over issues such as “could have done” or “should have done” or “failed to do” to prevent casualties or physical damage, even when they do their best to protect those affected.

For this reason, I have recently published a pocket handbook that attempts to provide such comprehensive situational

awareness. Beginning with a definition of active shooter incidents, the handbook then provides a chronological listing of major incidents. A six-phase framework serves as a tool kit to explain all the phases involved in such incidents, beginning with an explanation of the mindsets of the individuals who conduct such attacks. This is intended to provide public safety personnel a diagnostic tool to identify persons in their jurisdiction who might demonstrate such warning signs before their turn to violence. The handbook then outlines the steps active shooters take to prepare for and plan their attacks, including weapons selection and targeting, and how such attacks are executed. The handbook’s final phase outlines the response measures required to protect and evacuate those impacted by active shooter events, includ-

ing how to cooperate with law enforcement and emergency medical personnel. Post-incident consequence management is also discussed. An appendix provides a self-assessment checklist tool to enable public safety personnel to ensure they are prepared to respond to such potential incidents in terms of protective procedures, systems, and training. Published by ASIS International in December 2012, information about “Active Shooter – Handbook on Prevention” can be found at: http://www.abdi-secureecommerce.com/asis/ps-117237-2040.aspx.

About the Author Dr. Joshua Sinai is a Washington, DC-based consultant and educator on terrorism and counterterrorism issues. He can be contacted at Joshua.sinai@ comcast.net.

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10/16/12 9:46 AM

Flashing Red:

How Threat And Vulnerability Assessments Could Have Saved The Benghazi Consulate

By Leo Labaj

A protester reacts as the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest by an armed group said to have been protesting a film being produced in the United States September 11, 2012. An American staff member of the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi has died following fierce clashes at the compound, Libyan security sources said on Wednesday. Armed gunmen attacked the compound on Tuesday evening, clashing with Libyan security forces before the latter withdrew as they came under heavy fire. REUTERS/Esam Al-Fetori

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quote from the bipartisan report, “Flashing Red: A Special Report on the Terrorist Attack at Benghazi,” released by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs: “Libya and Benghazi were ‘Flashing Red’ around the time of the attack…Western facilities and personnel became an increasing focus of threats in the spring of 2012.”

Flashing Red is an apt name for this report. Flashing Red is what you see when responding to a firefight, the adrenaline pulsating as first responders put their lives on the line. Flashing Red is what a crime scene looks like when teams of medics and police illuminate everything in a crimson wash. Flashing Red is the fog of war, the blinding distraction that makes life and death decisions impossible to analyze in the moment. Flashing Red is why I specialize in emergency planning and disaster prevention, and why the questions about what happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 go much deeper than a failure in diplomatic security. My job is not to be an armchair pundit talking about how this or that crisis impacts political posturing. Rather it is to put myself in the mind of the security apparatus that is responsible for protecting our assets in hostile areas around the globe. For the Consulate in Benghazi that security responsibility lay at the doorstep of the Department of State, and it is that department’s solemn duty to take a critical look at just how it approaches threat mitigation and response.

As background for this article, I teach a Target Analysis and Vulnerability Assessment Course for security professionals across the United States and abroad.

As part of this training I spend a significant amount of time conducting Threat Assessments by adapting the use of the CARVER Vulnerability Assessment Methodology. I would submit to you that nearly any of my former students could have developed a security philosophy that would have prevented the loss of life of the Ambassador and his Information Technology Officer. This is not because I am the greatest Critical Infrastructure specialist ever to come out of the Central Intelligence Agency, but because the Consulate would have been protected based on the logical melding of quantitative and qualitative assessments of available threat information. And if the facility could not be secured based on available intelligence, then the Ambassador would not have been in Benghazi that night, full stop.

In the case of Benghazi, it was well known that there were a number of militia groups and training camps in the vast Libyan desert. Once intelligence confirmed militia groups and their training facilities were in the area, the threat count should have risen significantly.

Responding to a tragedy is a disorder of Flashing Red lights. Constructing a systematic way of categorizing, predicting, and preventing tragedies is by contrast orderly, cost-effective, and so simple even my interns can pick it up as fast as some security professionals. And the most important part is, that system already exists in the CARVER Methodology. There is nothing to invent here, no reason for confusion or unnecessary deaths, and certainly no excuse for poorly secured facilities under the control of the United States government.

Over the remaining course of this article, I would like to demonstrate how preventative methods could have changed the outcome of the Benghazi attack, and where vulnerabilities went unrecognized or uncorrected.

The Threat / Vulnerability Assessment Process Threat Assessment Prior to any Vulnerability Assessment (VA), a comprehensive Threat Assessment (TA) is necessary. The TA is a vital step in the VA process, defined by an appraisal of collected intelligence and other available information regarding the spectrum of threats to operations, programs, facilities and people of a given target. By asking and answering four simple questions, we would have known the potential threat to the Consulate and its complex. Those questions are: • • • •

Who will target the asset? (Adversary Characterization) What asset(s) are targeted? (Adversary Target Selection Criteria) Why would that asset be targeted? (Adversary Intent/History) How will the asset be attacked? (Adversary Capabilities)

If those questions cannot be answered, a US diplomat has no place being there.

Yet suppose the answers were known in advance of the attack on September 11, 2012. Simply knowing a threat’s presence is not enough. CARVER helps us take this information and process it in a useful way. But first, let us make sure we have a firm grasp on all aspects of what it means to understand an adversary.

Below I expand further on what must have been known in Libya, and how that information should have been processed and used in the Vulnerability Assessment process.

Adversary Characterization- As part of the Threat Assessment process it is important to identify all potential adversaries that pose a threat to a given facility. Adversaries can take many forms such as extremist groups, criminals, terrorist organizations, intelligence services, disgruntled employees, even neighborhood gangs. In the case of Benghazi, it was well known that there were a number of militia groups and training camps in the vast Libyan desert.

Once intelligence confirmed militia groups and their training facilities were in the area, the threat count should have risen significantly.

Adversary Target Selection Criteria- Adversaries select targets and plan attacks based on many factors, including prior targets, significant dates, effect or consequence, economic and political considerations, and matching their capabilities to the designated target. Let’s look at two of these, Prior Targets and Significant Dates, to see how proper knowledge of them could have helped secure Ambassador Stevens and the three other Americans killed.

Prior Targets- US diplomatic missions have been targeted numerous times in the past. The bombings of the embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania are examples, whose investigations I followed as an Explosive Ordnance Technician for the CIA. While I would like to say that was not too long ago, the truth is we well know that diplomats are desirable (and often soft) targets for mili-

tants. Numerous Western targets in Benghazi have also been attacked prior to September, 2012 which would help indicate a pattern for those looking for one. So to think we were not a target in Benghazi would have been foolhardy, and something I deeply hope was never taken for granted.

Significant Dates- Hard as it may be to understand, terrorists seem to love anniversaries, and they are not ones to forget them. There is no better example of that than the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. That attack happened on April 19, 1995, one year to the day after the final attack on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The Oklahoma City bombing, perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh, was in retaliation for that bloody ATF raid in Waco. Again, to think September 11 was not a significant date would have bordered on the unimaginable, and something I have difficulty assuming went unnoticed.

Adversary Capabilities - Once we identified our primary adversaries as militia extremists, it does not take too much imagination to identify potential weapons and methodologies they would use in an attack on the Consulate. We all watched the overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya on television and saw the weaponry used by local bands of armed civilians. As part of a Vulnerability Assessment we would have had to consider protecting the Consulate and the Ambassador against all of the capabilities we knew those militias possessed. That may be an expansive task, but certainly not an impossible one, and well worth the effort.

That is a lot of information we just covered. Yet as I mentioned, the beauty of the CARVER Methodology is its ability to synthesize complicated data into usable information.

The following is a graph I used to model the Impact and Likelihood of a spectrum of threats to the Consulate in Benghazi. These threats would be typical if the adversary were a well-armed militia. This graph took less than five minutes to create, and already we have a better picture of the security requirements dictated by an American diplomatic presence in Libya.

once you have thoroughly completed the Threat Analysis can you truly begin to build a logical (and costeffective) defensive arrangement designed to prioritize the deployment of finite security resources.

Vulnerability Assessment After the Threat Assessment is completed, it is used as a blueprint for the Vulnerability Assessment. With a firm foundational understanding of who is looking to compromise an asset, we can now turn to the business of assessing that asset’s vulnerabilities. Again, this is not an overly complicated procedure. What I am telling you here is no different from my Threat Analysis and Vulnerability Assessment course, and I sincerely hope that this methodology finds its place of prominence among all the political posturing taking place over the Benghazi attack.

The role of the VA is quite simple; it is to assess whether the current security measures (or posture) effectively address the known or perceived threats to an asset. If security measures do not effectively meet the known threats it is up to the assessor to ensure that adequate protection is implemented. Obviously, this was not accomplished in Benghazi.

Somewhere in this process, there was a hole. But where? As we outlined earlier, it is unlikely that the threats in Libya were unknown.

Nevertheless, the Vulnerability Assessment, if one was conducted at all, did not result in the added security that was necessary to meet the risk of known threats.

IMPACT

Adversary Intent/History- As I have been demonstrating, it is important to really understand your adversary in order to establish the po- The adversary is determined, and he tential threats your assets or facilities knows all about you. He is obsessive, face. Just as my job means getting into especially one motivated by politics the minds of those responsible for the or religion. Your dogma must be the security of the Consulate, a prevention security of your asset. Learn as much specialist’s task also rests on his/her about the adversary as he knows ability to suspend his/her disbelief and about you. What are his causes, comsee things from the perspective of an mitments, alliances and networks? aggressor. This intersects with TA/VA What are his capabilities vis-à-vis when we combine that information weapons, tactics, training and surveilwith known prior incidents against lance techniques? What effect does a facility or infrastructure, current he mean to induce, and why? Only or known threats, attack methodologies that an 25.00 adversary has used in the past or may be likely to use in the future, VEHICLE BORNE IED and a familiarity with 20.00 similar incidents against VEHICLE comparable targets. InMOUNTED WEAPON tent and history of the PLACED IED extremist activities in 15.00 Benghazi were clearly STANDOFF ATTACK documented by multiple MORTAR, RPG agencies. Prior bombing INCENDIARIES attacks on US Consul10.00 ates, an assassination SMALL ARMS attempt against the British ambassador, and a 5.00 multitude of related incidents in an unstable post-conflict environment all increased the 0.00 threat level against the 5.00 10.00 15.00 20.00 25.00 American Ambassador significantly.

DBT LIKLIHOOD

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The protection of any asset is based on its Security System Effectiveness. A facility such as the Consulate in Benghazi should have been evaluated to determine its ability to effectively deter, detect, delay and respond to an attack based on the spectrum threats identified in the Threat Assessment. The number of instances we have seen embassies besieged by mobs on every continent should be proof enough that it is imperative to meet those four criteria. Let’s look at each element of Security System Effectiveness and see just Vol.19, No.1

how they were applied in this case, and where the lapse lies.

Deterrence - A countermeasure strategy that is intended to discourage a breach of security by fear or doubt. Deterrence in the case of Benghazi would have been difficult.

The militias were well armed, well organized and motivated. Casing the compound previous to the attack by the adversary identified no effective resistance and thus no deterrence.

Sometimes it is unreasonable to expect total deterrence from an ideologically motivated attack.

Detection- A countermeasure strategy that is intended to provide identification of inappropriate, incorrect, malicious or anomalous activity by an adversary attempting to breach security. The purpose of detection is to provide assurance that an adversary crossing the perimeter will be detected whether walking, running, jumping, crawling, or climbing at any point in the detection zone.

Most important, the earliest possible detection of an unauthorized intrusion as far from security interests as possible is required to determine the delay necessary for an adequate response. Surveillance in Benghazi resulted in real-time confirmation of the attack in progress through the use of CCTV. However, by the time the Consulate detected the intrusion the adversaries were already at or inside the compound. There was not enough time to dispatch a response team to intercept the aggressors before they reached a target.

Delay- A countermeasure strategy that is intended to provide various barriers to impede the progress of an adversary until an adequate response can be affected to suppress the assailants.

The delay mechanism in Benghazi was not sufficient to overcome the lag in detection, and thus could not allow for a reasonable response time.

Impediments in the compound should have consisted of a sizeable protective security force, and a secure safe-room to house as many personnel as possible. If both of these were in place, an active military response could have been affected. We know that the State Department depended on a local guard force and the Libyan Government to provide protective security for the Consulate. That was immediately deemed inadequate by those on the ground when these forces were tested in combat. The Ambassador consequently retreated to a safe-room, as would be expected. The panic-room’s prime function is to provide time for a response action. The response

time should be confidently known in advance, so that the safe-room can be constructed and furnished accordingly.

This was the final failing that resulted in the tragic death of Ambassador Stevens. The Ambassador died from smoke inhalation while in the room. Arson should have been expected as one of the spectrum threats against the structure, either as a direct attack or a consequence of explosives. At a minimum, a smoke ventilation system should have been installed and self-contained breathing apparatuses should have been available for the number of occupants expected to take refuge. None of that happened.

There were no reasonable contingency measures installed, let alone those designed to meet the catastrophic failings of the Consulate’s delay measures.

Response - A security strategy that reacts to an adversarial activity after detection and assessment. It can include notification of authorities, evasive action, and confrontation. It was not known at the time, either by the State Department or Department of Defense, how long the attack was going to last in Benghazi. It appears as well that those responsible for Consulate security did not know how much delay was made available by the safe room. As soon as confirmation of an attack on the Consulate was confirmed, a well-rehearsed response should have been carried out immediately. If the appropriate detection and delay strategies were in place, the response force may have had up to four hours to react, dramatically reducing the Flashing Red panic of a confused rescue effort.

Modeling Catastrophe So far I have been talking a lot about Threat and Vulnerability Assessments in more generic terms, mentioning the importance of ‘methodologies’ more than once. In fact, all Vulnerability Assessments are generally based on some methodology, whether formal or informal. In my Target Analysis and Vulnerability Assessment class, as well as in my career at the Agency, I use the CARVER Methodology. This methodology, in my opinion, is unsurpassed in integrating the analysis and examination of the interrelationship of assets, threats, vulnerabilities and countermeasures surrounding a specific facility. CARVER is a unique analytical tool because it facilitates both a qualitative and quantitative assessment of a facility’s vulnerabilities using delineated criteria and a numerical ranking system.

This fusion allows for the recurrent usage of a reliable formula across an infinite range of assets. The criteria used in the CARVER Methodology are: • • • • •

Criticality - Degree of importance to a facility Accessibility - Ease of access to a facility or component of a facility Recoverability - Time taken to restore facility operability Vulnerability - Level of exposure to attack (adversary capability) Effect - Scope and magnitude of adverse consequences and reactions to them • Recognizability - Degree that component or operation is recognized by the adversary

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Using these criteria, I designed a sample CARVER matrix to identify the risk and probability of attack to the US Consulate in Benghazi. The result is, as you would expect, not a pretty picture. As a caveat, the numbers here are subjective because I was not afforded the opportunity to perform a first-hand Vulnerability Assessment of the Benghazi Consulate. The numbers are based on news reports, photographs of the compound, and my experience as an assessor of similar facilities.

However, the matrix still serves an important educational purpose, as it illustrates how high the risk was, based on any measure. While anyone could take exception to a specific finding, in general this model clearly predicts the potential for catastrophe. If this matrix was developed by an assessment team, the goal would be to reduce the number values in the matrix to an acceptable risk level. This can only be done by incorporating countermeasures which reduce the probability of attack, like those mentioned in the Security System Effectiveness section. If those numbers cannot be reduced, the facility is indefensible and should be closed immediately.

As you can see in the matrix, I have identified five general assets with a brief description of each. Based on our Threat Assessment, I have established the threats to each one of those assets. Using values 1 through 5 I then quantified the risk to each of the criteria in CARVER. Again, one could argue with individual values, but I believe that any assessor would come up with similar figures based on the threat spectrum known at the time. The risk was just unacceptable.

Conclusion If you would like to know more about the CARVER Methodology specifically, or its history, you can always see my Winter 2011 article on that subject in this Journal. For now however, those specifics are secondary to the point I am trying to make. With Congress lining up to take a swing at anyone within spitting distance of the Benghazi tragedy, it is important to remember that political culpability and future disaster prevention are hardly related. For me and my colleagues, the attack on September 11, 2012 was made possible not by last-minute failures in security detailing or scheduling. Rather it originated in a systemic misunderstanding of the risks that existed in Benghazi, and consequently how the Ambassador was protected against them. Security needs a methodology, an order, a reliability.

Without all that, we are left with headlines reading Flashing Red.

About the Author Leo Labaj retired from the Central Intelligence Agency and has over 40 years of counterterrorism experience. He currently serves as Director of Critical Infrastructure Protection at Security Management International, LLC and frequently teaches courses on the CARVER threat and vulnerability assessment methodology. He can be reached at llabaj@smiconsultancy.com.

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Lashkar -e-Taiba:

Evolution Of A Transnational Threat

By Thomas Henkey

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ntroduction Five years ago, surreal images of the Taj Mahal hotel ablaze with the sound of gunfire echoing from within led many, including political commentator Fareed Zakaria, to refer to the event as “India’s 9/11.” This attack on the Indian metropolis of Mumbai was certainly a brazen one, and it dramatically brought the group responsible to the attention of many observers for the first time.

While semantics may vary, Western governments universally describe terrorism as politically or ideologically motivated acts of violence or coercion. Lashkar-e-Taiba, by any accepted definition, is indeed a terrorist organization. The group’s virulently antiIndia, anti-Hindu stance marks its extremism as both territorial and religious in nature.

Counterterrorism professionals can certainly benefit from examining the formation, funding, objectives, and operations of such an organization. The question ultimately becomes, in its blend of state-sponsored and non-state-sponsored extremism, does Lashkar-e-Taiba represent the future of terrorism?

Despite language and translation barriers, sources from academic journals to mainstream media (such as Time and Newsweek) have taken note. A pair of documentaries regarding the now infamous assault on Mumbai are highly insightful, as are a number of recent interviews granted by outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen. Reviewing these sources, and speaking with counterterrorism experts such as Peter Chalk, an overview of the organization began to emerge.

Formation and History Like most established terrorist organizations, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has a rather lengthy and convoluted history, tracing its roots back to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

By the late 1980s, the LeT’s parent organization, Markaz Dawa ul-Irshad (MDI) emerged from a glut of Islamist and tribal groups fighting the Soviet occupation often collectively referred to as Mujahideen.

The primary founder of MDI was the self-described Islamic scholar Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. Saeed also founded the more militant offshoot LeT in approximately

1990, as the Pakistani and Indian conflict over Kashmir reached one of its most heated points of contention. Since 1947, the nations have descended into armed conflict on four occasions – three times over Kashmir.

By 1993, LeT had effectively shifted its focus from the Afghan conflict to Kashmir, although it retained illicit training camps in both regions, and took on a violent mix of religious extremism and Kashmiri regionalism. (The name refers to the Army of the Good or Army of the Righteous, and variations include Lashkar-I-Tayyaba and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.) Many core members subscribe to the strict Ahle-Hadith sect of Wahhabist Islam – aligned with highly conservative Sunnis, and with the leadership of Al Qaeda. However, in contrast to many such groups, LeT seemed to focus its rage not upon Shiite or Sufi Muslims, but rather upon Hindus in South Asia – and Indians in particular.

Through the 1990s, the group conducted a number of attacks in and around the disputed Kashmir territories, but 2001 represented a transformation of LeT. Under pressure from the Pakistani government, the group changed its official name to Jamaat ul-Dawa (or Ja-

Like most established terrorist organizations, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has a rather lengthy and convoluted history, tracing its roots back to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

By the late 1980s, the LeT’s parent organization, Markaz Dawa ul-Irshad (MDI) emerged from a glut of Islamist and tribal groups fighting the Soviet occupation often collectively referred to as Mujahideen.

maat-ud-Dawa), and professed to be an Islamic charity. Simultaneously in 2001, Lashkar-e-Taiba – as it was still universally called – launched a series of brazen attacks on Indian targets. These included multiple attacks in the city of Srinagar, and in apparent coordination with Jaish-eMohammed (JeM), an armed assault on the Indian Parliament in Delhi. The latter action nearly brought Pakistan and India into open conflict for a fifth time.

creasingly extending its operational agenda beyond Kashmir,” and has been “linked to a number of international incidents reflecting a globalized element of LeT.” Chalk saw the main threat to U.S. and European interests in LeT’s training camps, noting it as “one of the most prominent groups for training and assisting foreigners,” and estimating that “about 150 Westerners since 2008” have attended these facilities. LeT thus provides an ideal breeding ground for homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) to hone their skills.

Evolution: Local Irritant to Transnational Threat This period marked a clear turning point for LeT. Sponsoring attacks deep inside India represented a substantial escalation over previous activities. Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah was captured at a LeT “safe house” in Faisalabad, Pakistan in March of 2002, indicating not only more ambitious attacks on Indian interests, but also a willingness to align with other Wahhabi extremist organizations.

There is also substantial evidence of some degree of LeT presence in other nations in the region, including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Bruce Riedel, the head of President Obama’s recent strategic review of Afghanistan and Pakistan, has estimated the number of militants who have received training in LeT camps as high as 200,000. Plots involving individuals trained in these camps, or otherwise directly associated with LeT, have been disrupted in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia – the unmistakable mark of an organization with aspirations for a truly global reach.

The US Department of State’s 2010 Country Reports on Terrorism notes “[LeT] is an extremely capable terrorist organization with a sophisticated regional network.

It [continues] to view American interests as legitimate targets.”

Hafiz Saeed (C), the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, speaks during a rally organised by the Defense of Pakistan Council in Lahore, May 25, 2012. About 150 protesters gathered to take part in a protest rally against the possible re-opening of supply routes through Pakistan to NATO troops in Afghanistan, which have been closed since a cross-border attack by NATO forces in Afghanistan that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the Pakistan border on November 26, 2011.

REUTERS/Mohsin Raza

It is also important to note that multiple sources place the headquarters of LeT in Muridke, just outside of the large Pakistani city of Lahore. Still led by founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, a wanted international terrorist, LeT operates quite openly despite being surrounded

by Pakistani military and intelligence units. For counterterrorism analysts, this fact raised more than a few eyebrows.

During a recent conversation, Peter Chalk of the Rand Institute offered further insight into the organization. The group, said Chalk, is “in-

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The Pakistani government cannot openly support such activities, yet there is ample evidence that Pakistan sees extremist Islamic groups such as LeT and Jaish-eMohammed (JeM) as proxies to use against its perceived archenemy, India. Elements of the Pakistani government certainly see any effort that forces India to dedicate resources and personnel to countering such groups as preferable to a costly, direct conflict.

It is also important to note that multiple sources place the headquarters of LeT in Muridke, just outside of the large Pakistani city of Lahore. Still led by founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, a wanted international terrorist, LeT operates quite openly despite being surrounded by Pakistani military and intelligence units. For counterterrorism analysts, this fact raised more than a few eyebrows.

Elements of the Taliban are active in the area around Lahore, having used this region not only as a supply route for its activities in neighboring Afghanistan, but potentially as a staging area for attacks on Pakistani military units and supplies.

In addition, the specific location – formerly government land – only added credence to the widespread viewpoint that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of the Pakistani government was supporting the efforts of LeT. This underlines the most explosive element of the LeT’s rapid expansion: the group appears to be partially trained and sheltered by the ISI. There can be no other logical explanation for the cozy relationship seen in Muridke, nor

for the multiple sources that have indicated more than passive support from the Pakistani intelligence community. It is highly likely that the ISI – or elements therein – has actively assisted recent LeT campaigns against civilian targets in India, thus enabling a proxy to achieve Pakistan’s goals without direct involvement. Perhaps just as worrisome to Western governments is the fact that these sympathetic elements within ISI effectively provide a de facto information and intelligence arm.

Any connections, formal or informal, between the ISI and LeT are crucial. In earlier comments, Chalk has noted that the ISI “consistently sought to leverage the group as a deniable proxy through which to wage a long-term war of attrition against Delhi.” In fact, American President Barack Obama recently warned Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that his nation’s use of insurgent groups to promote national policy “cannot continue,” while at the same time calling for “closer collaboration against all

extremist groups.” The same letter, personally delivered by then National Security Advisor James Jones, specifically mentioned alQaeda, the Haqqani network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba by name.

In addition, speaking before Congress just prior to his retirement, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen stated that Pakistan “may believe that by using these proxies they are hedging their bets, or redressing what they feel is an imbalance of regional power.” He went on to state that Pakistan has effectively “eroded their internal security and their position in the region.” As per tradition, Mullen spoke with a bluntness characteristic of a career military officer on the verge of stepping down.

Multiple sources have also stated that Indian Prime Minister Monmohan Singh views the group as Pakistan’s largest terrorist organization and a direct threat to any peace efforts. Tellingly, similar conclusions have been reached by analysts

across the political spectrum, from the conservative-leaning Rand Corporation to the liberal-leaning Brookings Institute.

to impose the types of sanctions, trade penalties, and travel restrictions that often stall or reverse such behavior.

The immediate importance of this issue centers upon the fact that state-sponsored terrorism is almost certain to bring direct repercussions. Nations funding or supporting terror groups knew that such sponsorship came with inherent risks, such as monetary sanctions or limitations on the movement of senior government officials; being labeled as a pariah by the international community.

It is this “hybrid” combination of state and private financial and logistical support that makes LeT so difficult to counter, and threatens further expansion. Attacks such as the November 2008 assault on Mumbai exhibit a level of funding and coordination that is rare in the world of organized terror, and certainly help to explain how LeT moved from a small local player to a significant regional and transnational threat in but a few short years.

Yet if an organization such as LeT, and its “front” groups such as Jamaat ul-Dawa, can continue to raise funds from the Pakistani diaspora and other private supporters even as it simultaneously receives covert operational support from a national government, it represents a unique problem for other nations. As long as the government of Pakistan can maintain some degree of plausible deniability, it remains difficult for the international community

Case Study: Mumbai In November of 2008, a welldocumented assault on the Indian city of Mumbai left over 160 people dead, including several prominent police officials. Rarely in history have the details of a terrorist attack been so well captured in writing, on video, and via audio recordings – offering a unique opportunity

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to gain significant understanding of how LeT operates.

During the course of 2008, the terrorist training camps operated and funded by LeT in Kashmir and along the Afghan-Pakistan border were fully functional and well-attended.

The group had participated in a series of high-profile attacks on India over the previous two years, including a multiple bombing of passenger trains in Mumbai that killed 211 and injured over 1,000.

However, during the same period the group had also suffered losses in its leadership, including the killing of top lieutenant Abu Saad.

According to testimony provided in U.S. federal court, planning for a new large-scale series of attacks began as early as 2001 to 2004. By 2008, a number of specific targets in Mumbai had been selected, and detailed reconnaissance performed on each.

A group of around twenty young militants had been recruited and trained for the operation in India; ultimately ten would be selected to actually participate in the suicide mission. A commercial vessel would be hired or hijacked to take the assault teams to the shores of Mumbai, where the ship’s crew would then be killed. Once ashore, the LeT operatives would fan out and assault multiple high-profile targets across the city, creating as much mayhem and confusion as possible before being killed. It was, from the very beginning, to be strictly a one-way trip for the five two-man terrorist teams.

As is amply displayed in the media coverage that followed, the terror cells successfully infiltrated a number of sites, including a train station, a popular café, a Jewish center, and two luxury hotels. The groups used assault rifles and small explosives to attack concentrations of civilians, and also fought pitched battles with responding security forces – who initially estimated the number of militants at 50 to 100.

The insightful documentaries Terror in Mumbai (HBO) and Mumbai Massacre (PBS) clearly display the uneven and disorganized response

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of local authorities. The running gun battles took three days to unfold, and essentially brought a major metropolis to a halt. When the smoke finally cleared, 166 victims were dead – primarily civilians – and scores more injured.

Crucial to the initial investigation was the lone surviving gunman, Ajmal Amir Kasab. Cornered by Indian security forces, Kasab and a companion tried to fight to the death, but the former was swarmed by police and taken into custody. In a chilling hospital interview, Kasab details the planning for the attack – clearly implicating both LeT and the Pakistani ISI, and stating that he was instructed to identify and execute Americans, Britons, and Israelis “because they have done injustice to Muslims.” (Kasab was executed in November of 2012.)

Perhaps even more chilling were the audio recordings of the gunmen talking via cellular phone to their “controllers” in Pakistan. Indian security forces acquired the frequency being used by the terrorists as events were unfolding, and the resulting recordings offer incredible insight into LeT’s operations.

The young gunmen, anxious and sleep-deprived, are given their grim orders by a preternaturally calm advisor they refer to as Major Iqbal.

If this “Major Iqbal” – which may or may not be his actual name and rank – is indeed a member of the ISI or Pakistani military, it would indicate that a Pakistani official had full control of the terrorists on the ground in Mumbai.

Following these attacks, ISI complicity with LeT operations was no longer a murmur heard amongst counterterrorism officials in India or Europe; it was soon officially acknowledged in a US federal court. Admitted LeT plotter David Headley assisted the group with reconnaissance and logistical planning for the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

As part of a plea deal, he agreed to testify against an alleged financier and co-conspirator for the attack, Tahawwur Rana. In May of 2011, in a US District courtroom in Chicago, Headley calmly recalled the close collaboration between the ISI and LeT in planning the attacks, which killed 166, including six Americans.

Headley, born as Daood Gilani in the United States but raised in Pakistan, said that he and Rana had helped plot the assault with input from both organizations. Under oath, Headley stated that “they coordinated with each other,” and that “ISI provided assistance to Lashkar.” This crucial testimony, combined with the specific location of Usama bin Laden at the time of his death only three weeks prior, certainly provides significant evidence that the ISI has been playing one side against the other on a grand scale. (The jury went on to deliver a “split” verdict against Rana in the trial.)

Analysis and Conclusions The rapid evolution of Lashkare-Taiba from a handful of Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan to a transnational security threat is complete. The group already represents a significant security threat across South Asia, and shows clear intent to further expand.

The US government has unquestionably taken notice, with terrorism being a prime topic for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during visits to India in mid-2011. As the US Department of State’s Daniel Benjamin has summarized, “very few things worry me as much as the strength and ambition of LeT.” From a policy standpoint, LeT indeed represents a relatively unique challenge to the United States. The organization is clearly a threat to American citizens and interests, and statements by LeT insiders such as Headley and Kasab clearly implicate at least some members of Pakistan’s intelligence services as being complicit supporters to acts of mass murder. These revelations have contributed to already strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, and complicate further intelligence or military cooperation.

And yet, Pakistani and American policies may be aligned again in the near future. For even after

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being pumped full of money and weaponry by its supporters, terrorist organizations often come to the conclusion that they no longer require a benefactor. Just as the Pakistani Taliban have turned on their hosts, unleashing bombings across the country, LeT can be expected to eventually bite the hand that feeds. As framed by former US counterterrorism official Juan Carlos Zarate in Newsweek, Pakistan is now engaged in “a delicate dance with a Frankenstein of their own making.”

Lashkar-e-Taiba may have sprung into existence as yet another collection of Mujahideen fighters in the Soviet-Afghan conflict, but through ample funding and equally ample violence, the group has emerged as a major threat to Western interests across the region and beyond. While elements of the Pakistani intelligence apparatus play a dangerous “double game” with what they mistakenly perceive as a controllable asset, LeT continues to be shielded from the full brunt of international law.

Furthermore, the troublesome hybrid-funding model represented by the group, while not entirely unique, has a very real potential to be adopted by other terrorists and organized-crime syndicates worldwide. Essentially, LeT has already proven itself to be one of the most dangerous transnational terrorist organizations on the planet, has some level of support from the Pakistani intelligence community, and shows full intent to continue expanding its brand.

As Major Iqbal said in the midst of the Mumbai assault, “This was just the trailer. Just wait till you see the rest of the film.” International counterterrorism experts had best be paying close attention, lest LeT be allowed to stick to the deadly script they have envisioned.

About the Author Thomas Henkey is an Emergency Coordinator with the City of Chicago and recently finished coursework in the Emergency and Disaster Management Masters program at American Military University. He can be contacted at: tomhenkey@hotmail.com

SEAL Team Six And The

Linda Norgrove Hostage Rescue

Dr. Thomas B. Hunter

British aid worker Linda Norgrove in Afghanistan, Image courtesy The Guardian, Wednesday 13 October 2010 11.23 EDT

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ntroduction

The US Navy’s formally designated Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), better known as SEAL Team Six, is one of America’s two elite military hostage rescue units, the other being the US Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, or Delta Force. Both units famously maintain an exceptionally high standard in a wide variety of skill sets, from reconnaissance, to close quarters combat, from desert survival to maritime infiltration, and from high-altitude parachute jumping to closed-circuit diving. All these skills are maintained due to grave necessity, given the reality that these teams can be called on to perform at a moment’s notice, virtually anywhere in the world.

In October 2010, SEAL Team Six undertook one of the most challenging hostage rescue operations in recent memory, with the attempted safe retrieval of British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who had been kidnapped by Taliban gunmen while traveling in eastern Afghanistan. Despite the best training, tactics, weapons, equipment, and personnel, not every hostage rescue operation results in the desired outcome, namely, the safe return of the hostage(s) from the hands of their captors. This mission provides tragic, but important, glimpse into the dangerous world of military counterterrorism hostage rescue operations and highlights the myriad dynamics at play when such a time-critical event unfolds, requiring the specialized skills of the men who make up these covert units.

Abduction Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan (OEF-A) was launched on 7 October 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks targeting the United States of 11 September. The goal of this operation was the eradication of the al-Qaida presence in that country, particularly with regard to training facilities, as well as the elimination of the extremist Taliban regime and, ultimately, the support of a nascent democratic government in Kabul. To this end, the military forces of the US, Great Britain, France and other NATO countries invaded Afghanistan and immediately set about establishing a longterm presence in that country to support those operations.

In addition to military forces, following the conclusion of the initial major combat phase, many countries sent aid workers to

support the Afghan people and to provide medical care, education, financial and economic support, and other assistance.

Yet, despite their humanitarian missions, aid workers were not immune from the predations of terrorists and militants. Kidnappings (typically for ransom), violence, and even murders were inflicted on these personnel, particularly given the fact that they often worked in some of the most remote areas of the country, far from the protection of NATO forces, or even Afghan law enforcement.

So it was that, on 26 September 2010, 36year old British aid worker Linda Norgrove, along with three colleagues, was traveling in a convoy of two unmarked Toyota Corollas on the main road from Jalalabad to Asadabad in eastern Konar Province. At the time, Norgrove was serving as regional director for a charity group, overseeing a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) project helping to create jobs and improve economic conditions for Afghans throughout eastern Afghanistan. To facilitate her work, she had taught herself the Dari language and rarely traveled without wearing a burka, the traditional clothing for Afghan women, so as not to appear overtly “Western.”

As her small convoy passed through the Dewagal valley, they entered a dangerous stretch of roadway, with steep mountain on one side and the Kunar river on the other. It is unknown if Norgrove was aware of the fact that, two months prior, an American military convoy had been ambushed at the very location they were passing through.

Indeed, analysis of historical data indicates that this corridor has been a prime

Yet, despite their humanitarian missions, aid workers were not immune from the predations of terrorists and militants.

Kidnappings (typically for ransom), violence, and even murders were inflicted on these personnel, particularly given the fact that they often worked in some of the most remote areas of the country, far from the protection of NATO forces, or even Afghan law enforcement.

ambush location not only during Operation Enduring Freedom, but dating back to mujahedeen fighters dating back to the war against the Soviets during the 1980s.

While navigating this dangerous length of road, they were observed by a group of 6-8 Taliban, armed with automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades (RPG). Unlike the military convoy, which had been immediately engaged with weapons fire, the gunmen instead ordered the two vehicles to a halt, and the passengers to exit their vehicles. Norgrove was quickly identified as a Westerner and placed on a donkey, while her three Afghan colleagues were ordered to follow the Taliban on foot.

Given the proximity of the camp to which the hostages had been taken, and the promptness of the response, it did not take long for US forces to locate the suspected camp and to begin surveillance using Predator drones. In addition, leaflets were dropped from aircraft offering rewards to any local villagers who might be willing to provide information about the hostages’ then-unknown location. It is unknown if this effort bore fruit in time for the rescue operation that followed; however, clearly the Taliban would have known their enemy was activity seeking Linda Norgrove.

released, reportedly after some concessions had been given to the Taliban kidnappers.

These three individuals were quickly taken into protective custody and questioned by US and British authorities, in order to obtain the most current and complete picture of the layout of the camp, weapons observed, and any other critical intelligence that could be gleaned. In such a dynamic situation, obtaining this time-sensitive information was of the utmost importance, and reportedly the Afghans provided every possible detail to the intelligence teams and, in turn, to the mission planning cell.

Soon after taking the USAID team hostage, the Taliban issued a demand for the release of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistan-born scientist arrested by Afghan authorities in

The quick reaction teams from SEAL Team Six and the British Special Air Service (SAS) were put on alert immediately following notification of the abductions on 26 September. Priority requests for Predator surveillance and detection flights and other reconnaissance assets were immediately issued to local force commanders, and initial planning meetings were undertaken.

However, on the more important matter of which unit would be best suited to this specific operation, it was quickly agreed that SEAL Team Six, which had been operating in that area for some time, would be best suited, given their intimate knowledge of the terrain.

After traveling for some time, the group arrived at a Taliban-held village located approximately 8,000 feet in a more remote, mountainous area of the same valley in which she’d been taken hostage. News of the kidnapping quickly spread to local Afghan authorities, who in turn informed the US military. Both groups immediately undertook roadblock and other search operations in the hope of quickly locating Norgrove and her team as well as to attempt to prevent Norgrove from being moved into neighboring Pakistan, where locating and rescuing her would have become much more problematic.

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2008 and later transferred to US custody.

Prior to her arrest, Siddiqui had been sought

by Afghan and NATO forces for her prior activities as an al-Qaida financial facilitator, and had been placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. Given the wellknown stances of both the US and Great Britain against negotiations with terrorists, this demand was a non-starter.

Mission Planning On October 3, in an unexpected development, the three Afghans who had been taking captive along with Norgrove were

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One important matter had to be considered and debated not only among the hostage rescue planners in Afghanistan, but senior political officials in Washington and London as well. This matter concerned Norgrove’s British citizenship. Clearly, the preferred option for British government, if only for matters of national pride in the press coverage that would certainly follow a potentially dramatic rescue, was for the use of an SAS (or Special Boat Service, SBS) team to conduct the operation. However, on the more important matter of which unit would be best suited to this specific operation, it was quickly agreed that SEAL Team Six, which had been operating in that area for some time, would be best suited, given their intimate knowledge of the terrain. The SAS team was placed in a standby role, should their assistance be required, in the event something unexpected were to occur, such as the possibility one of the SEALs’ insertion helicopters might be disabled or downed during the rescue.

It is unknown if there was disagreement amongst US and British special forces teams as to the SEALs preferred insertion technique - the helicopter. Traditionally, the SAS preferred to be deposited significant distances from their objectives and then undertake rapid foot marches (known in the British military as “tabbing”) to the objective in order to preclude any possible

alerting of the enemy via the sound of the assaulters’ approaching helicopters.

The SEALs, in contrast, preferred to maximize surprise by first sending in a close reconnaissance team, then sending in the larger assault element via “fast rope” from a helicopter directly onto, or very close to, the objective. The decision as to how to conduct the specific tactics of the mission was left to the US team, which was, in the end, ultimately responsible for conducting the very dangerous, fluid, and complex rescue. It should be noted that, given the recently disclosed existence of a stealthy new American helicopter as witnessed during the operation to kill Osama bin Ladin, it is possible that this capability would certainly have been factored into this decision if, in fact, such scarce assets were available to the SEALs at the time.

The matter was forced to a conclusion on 2 October when intelligence reports began to filter in that the Taliban may have been preparing to execute Norgrove, or, at least, move her into Pakistan. Informed of this development, London quickly approved the request from force commanders in Afghanistan to conduct an immediate rescue operation. In turn, the SEALs, along with an approximately 20-strong contingent of US Army Rangers that would accompany the assault to provide added security, began their last minute preparations.

In addition, force commanders had approved the inclusion of an all-weather, day/ night-capable AC-130U “Spooky” gunship in order to interdict any fleeing Taliban who may attempt to escape through the mountainous terrain. The Spooky crew was well versed in working hand-in-hand with special operations teams like SEAL Team Six and was a welcome addition to the force package.

The Rescue During the early morning hours of 3 October, the kidnappers were holding Norgrove in one of the small huts that comprised the loose configuration of single story mudand-wood structures – all surrounded by a 16-foot wall - comprising the Taliban compound. Various reconnaissance assets, both on the ground and in the air, and

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The plan was for the first SEAL element to fast rope from the lead Blackhawk directly into the walled compound, while snipers covered their insertion and engaged targets of opportunity, including any Taliban sentries who may be present.

A second team would immediately follow and move directly to the hut in which Norgrove was...

Naval Special Warfare Development Group

(SEAL Team Six) Losses in Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) 12 September 2008: Senior Chief Petty Office John Wayne Marcum, 34, and Chief Petty Officer (select) Jason Richard Freiwald, 30, were killed during a firefight with heavily armed Taliban militants.

06 August 2011: In the largest single day loss of American lives, 20 members of SEAL Team Six were killed when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter transporting them was shot down by Taliban forces immediately following a combat mission to assist a team of U.S. Army Rangers under fire in eastern Afghanistan. In addition, two West Coast-based SEALs (SEAL Team 5), three US Air Force 24th Special Tactics Squadron Combat Controllers, and five US Army crewmembers were also killed in the crash.

08 December 2012: Petty Officer 1st Class Nicolas D. Checque, 28, died of combat related injuries while supporting an operation to rescue an American citizen held hostage by Taliban militants.

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bolstered by the information provided by the three released Afghans, had fixed her location in a specific building, and this was promptly made the priority target.

At approximately 0230, four MH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, piloted by crews from the US Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, lifted off from a secure section of Kabul Air Base, carrying 24 SEAL Team Six operators and the Ranger security element.

The plan was for the first SEAL element to fast rope from the lead Blackhawk directly into the walled compound, while snipers covered their insertion and engaged targets of opportunity, including any Taliban sentries who may be present. A second team would immediately follow and move directly to the hut in which Norgrove was believed held. The first team would then clear all the buildings, eliminating any threats as they moved, while the second team effected the actual rescue.

At precisely 0330, one hour after launching from Kabul, the first helo raced in over the building, kicking up a cloud of dust as the lead element dropped in from their fast ropes. Once down they engaged the Taliban, who had apparently been taken wholly by surprise. Hot on their heels, the first helo moved off-station and was replaced by the second Blackhawk, which in turn disgorged its team of SEAL assaulters, who moved directly to the target building.

The Taliban returned gunfire and the battle was joined. The first militants died quickly, but some spread out around the compound, aware enough to take Norgrove with them, perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation in the thought that if they held on to their hostage, the Americans would somehow be dissuaded from engaging them. In the confusion that followed, as can be expected in any such dynamic environment, the SEALS were unable to immediately locate the hostage and they began to search for her outside the compound, all the while engaged in a firefight with the remaining Taliban.

Two Taliban gunmen attempted to escape from the fight by sprinting away into the darkness. High above, however, the orbiting AC-130 crew observed the “squirters”

and tracked their movements utilizing nightvision and infrared equipment. In coordination with the SEALs, who confirmed none of the rescue team had ventured off in pursuit, the gunship then engaged the gunmen with precision 25mm and 40mm weapons fire, killing both.

At roughly the same time, one of the SEALs observed armed men moving into a gully near their position, possibly to attempt to outflank the rescue team. In order to eliminate the threat, he threw a single M67 grenade into the gully. What the SEAL could not have known, was that Norgrove had either been forced into, or chosen to run to, the relative safety of the gully in order to avoid the chaotic gunfire that had erupted all around the camp. Fragmentation from the detonating grenade struck the aid worker in the head and chest, causing severe injuries, though not yet fatal.

Upon locating Norgrove, badly injured and lying in a fetal position, SEAL and Ranger medics quickly worked to dress her wounds and render emergency medi-

cal aid. She was immediately moved to a waiting Blackhawk and was transported to the nearby US military medical facility at Kabul Air Base. However, despite the frantic efforts of doctors and staff, she passed away soon after her arrival at the hospital.

Only hours after her passing, the British press had been alerted and began to run stories of the failed operation. Initial reporting indicated that Norgrove had been killed by her captors during the assault, either by gunfire or via detonation of a suicide vest. In the months that followed the rescue attempt, however, a joint USUK investigation (overseen by a former SAS commander secretly dispatched to Kabul) into the circumstance of Linda Norgrove’s death determined that the SEAL operator had indeed thrown the grenade that killed her. He and other military personnel were later disciplined for their actions, primarily owing to their purposeful failure to report the use of the grenade. Linda Norgrove’s body was later returned to her home in Mangersta, Scotland, where she was buried.

Her mother stated, during the funeral,

“Linda’s humanity, hopes and ideals have long been aboard in the world and we commit these to our minds, our wills, and our hearts. Her qualities will always remain with us.”

Conclusions The Norgrove hostage rescue operation provides a tragic example of the myriad dynamics that can present themselves during a military counterterrorism hostage rescue operation. High altitude, mountainous terrain, total darkness, heavily armed gunmen, and a vulnerable hostage, are just a few of the many variables that may be encountered during such operations, any one of which might cause a catastrophic end to an otherwise well-planned and precisely executed operation.

About the Author Dr. Thomas Hunter is a former DIA intelligence analyst and author of over 100 published articles relating to counterterrorism and hostage rescue. Dr Hunter currently resides in Southern California.

COUNTER TERRORISM

SECURITY NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Aviation, Corporate, Cyber, Global, Homeland, Maritime, Law Enforcement, Intelligence Photo credit U.S. Department of Defense.

IACSP and PlanetData present a new website bringing you counterterrorism news, articles, events, and more.

www.planetdata.net/ct

Police Armored Rescue Vehicles In A Time Of Global Security Concerns

By Bob O’Brien, Jim Weiss and Mickey Davis

ARVs are ideally suited to protect officers conducting high-risk warrant services. This is especially true when approaching target locations guarded by armed bad guys or lookouts. There have been a number of instances where raid teams have been fired upon while approaching the target. An ARV is capable of withstanding such gunfire and protecting the raid team inside it, as well as covering and rescuing officers who find themselves pinned down or under fire. Cleveland Police Department SWAT with Mother II.

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n urban crime and terrorism environments, tactically-minded police recognize the need for the ballistic protection offered by police armored vehicles. In the pre-9/11 world, the term “armored rescue vehicle” or ARV was adopted to appease politicians and get public approval for the purchase and use of such vehicles. Today there is definitely a big change in attitude from not many years ago when ARV’s were rare and considered “too military.”

History Both Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) teams and police ARVs are relatively recent developments in American law enforcement. SWAT, introduced in the late 1960’s by LAPD, didn’t really take hold until the 1970’s. Armored rescue vehicles were a rarity until the 1980’s, when military surplus Peacekeepers were made available to agencies fortunate enough to get them. Other agencies converted commercial armored trucks; however these weren’t designed for police, were often mechanically unreliable, and had doubtful ballistic capabilities. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Federal Government made funding available for local agencies to obtain ARVs under Homeland Security assistance. As a result, many older ARVs are being replaced by newer ones with improved counter-threat features.

The need for ARVs was emphasized by an ambush of police in the city of Cleveland. The account follows.

Dateline 1968, Cleveland, Ohio, Glenville Shootout – About 25 armed members of a radical group ambushed police responding to an incident. This was a classic example of urban guerilla warfare. Most of the 15 wounded officers were shot trying to rescue downed officers. At the time, the police department armament consisted of revolvers and shotguns with three rounds of shotgun ammunition. Radio calls went out begging for an armored vehicle.

Police in Cleveland finally requisitioned a Brinks armored truck and used it to move in and remove their casualties.

ARV Rescue Medevac tactics/techniques are what SWAT should be - smooth, simple, direct – and most importantly - effective. The guiding principle is position the ARV as a shield, between the victim(s) and suspect(s), whenever possible. Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, South Carolina – multi-agency training.

ARV use in conducting a rugged terrain search -- this type of search is tailor-made for armored rescue vehicles, depending on the nature of the terrain. ARVs provide the safety of rolling cover, and are often able to traverse larger areas faster and more effectively than officers on foot. This is especially true in areas of high grass or bushes. Cleveland Police Department SWAT with Mother II.

Approximately seven Brinks trucks saw duty in the riots that followed the shootout. In the incident, eight died. According to police accounts, four of them were police officers.

The aftermath of these shootings led to the formation of a SWAT team and a custom-made armored vehicle. The AV looked like an oversized Brinks-type truck, which the police called it Our Mother, but it was usually referred to, even by the media, as just plain Mother.

Mother was originally painted the same light blue as the zone cars used as a Mobile Command Post, but was painted gray in 1979 when its role changed to that of a Rescue Vehicle.

In 1997, the Cleveland Police Department (CPD) replaced Mother with a newer vehicle, a Dragoon/ Patroller (Mother II) manufactured at the time by AV Technologies of General Dynamics Land Systems but now manufactured by General Dynamics in Spain. Over the years, Mother and Mother II have proven they save lives and are accepted by the public.

UFF Operation – Cleveland PD employed Mother hundreds of times, including during the 1984 arrests of members of the United Freedom Front (UFF) at a house on West 22nd Street. The UFF, a sophisticated left wing terrorist organization, was the FBI’s most wanted

With the increase in violent crimes against the public and Delray Beach (FL) Police Department officers, they felt that it will only be a matter of time before they would need a vehicle like this. Delray Beach Police Department, FL, SWAT.

domestic terror group. While currently inactive, for more than 10 years it terrorized the East Coast in bombings, bank robberies, and targeted shootings of law enforcement officers, including the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper.

In 1984, New Jersey State Police and FBI tracked the UFF to Deerfield, Ohio (outside Ravenna). The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) as well as FBI SWAT were assigned to make the Deerfield arrests. (In addition to HRT, the FBI also has SWAT teams.) While Pittsburgh FBI SWAT was making the arrests, they requested perimeter assistance from the Cleveland Police Second District. The UFF terrorists were reported armed with explosives and heavy weapons. A quick-thinking 2nd District Captain requested CPD’s SWAT, who responded with their entire unit including Mother. The presence of Mother literally changed the entire game plan.

FBI HRT and Cleveland FBI SWAT took down and arrested the head UFF suspect, and the West 22nd Street operation followed immediately. CPD SWAT “fronted” Mother, ordering all occupants in the UFF house to “come out with their hands up - no weapons.” There was a long pause without any response. Then the UFF women and children came out and were taken into custody.

More loudspeaker commands ordered the UFF males to surrender.

No response. It was an extremely tense situation. Then the two UFF males, the shooters of the New Jersey State Trooper, finally emerged - hands up and empty - and were immediately arrested. CPD SWAT later learned the males had fully intended and planned to “shoot it out.” That is, until they saw Mother and realized resistance would be completely useless. Inside the West 22nd Street house, large quantities of explosives and heavy-caliber

weapons, including scoped rifles, were found strategically positioned.

Speaking at a conference years later, the lead New Jersey State Police detective on the UFF investigation said: “I don’t know what kind of crime problems Cleveland has, but they brought out this “tank,” and the UFF surrendered to the “tank” (Mother).”

Current Use of ARVs

SWAT ARVs are primarily used in response to active shooters, barricaded bad guys, rescue of downed police officers and civilians, hostage situations, area searches, raids, and riot and crowd control. In these situations, the psychological impact of the police and their ARVs will usually stop disruptive people or criminals.

Police armored rescue vehicles allow law enforcement agencies to shield their crew and tactical team members -- such as SWAT -- when they are under gunfire. As part of the team, these vehicles can aid in the rescue and evacuation of wounded and injured persons while offering tactical teams protection and mobility so they can change direction and react swiftly. Acting as both shield and sword, ARVs also have the ability to help pin down and demoralize bad guys. It is estimated that there are more than 5,400 police armored rescue vehicles in America. The point is that police ARVs have been used for counterterrorism for many years, and now that so many SWAT teams have them, it’s logical they will be employed as an integral part of the fight against any/all terror-related incidents, both domestic and international. While ARV strategies and tactics need to adapt to changing circumstances, they will essentially be variations of what already works. The basic police AV (armored vehicles) types are (1) Custom Built, (2) Military Surplus, and (3) Commercial Conversions.

Custom Built: Keeping in mind that Cleveland’s Mother was built over 30 years ago, its problems included having its armor zipped by a round from a 30-06 rifle, air conditioning leaks, top heaviness, short brake life, and doors that fell open unless they were locked.

The newer Mother II, as well as today’s custom, made-to-order vehicles, do not have these problems. Military Surplus: When buying military surplus, some police departments have had to gut the AVs and rebuild them. When this is done, the agency must have sev-

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eral officers or mechanics who know how to work on the vehicles and do any needed rebuilding and repairs, as well as people who can handle them on the road and in tactical situations.

Some agencies, such as the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, have had military surplus tracked vehicles in their inventory, but most police ARVs are wheeled 4x4s. Other departments have military AVs beefed up with additional steel armor (not all AV ballistic protection is made of steel); slanted armor is a plus. And, as intimidating as hard-skinned, military surplus AVs look, they might have the drawbacks of poor driver visibility when turning and backing.

Commercial Conversions: Brinks (an armored money escort service) has had a policy requiring their permanently out-of-service AVs to be either destroyed or sold to law enforcement.

Police departments have bought olds ones for a very nominal fee. A new paint job and repairs are needed.

Command & Control.

While logically, ARV command and control should be SWAT’s, some agencies consider SWAT and ARV command and control to be separate entities, and place tight restrictions on when, where, and how ARVs are authorized and deployed. In some cases there are judicial precautions and armored rescue vehicles are mandated by court orders, including when an ARV is allowed to be used for warrant service.

It became an administrative issue when one agency obtained an ARV through a federal grant, with the designation of Armored Command Post.

Predictably, non-SWAT command staff took it over and non-tactical personnel were authorized to operate it. This drastically reduced its tactical role.

When obtaining an ARV, it is recommended that the agency clarify that SWAT is in command and control of it, in line with the agency’s policy and procedures governing SWAT. The armored rescue vehicle should be considered another mastered resource in the SWAT toolbox, the same as counter-snipers, entry teams, and chemical/less-lethal munitions.

This clarification would result in greater command and control, along with better accountability for both the agency and SWAT. Ideally, all ARV crewmembers should become familiarized with and train with the ARV so they know its capabilities, strengths,

and weaknesses. They should also be cross-trained and able to drive it.

Tactical Studies Research is where a SWAT team develops ARV tactical and rescue theories. Team members should learn as much as they can about tactics and SWAT. One way to do this is to talk with other SWAT teams to find out when, where, how, and why they use their ARVs. Training is where the theories evolve into tactics. This training can be conducted by outside sources as well as by an agency’s in-house trainers. It is recommended that team members take advantage of every opportunity to incorporate their armored rescue vehicle into their training.

Experience comes when tactics are tested and theories are validated or disproved. The more call-ups or missions a team responds to in which they deploy their ARV, the more experience they will attain.

Critiques or debriefings are where teams or police agencies decide whether or not to keep or scrap certain tactics. Be sure to critique/debrief after each and every SWAT mission, and apply the lessons learned for the next time. The research-trainingexperience-critique cycle ensures that only the very best, proven-effective tactics become part of a SWAT team’s toolbox. Training transfers to performance.

Finally, keep a watchful eye on events in Middle East battle zones, where armored vehicle tactics are being put to the test and changing daily.

There are numerous military armored vehicle tactics books on the market that contain experiences relevant to police ARV tactics, or can influence the tactics already in place. No one in American law enforcement knows what armor-defeating weapons have been smuggled across our porous borders, especially the one with Mexico. The former Soviet Union put great effort into its operations in Mexico that were directed at the USA during the Cold War years, including border smuggling. Terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda are believed to have smuggled weapons into America, making counterterrorism activities a prime mission of the CBP Border Patrol.

Basic military armored tactics that are still relevant to police include how to recognize armored vehicle ambush sites and counter them, how to operate

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with foot components, and the use of terrain and cover by other armored vehicles with firepower. Concepts that can be useful to modern ARV police tactics are covered in the book Panzer Tactics: German Small-Unit Armor Tactics in World War II, by Wolfgang Schneider. This book, complete with photos, sketches, and diagrams, is just one example of information available.

Rescues and Active Shooters The most important mission for SWAT and ARVs is to rescue downed civilians and police. The simplest yet most effective ARV rescue tactic in an active shooter, rapid deployment situation is to position the vehicle between the victim(s) located in the kill zone and the hostile threat. Using the ARV as a shield, get in, perform the rescue, get out, drop the victims off in a safe location, and repeat as necessary.

Depending on the circumstances, the ARV crew can provide cover fire or launch chemical agents, smoke, etc.

Not all victims are immobile, and may be able to assist in their own rescue; others will need to be lifted physically into the ARV for evacuation. Victims might also be able to provide valuable intelligence.

High-Risk ARV Raid/Search Tactics ARVs are ideally suited to protect officers conducting high-risk warrant services. This is especially true when approaching target locations guarded by armed bad guys or lookouts. There have been a number of instances where raid teams have been fired upon while approaching the target. An ARV is capable of withstanding such gunfire and protecting the raid team inside it, as well as covering and rescuing officers who find themselves pinned down or under fire.

In addition, some ARVs are equipped with rams designed to breach fortified doors and overcome obstacles such as fences, gates, and barricades.

Some ARVs are equipped with ladders or hydraulic ramps designed for upper level entries (second and third floors, for example), a distinct advantage for the raid team. ARV PA systems can supplement the required “Police with a search warrant - demand entry” announcement.

Area Searches This type of search is tailor-made for armored rescue vehicles, depending on the nature of the terrain. ARVs provide the safety of rolling cover, and are often able to traverse larger areas faster and more effectively than officers on foot. This is especially true in areas of high grass or bushes.

And depending on the ARVs mechanical capabilities, its four wheel drive and high clearance allows it to go through obstacles that would deter foot officers.

If the ARV is equipped with night vision and/or thermal imaging, the suspect’s location can be quickly identified. A hidden bad guy might panic upon seeing a 12-ton ARV crashing through the brush and literally be flushed into the open.

actual or potential armed threat to the safety of innocent civilians and also to police. They may be active shooters, or they may be in deep hiding, hoping the police will go away.

Depending on the location or terrain, suspects may be difficult to contain, and location containment -- whether it is a vehicle, building, or an open area -- is the cardinal rule of SWAT tactics. If a situation cannot be contained, the tactics become extremely challenging. This is especially true for bad guy vehicles, which can become mobile at any time. ARVs can take on the role of blockers.

LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department SWAT have both successfully formed vehicle barricades through the use of multiple ARVs, boxing in the bad guy’s vehicle.

Experience has shown that fronting the ARV usually only temporarily heightens tensions; then things settle back down again.

This is true for both hostage and barricade situations. In fact, the vehicle often becomes part of the background and literally fades from prominence -- until it goes on the offensive.

ARV tactics in hostage situations are similar to those of barricaded suspects, but with additional considerations. The most notable consideration is if and when to

In hostage and barricade situations, the ARV’s mere presence can act as a distraction to the suspect(s), and may be effective in diverting their attention away from other tactics SWAT might be deploying.

Barricaded Suspects Hostage Situations This is possibly the most common ARV situation. Depending on agency policy and SWAT team tactics, the vehicles are either fronted immediately or held in reserve until needed.

Barricaded suspects can pose an

front the vehicle. Unlike barricaded suspect situations where only the suspect is involved, hostage situations involve a threat to innocent victims. Consequently, the command element needs to weigh the pros and cons of fronting the vehicle, and under what circumstances to do so. Depending on the circumstances, they may opt to keep the ARV hidden nearby and at the ready for rapid response.

Riots/Rowdy Crowd Control ARVs are extremely effective in riot and rowdy crowd situations, offering officers protection from assault, thrown objects, and gunfire. Police in Europe have been using ARVs to quell riots for many years. However, unlike our European counterparts, American ARVs are not supported by water cannon trucks.

The psychological advantage of ARVs in crowd/riot situations cannot be underestimated. A good example is the tactical team that deployed its vehicle against a large crowd of rioters throwing rocks and bottles at police.

Police ARVs are integral to SWAT, with SWAT and ARVs playing a pivotal role in counter terrorism responses. The reality is that since 9/11 and the advent of Homeland Security, US law enforcement has steadily upgraded nationwide counterterrorism capabilities, including/especially SWAT and ARVs. American police have come a very long way with ARVs since pre-9/11 days.

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Tactical Sniper Rifles An Overview The Stalker System

By Christopher Drake

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ACKGROUND The Drake Associates’ STALKER Sniper Weapon Systems have been developed from a blend of modern rifle technology. From a Historical prospective, the Drake Associates STALKER .300WM Program was developed after they analyzed what the military end user was asking for in the field from real operational sniper end users.

In 2008 a meeting was held by US SOCOM at McDill AFB, Tampa Florida to discuss the possibilities of a modular or extended range sniper weapon system with industry input.

The US SOCOM PSR Solicitation was born at this time. Drake Associates had worked on the US SOCOM PSR Solicitation for the SOCOM Community and submitted the PGM .338LM PSR Sniper Weapon System through our systems integrator ATK, Lake City. Other companies such as Remington submitted a system called the MSR rifle which is a three barreled .308, .300WM and .338LM Sniper weapon system that uses a unique folding chassis system. Other major gun manufactures included SAKO with the TRG42, FNH USA with the Ballista rifle, Barrett with the MRAD and this list goes on but the focus was to incorporate a longer range or extended range capability over the existing M700 Remington (M24) and more accurate than the Barret M107 50cal .

During the PSR solicitation a very unique thing happened for the US Military – a second solicitation was issued calling for an upgrade of the US military’s M24 .308 Sniper Weapon System as there was a current and real wartime need for a long range system that would not need a lengthy evaluation process. With the two conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan the US Military needed a long range sniper weapon system that used a military cartridge already fielded. There was also a special demand for a long range sniper weapon system that could add more distance than the standard .308 Winchester. The US military had been using the .308W M118LR that was effective to about 1000 meters. Behind the scenes, there was a focus on a .300WM system, and since the US Navy Crane had in place a MK13 .300WM Sniper Weapon System with type classified .300WM ammunition, a transition was inevitable.

The US Army that had provided M24 Sniper Weapon Systems since the late 1980’s now had the vehicle to make an argument to the powers to be that an update would be the most cost effective and fast track solution. The US Army had planned ahead when it originally purchased the M24 in the late 1980’s and decided that a Remington M24 should be equipped with a long action allowing for a upgrade in the future. It took a number years, but with lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan it was clear that the modern day sniper needed additional ballistics with his rifle. Thus the concept of the M24E1 was born. The US Army contracted with Remington for the XM2010 , now type classified as the M24E1.

During the PSR Solicitation and XM2010/M24E1 projects the gun manufacturers shifted from traditional Kevlar / composite butt stock systems with either bedding blocks or traditional bedding to a new concept of modularity. The major gun manufacturer’s

With the two conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan the US Military needed a long range sniper weapon system that used a military cartridge already fielded. There was also a special demand for a long range sniper weapon system that could add more distance than the standard .308 Winchester. The US military had been using the .308W M118LR that was effective to about 1000 meters.

involved in the PSR solicitation and the M24 upgrade solicitations submitted their weapon systems with folding chassis that incorporated adjustment devices to fit the sniper as well as many other optimized features that included, detachable magazine feeding, long top picitinny MOA rails to keep day optics in line with PVS, MUNS or thermal devices (FLIR H.I.S.S.). Other features included side picitinny rails for use with illumination lights and laser devices (both IR and visible) such as the PEQ15 and additional design options including accessory mounting points on picitinny rails for QD bipods, rear monopod, tubular barrel protective shrouds, high efficiency muzzle breaks, scope mounts to optimize the optic with a red dot reflex sight for close in shooting and many other options to enhance the sniper’s effectiveness.

STALKER DEVELOPMENT Drake Associates after examining the products that were submitted in both solicitations wanted to make a commercially available sniper weapon system that exceeded the stringent requirements of the US Military on both the M24E1 program and the PSR Solicitation. Drake Associates went back to our contacts of end users in the field, current US Military Snipers from all branches of the services and requested their input. It was important to understand what the end user liked and what as they would say “absolutely sucks” and incorporate these “real world” product improvement in a new weapon and chassis system.

The first step was for Drake to go back to CADEX , the original Canadian design team , that had done chassis design work on the M24E1 program, and request that a more advanced chassis system be developed for another rifle action called the RANGEMASTER PRECISION ARMS, 4 LUG QUADLITE REPEATER action from the UK. Drake Associates then developed a complete compact sniper weapon system that utilized a shorter 16.5” barrel and an advanced CADEX Strike Dual 30 chassis. This was the birth of the STALKER GEN 2 RPA that would successfully engage targets to 1000 meters in .308.cal. The weapon was so compact that it met the NON NFA mini-

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After examining the products that were submitted in both solicitations wanted to make a commercially available sniper weapon system that exceeded the stringent requirements of the US Military on both the M24E1 program and the PSR Solicitation.

Drake Associates went back to our contacts of end users in the field, current US Military Snipers from all branches of the services and requested their input.

It was important to understand what the end user liked and what as they would say “absolutely sucks ” and incorporate these “ real world” product improvement in a new weapon and chassis system.

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mum standards of longer than 26” overall length when folded, but what made this distinctive was that the weapon was more compact than the US Military standard configuration M4A3 with a 14.5” barrel in the collapsed stock configuration. This compact design gained a lot of attention with US Law Enforcement agencies (State and Federal) who appreciated the compact size for urban deployment. This weapon has been in production both at the Rangemaster Precision Arms factory in the UK as well as the Drake Associates Manufacturing facility in NY since 2011 in .308 and similar bolt faced calibers.

Domestically US Military and Law Enforcement Snipers, as we all know, are traditionalists. Getting a group of TYPE A personalities to deviate from a mainstay weapon such as the Remington 700 is quite difficult.

With this in mind Drake Associates began developing an upgraded and advanced concept of the M24E1 .300WM Sniper Weapon System to compliment the STALKER GEN 2 RPA but a US variant called the STALKER .300WM and STALKER .308, as a spiral development project.

In addition Drake looked at barrel design on these new rifles and incorporated a product improvement program (PIP) that would make the weapon perform better than the current M24E1 in service weapon systems. The STALKER would optimize the barrel and chassis design and improve and advance the current sniper weapon system that is in use today.

STALKER / CHASSIS DEVELOPMENT The Drake Associates STALKER .308 and .300WM features the CADEX Strike Dual Chassis system. During the design of the STRIKE DUAL chassis system, CADEX initially went back to the drawing board from their original chassis used by the US Military on the M24E program and identified several ways to make the system even better, which resulted in the Strike Dual Series Chassis .

The original CADEX generation 1 designed chassis that was developed for the M24E / XM2010, RACS system, and MSR programs delivered by Remington for the military end-user is very different from the

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the option to extend or shorten the overall length of barrel and team this upgraded barrel with a correctly accurized blue printed / trued 700 action.

A new and upgraded CADEX Strike Dual series chassis system that we are using on our STALKER Sniper Weapon Systems. The upgraded CADEX Strike Dual Chassis and Sniper Weapon System has many major design improvements over the original Gen M24E1/ XM2010 chassis that include: 1. A lower bottom metal / magazine well that has the ability to be removed without the need to un-bed the complete barreled action from the chassis when working on the weapon trigger for maintenance. This eliminates the need to re-zero after trigger or mag well maintenance work. (Photo A) 2. Steel bedding system (steel chassis to steel action components). This eliminates steel to aluminum incompatibility that was present in the Gen 1 design.

3. Simple, hand quick adjustments on LOP, cheek weld and butt plate that require no tools.

4. Reinforced / Stronger fore-end attachment assembly than previous gen 1 design currently used by the US Military.

5. Ability to change mag well for use with different AICS pattern magazines B if a caliber change was made or if the end user wanted to use a different barreled action than the one originally intended for the chassis.

BARREL TECHNOLOGY After being heavily involved in the US SOCOM PSR solicitation with the PGM .338LM PSR and working hand in hand with ammunition manufacturers and ballistics technicians we were able to identity who in industry makes extremely reputable and superior high quality barrels. For our STALKER Sniper Weapon Systems, Drake Associates chose to go with Satern Manufacturing, who is very well known in the F class and competition community. Satern additionally builds barrels for premier competition teams and US Military competition teams as well. All threads, crown and muzzle thread work have been coordinated by Satern manufacturer to make sure that there are no additional inconstancies and all components align correctly and concentrically for use with suppressors.

The barrel on the STALKER system was optimized for long range performance based upon customers load / projectile while retaining the larger style M24E tactical profile, with

Satern additionally builds barrels for premier competition teams and US Military competition teams as well. All threads, crown and muzzle thread work have been coordinated by Satern manufacturer to make sure that there are no additional inconstancies and all components align correctly and concentrically for use with suppressors.

For its customers, Drake has the ability to build a barrel in this profile and prescribe the corresponding twist rate based upon the user’s requirements. These rifles are custom designed and not a stamped out “cookie cutter” product. Drake works closely with the customer to build to the exact requirements.

As an example of barrel performance, here is a photo (B) that was sent to Drake by a very recently retired US Army Sniper School Instructor from Ft Benning. He was shooting the STALKER 308 using the same barrel profile as used on the .300WM (Stalker 700/.308 Rem 700 Short Action / M40 upgrade) Photo shown is a 100m zero 5rd group.

STALKER PERFORMANCE An independent gun writer for a major weapons publication recently evaluated the STALKER 300 and was able to provide and publish impressive performance results with the STALKER 300. When shooting Federal Gold Medal Match 190’s a muzzle velocity of 2890 was achieved and typical grouping was at .5 MOA, MK248 mod 1 220 Gr ammunition was yielding a muzzle velocity of 2750 and grouping at .6 MOA. and Hornady Match 174 Gr yielded a muzzle velocity of 2790 and a grouping of .3 MOA. Typically in the field professionally trained snipers are seeing groups of sub-half MOA or better with commercially available 190Gr .300WM. It is not uncommon for grouping to lay round over round creating a “clover leaf” on the MOA pastie.

Other reports of the STALKER .308 include grouping of .21 to .28 MOA When engaging targets at distance and extended ranges, the end user will find the STALKER 308 (1000m system) and the STALKER 300WM (1300m+ system) will meet the end user performance requirements consistently. As a result snipers in the field having seen the advantages of the STALKER over their current system, they

have been asking Drake to build and supply custom competition weapons with optimized barrel and performance features.. The majority of Drake’s customers want a system as close to the fielded system in service with the military so if additional work is requested they have the ability to mod up the existing kit per the customer’s specification.

OPTIONS Optional accessories on both systems are Jewell Trigger®, Optional Barrel Lengths 16.5 to 26 inch and high performance fluting. A custom bolt handle knob may be installed; however this is an option at customer’s request. (You can see the bolt handle conversion in the photo of the sniper with the tan chassis system).

$4400 USD each (MSRP is $5118), plus taxes, S&H. Considering that a copy of the M24E on the current civilian market from Remington Defense is selling for $26,000, the benefits of the advanced design of the STALKER 308 and STALKER 300 at the attractive price point of $4400 is quite a significant savings to the end user without any sacrifice in performance.

STALKER PRODUCT LINE The Drake Associates STALKER 308 and STALKER 300 will include the following kit and components: Drake Associates Technical Spec. STALKER .308 - Weapon Features an accurized and trued NEW Remington 700® Short Action in .308W , enlarge to 8-40 torx screw action top holes for mounting top rail, X-Mark Pro® trigger , 20 MOA rail, full rail kit 3,6,9 o’clock position, CADEX® Strike Dual 30 folding chassis system in either Black, Tan/ Flat Dark Earth or Green, Satern Mfg. Stainless Steel M24E Heavy tactical barrel profile optimized for 168-175.gr match chamber with AAC® Blackout 51T muzzle break, 5/8x24 muzzle threads, target crown and coated to match action. Sniper Deployment Drag Bag kit with custom embroidery, additional padding and pockets, M.O.L.L.E. strapping system, backpack straps for field.

All the above components are all included as standard.

Drake Associates Technical Spec.

STALKER .300WM - Weapon Features an accurized and trued NEW Remington 700® Long Action in .300WM , enlarge to 8-40 torx screw action top holes for mounting top rail, X-Mark Pro® trigger , 20 MOA rail, full rail kit 3,6,9 o’clock position, CADEX® Strike Dual 33 series (for .300WM folding chassis system, CADEX® Strike Dual 33 series, Stainless Steel M24E Heavy tactical barrel profile optimized for 190 to 220gr match chamber with AAC® Blackout 51T muzzle break, 5/8x24 muzzle threads, target crown and coated to match action. Deployment Drag Bag kit with custom embroidery, additional padding and pockets, M.O.L.L.E. strapping system, backpack straps for field. All the above components are all included as standard.

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Focused on presenting an attractive price point that would incorporate the most advanced designs in both chassis and barrel technology but would be commercially available and affordable for US Military, US Law Enforcement and US Civilian tactical and long range competitive shooting communities.

STALKER PRICING After being involved in the US SOCOM PSR, CERSR (Configurable Extended range Sniper Rifle Solicitation– US Army Picitinny Arsenal NJ) Solicitation and the UPGRADE M24E1 Solicitation, Drake Associates focused on presenting an attractive price point that would incorporate the most advanced designs in both chassis and barrel technology but would be commercially available and affordable for US Military, US Law Enforcement and US Civilian tactical and long range competitive shooting communities.

Currently Drake Associates offers the STALKER .308 or STALKER .300WM at a special , limited time price of

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You may refer to the Drake Associates website for additional details on STALKER Sniper Weapon Systems for the US Civilian, US Law Enforcement or US Military Customer. www.drakeassociates.us STALKER Sniper Weapon systems can also be built with the following actions- Remington 700 short and long, Stiller MK13 / TAC300, McMillan G30 .338LM and the McMillan MK15 / TAC50 action in both .416 Barrett and .50 BMG calibers. www.DRAKEASSOCIATES.us

CONTACT Chris Drake, cdrake@drakeassociates.us, 631 749 1100, www.drakeassociates.us , Editors note other referenced manufacturers, products and referenced in this article are trademarked by their respective companies.

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Secure Driver:

Using Reference Points To Gain More Precision

By Sean McLaine

W

hen I began driving, everybody had hood ornaments and nobody had cell phones. The rule of thumb was, when the hood ornament touched the curb line, the tires would soon do the same.

With car design these days, reference points are more important than ever. In my ’95 full size sedan I can position the car in the second lane, look to the right and see where the curb meets the road from front to back. When I back into a spot, my visibility is just as good as when I look out the windshield.

My last two cars that I have used for daily driving have more restrictive views. Cars are shorter, and to make space, trunks (and correspondingly) door tops are higher. This means that the portion of the pavement you can see moves further away from the car. In

54

addition, smaller windows mean that there is a smaller perimeter. The corresponding reduction in window seal results in less wind noise in the cabin. Doorposts are closer to the driver’s head interfering with the sight line when glancing over the shoulder to check the blind spot to the left. The roof support at the back window is now highly angled and wide. Advances in safety mean new cars have larger headrests and head rests for the rear seats. When combined, the end result is poor visibility and reduced awareness of your surroundings.

What can we do to ensure that we, as professional drivers, continue to stay aware of our surroundings on the road and in parking lots?

How can we consistently put the car where we want to in tight spots?

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We no longer have hood ornaments, but you can still use the centerline of the hood to judge your distance from the right side of the road. When you are in your travel lane, use the hood again.

When the lane mark on the right side passes through the point on the hood ¼ in from the right side of the car, you are in a good position.

When passing on the left of another car, use your rearview mirror to let you know if you are clear.

When you see both of the headlights it is safe to move back into the lane.

As a professional driver, you understand the tactical advantage of backing in to a spot EVERY TIME you park. As you are pulling up, ensure the area where you will be backing is clear and safe. When backing up it is often hard to see the space. Before beginning to park, check to make sure the space is clear of obstructions and pedestrians. Look to see if the spaces are directly across from each other in the lot. If so, you can look out the windshield. If you are in

line with the space in front of you, then you can be confident you are within your lines. Use the rear passenger door to know when you are properly in your spot. When the line marking the back of the space is centered in the bottom of the window your car should be in the correct position. This will come in handy when you have full back seat. If there are cars next to you and you cannot see the lines, note the position of the car parked next to you and use that to mark your position.

If you must park head-in, the passenger door makes for a good reference point. Depending on the model, you may use the side view mirror, or the inside door handle. Once you are familiar with these marks, you can put the bumpers an inch from the line every time you park. Be flexible when exiting the spot. If you can move forward because the space in front of you is empty, be careful and check for cars that may be pulling into that space. When backing out of a spot, check to see if there are any open spaces across from you. If you want to go left, don’t commit yourself to always turning the wheel to the right, shifting and then turning left.

This may lead to multiple shifts and tight turns.

If you have an empty space nearby, back into a space across from you regardless of what side of your car it is on. This will allow you to have more room to move forward and exit the space.

A majority of your time is spent going from

point A to point B. However, many of the people you will be driving often attend social gatherings and sporting events. When driving in these conditions, the dangers facing you are pedestrians and complacency. Cell phones and alcohol come into play, and walking in groups may cause people to focus more on conversation than the dangers of traffic.

A Stony Brook University study reports that cell phone use by pedestrians “leads to increased cognitive distraction, reduced situation awareness and an increase in unsafe behavior.�

Participants in the study who used a cell phone to text while walking veered off course by 60%.

Another study by the University Of Alabama Academy Of Pediatrics in 2009 found that young pedestrians who text or talk on cell phones while walking on or near a street are 40% more likely to get hit by a vehicle. They are much less attentive to traffic and the
 younger the children are, the higher the risk of being hit. The trends with young adults walking and using cell phones and being involved in an accident appear to be similar to those of young children.

When driving in vacation areas, both you and other drivers in the area may be unfamiliar with local roads. The dangers of pedestrians are still present, but you must also be careful for drivers changing their mind at intersections and driveways. If you find that you missed your turn, be

careful not to make sudden or dangerous stops or turns in an attempt to make the turn.

The reduced visibility in today’s cars forces us to take a more active role in surveying our surroundings. It is important to see what is on the ground before you move the car into position.

When in motion, it is imperative that you know where surrounding traffic is before an evasive maneuver becomes necessary. By constantly checking your mirrors and scanning the roadway, you will be prepared to maneuver the car if the need arises.

About the Author Sean McLaine attended the University of Scranton, obtaining his Bachelors in Criminal Justice in 1998. He has served as a Police Officer in Ridgefield, CT and now is working for the New York City Police Department.

While working as a motorcycle officer on the Highway Patrol, Sean received extensive training in high speed Emergency Vehicle Operations. In addition to his police related driver training, he also acquired driving experience at the Skip Barber Race School, where he participated in the Skip Barber Race Series. He currently serves as a Sergeant in the 79th Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Sean has been working with ADSI since 2004.

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Counter Terrorism Bookshelf

By Dr. Joshua Sinai

Anat Berko

The Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers

(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 212 pages, $42.00.

On Nov. 20, 2012 toward the conclusion of the Hamas-Israel war, an Israeli Arab reportedly placed a bomb under a seat in a bus in Tel Aviv that was detonated by a remote-control cellphone. His West Bank cell had set off the bomb after he had gotten off the bus and later escaped to his Arab village.

Twenty-eight Israeli passengers and passers-by were injured in the explosion. The bomber, it turns out, was part of a Palestinian terrorist cell that was rounded up quickly and arrested by the Israeli security service. Officials later learned the bomber was a West Bank Palestinian who had gained Israeli citizenship by marrying an Israeli Arab woman and that he and the other members of the cell hailed from the same West Bank town.

56

What would motivate a married Palestinian man to carry out a terrorist attack against Israel, his newly adopted country? Who were his cell’s recruiters, organizers and dispatchers? And, most important, what is the nature of Palestinian society that would encourage its citizens to conduct terrorist attacks against a much more powerful Israeli state when such operations exploit those who are in many ways the weakest members of society? Children of Palestinian leaders, for example, are never asked to carry out such attacks.

These questions are addressed in Anat Berko’s highly insightful “The Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers.” Although Ms. Berko’s book focuses on the motivations of Palestinian suicide bombers, especially women and children — unlike the Tel Aviv bomber, who was an adult male who escaped from the scene of his attack — all of these operatives are recruited and dispatched on their missions by similar types of male organizers.

The author, whom I’ve known for several years, is a retired lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army and an academic criminologist. She has spent many years interviewing Palestinian security prisoners at their Israeli jails, including the operatives (whose suicide missions failed) and their dispatchers. Fluent in Arabic and Arab culture,

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she was able to speak intimately with the prisoners and gain their trust. Their identities are disguised to elicit the most candid observations and to protect them. This will frustrate those who would like to follow up on their case histories, but readers nevertheless will benefit from the wealth of personal, cultural and operational details revealed by such firsthand field work.

This book extends the examination of Palestinian suicide terrorism, which was the subject of Ms. Berko’s earlier book, “The Path to Paradise.” In this book she focuses on Palestinian women and children, two groups that are especially exploited in patriarchal Palestinian society. Female Palestinian terrorists, in particular, are simultaneously important and unimportant in their society. As the author writes, a Palestinian woman’s “social duties and expectations are narrow and well defined.

Her first duty is to marry and bear children.

A woman who carries out a suicide bombing attack is perceived as having sinned, especially in a society in which the individual is unimportant as compared with the collective.”

Such women are considered “sinful” because a “woman who deals with terrorism is already perceived as being in the company of men,” thereby “having violated the codes of behavior and modesty expected by the traditional Muslim society.”

In another distinction between male and female operatives, the author adds that such “women do not participate in terrorism following a career in terrorism, or criminal activities but usually carry out just one attack.” In following this pattern, they differ from their male counterparts, who tend to be recidivists who “are often in and out of jail [for such activities] but will end up serving many life sentences.”

As a result of their traditional role in Palestinian society, the author points out, the women’s involvement in terrorism ultimately leads to a tragic ending because the expectation “that their status will be upgraded or that their pasts will be overlooked because of involvement in terrorism is a figment of their imagination. The sense of power and freedom they had when they were recruited and the artificial ‘respect’ they thought they had gained evaporated along with the feeling that they were unique.”

The same fate awaits Palestinian children who are dispatched on terrorist operations, such as “Hassan” (not his real name), a 10th-grader who was instructed by older terrorist operatives to recruit two of his schoolmates, one of whom was his cousin, as suicide bombers. Hassan, the author thinks, was selected because he had come from a dysfunctional family and had been indoctrinated in the Palestinian educational system to “hate Israel” and desire “martyrdom.”

While the older terrorist operatives convince such children that their lives will improve if they carry out terrorist acts, many of them end up in Israeli jails as security prisoners, with no hope for better lives even once they are released from prison.

In the book’s conclusion, the author discusses the impact of modernization on the role of women in the largely traditional Palestinian society. It is perceived as dangerous because the older generation feels it is losing control over women, who increasingly are being exposed to other ways of life through satellite television, the Internet and cellphones. For the light it sheds on Palestinian society and how its most vulnerable are exploited, “The Smarter Bomb” is highly recommended. A peaceful accommodation between Palestinians and Israelis will not move forward as long as large swaths of Palestinian society are manipulated and directed toward violence. [This review originally appeared in “The Washington Times” on November 19, 2012. Reprinted by permission] Paul Cruickshank, editor

Al Qaeda [Five Volumes] (New York: Routledge, 2012), 2304 pages, $1,400.00.

Compiled by Paul Cruickshank, a New Yorkbased investigative journalist and one of CNN’s top correspondents on terrorism, this 5-volume

collection of scholarly research and journalistic articles on al Qaeda is the most comprehensive resource published on the organization and its worldwide affiliates. The author’s 19-page long introduction places the collected articles by some 100 contributors (with some contributing several articles) in their historical and political context. The volumes cover the evolving threat, root causes, aims and strategies, administration and financing, ideology and ideologues, propaganda and Internet activities, radicalization and recruitment, safe havens and training, al Qaeda before and after 9/11, al Qaeda’s affiliates, homegrown and al Qaeda-inspired networks, and backlash and critiques of the organization and its activities.

Recent documents recovered from bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound are also included, revealing new information about the organization’s inner workings. Fully indexed, this is an invaluable one-stop reference resource.

Frances L. Edwards and Daniel C. Goodrich

Introduction to Transportation Security (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2013), 388 pages, $69.95.

This introductory textbook examines the security components of the nation’s inter-connected transportation infrastructure, such as highway, air cargo, freight and passenger rail, transit, and maritime. As demonstrated by the 9/11 attacks in the United States, as well as other attacks on surface transportation assets in Madrid, London, Moscow, and Mumbai, the transportation infrastructure is highly vulnerable to terrorist disruption, with high consequences caused by such attacks on these countries’ people, property, and economy. Other components of transportation security are examined, as well, such as natural hazards – all of which require comprehensive security programs, including provisions to ensure continuity of operations. The textbook also provides highly useful theories of security and emergency management relating to the transportation infrastructure, such as cost-benefit security strategies and effective methods for organizing, testing, and evaluating transportation across modes and professions, as well as a discussion of the government agencies, whether at the national or local levels, involved in emergency management and transportation security.

James J.F. Forest, editor

Intersections of Crime and Terror (New York: Routledge, 2013), 200 pages, $145.00.

A comprehensive examination by leading academic experts of the conducive environments and interactions between international organized criminal and terrorist networks. A majority of such interactions take the form of temporary organizational alliances (what is termed “customer-supplier relationships”) over a specific type of transaction, such as document fraud or smuggling humans, drugs or weapons across a particular border. In the process, the contributors point out, organized criminal and terrorist networks collaborate, share knowledge and learn from each other which serve to expand and upgrade their operational capabilities. The book contains broad conceptual articles, historical analyses, and case studies that highlight different facets of the intersection between crime and terrorism. Understanding the variety of these relationships’ dynamics at the individual, organizational, and contextual levels sheds light on understanding the magnitude and types of security threats posed by the interactions between terrorists and criminal networks and how to respond to such threats more effectively.

Eyal Lewin

Patriotism: Insights from Israel

(Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2011), $109.99, 260 pages.

An insightful examination by an Israeli academic of the personal traits, social and political factors that encourage or discourage patriotism in general, which are then applied to the case study of Israel. Defining patriotism as a sacrifice of one’s personal well-being and resources for the sake of the common good, it synthesizes these personal, social, and political factors into what the author calls a general linear model (GLM), which enables a researcher to test the significance of these factors, whether individually or in combination. The significance of these factors, therefore, cannot be

understood in isolation from one another, as some may be dominant while others may be ineffective in predicting an individual’s likelihood to become “patriotic.” The book is of particular interest to those studying the phenomenon of “homegrown” terrorists as well as traitor spies as it also explains the conditions that might lead such individuals to turn against their countries.

William Nester,

enemy regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq but soon transformed those interventions into protracted and grueling counter-guerrilla wars against the insurgents in those lands.

The author concludes with a series of recommendations which he believes are required to successfully defeat such insurgents’ manyheaded “monsters.”

Hearts and Minds Hydras: Fighting Terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, America, and Beyond Dilemmas and Lessons

(Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2013), 16 pages, $69.95.

(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2012), 320 pages, $29.95.

In this insightfully argued book, the author views insurgencies like the hydra, the manyheaded beast of Greek mythology. The danger of fighting the hydra, the author points out, is that once a government attempts to eliminate its insurgent adversaries through military means, such as killing some of their leaders, is that the collateral damage that might ensue might drive countless others in their supporting population to join the enemy’s ranks, with a government’s tactical victories resulting in strategic defeats in the long-term. In such a way, the author argues, the initially successful offensives

by U.S. forces succeeded in toppling the

J.K. Peterson,

Introduction to Surveillance Studies This introductory textbook examines the discipline of surveillance – a highly useful tool for protecting a country’s or business’s resources and assets. Beginning with an historical perspective on the evolution of surveillance technologies, it then outlines the development of modern-day devices, ranging from radar to the Internet. Also discussed are significant emerging technologies, such as GIS, GPS devices, Google Maps, biometric technology, surveillance cameras, global satellites, miniaturization of devices, and social media. While focusing on these technologies, the author also discusses social issues affecting surveillance, such as the challenge of balancing the need for surveillance and basic rights to freedom and privacy.

Ron Schleifer,

Perspectives of Psychological Operations (PSYOP) in Contemporary Conflicts: Essays in Winning Hearts and Minds

(Brighton, UK and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2011), 194 pages, $59.95.

An insightful examination of the role of psychological operations (PSYOP) in contemporary conflicts, especially those that are terroristbased. PSYOPs are designed to influence the perceptions and attitudes not only of terrorist adversaries, but their supporting constituencies, as well. The author, a prominent Israeli academic, examines other issues, as well, such as the PSYOP techniques adopted by Palestinian terrorist groups against Israel in the form of promoting the Palestinian cause in the West, and Israeli strategies to counter such Palestinian propaganda and radical Islam, within the context of overcoming Israel’s international image problems.

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Tony Schwalm,

The Guerrilla Factory: the Making of Special Forces Officers, the Green Berets

(New York: Free Press, 2012), 304 pages, $26.00.

A gripping, inside account of the U.S. Army’s Green Berets’ special forces. These elite units specialize in asymmetrical warfare, for which they are trained to penetrate and immerse themselves in hostile territory, including building relationships with the local inhabitants. The author, a retired lieutenant colonel, had served as a Green Berets, including as a trainer. Of special interest is the author’s account of the grueling training that their soldier recruits endure to become members of these elite unconventional warfare units.

Jeffrey D. Simon,

Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat

(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2013), 320 pages, $26.00.

This is one of the first comprehensive examinations of the important issue of “lone wolf” terrorism. This has become a significant threat in the United States and Western Europe because of the difficulty organized terrorist groups have in operating in these welldefended societies. Despite these hurdles, however, the author points out that the pervasiveness of the Internet is providing an ideal “breeding ground” for such isolated individuals with terrorist proclivities to be radicalized into “going operational” on behalf of violent extremist causes. It is important to note that these “lone wolves” are not just Islamist extremists, but are found among the spectrum of political and religious ideologies. Although few women have turned to “lone wolf” terrorism, the author points out that this is likely to change in the coming years.

Finally, although it is generally believed that little can be done to identify “lone wolves” prior to their attacks, the author believes that innovative strategies and policies, such as tracking their activities on the Internet, can be developed to prevent this type of terrorism.

About the Reviewer

Dr. Joshua Sinai is a Washington-based consultant and educator on terrorism and counterterrorism studies. His publication “Active Shooter – A Handbook on Prevention” was published by ASIS International in December 2012. He can be reached at: Joshua.sinai@comcast.net.

More Books For Your Bookshelf From Taylor & Francis

The Terrorist Criminal Nexus: An Alliance of International Drug Cartels, Organized Crime, and Terror Groups

By Jennifer L. Hesterman We are currently faced with a new national security challenge that is both vexing and complex.

The once clear lines between the international drug trade, terrorism, organized crime, domestic terror, and Mexican drug cartels are blurring as groups increasingly join forces to further individual interests and goals. The synergistic potential of the alliance between nonstate actors and terrorists is alarming. Factor in a rise in domestic terror and cartel activity spilling over U.S. borders and the resulting impact to America is grave. This text highlights the often disregarded, misunderstood, or obscured criminal/terrorist nexus threat to the U.S. Destroying the myth that such liaisons don’t exist due to differing ideologies, the book provides a thought-provoking and new look at the complexity and phenomena of the criminal/terrorist nexus. Chronicles the rise of domestic groups, including Americans taking up the cause of Jihad with targets inside U.S. borders • Assesses international terrorist groups that most threaten U.S. security: the franchises of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, HAMAS, and FARC • Analyzes why groups would and would not liaise and discusses emergent activity and trends • Presents an analysis of transnational crime, including drugs, human trafficking, money laundering, corruption, kidnapping, and piracy • Examines cartel activity at U.S. borders

Catalog no. K15479 / April 2013 / 333 pp / ISBN: 9781466557611 / $69.95

Antiterrorism and Threat Response: Planning and Implementation Ross Johnson

One of the single greatest challenges to security professionals in the 21st century is terrorism. In the last several years, we have heard a lot about the importance of preparing for terrorist attacks. This book offers a way to prevent terrorist attacks. Providing security managers with a clear and simple methodology to protect their organizations, Antiterrorism and Threat Response uses an adaptation of the U.S. Department of Defense’s antiterrorism fundamentals and applies it to the private sector to protect companies, facilities, and infrastructures. The book’s antiterrorism planning strategies enable security professionals to seize the initiative away from terrorists—setting them off balance and keeping them off balance—thereby disrupting their planning cycle and thwarting attack.

• • • • • • • • • •

The book helps security managers to: Understand the terrorist attack planning cycle Conduct a terrorism threat vulnerability assessment Develop an observation plan and the corresponding verification plan Understand how surveillance detection works Learn how pattern analysis wheels can be used to find weaknesses in security operations Appreciate the role of random antiterrorism measures and learn how to develop them Establish response plans for a wide variety of contingencies related to terrorist attack Adapt this methodology to maritime operations against piracy, individual protection, and travel security in high-risk environments Work with other security departments, the police, and the public to create infrastructure protection zones that will enhance the detection of suspicious events and reduce the likelihood of terrorist attack

Catalog no. K14932 / February 2013 / 300 pp.

ISBN: 9781466512900 / $79.95

Introduction to Intelligence Studies

Carl J. Jensen, III, David H. McElreath, Melissa Graves Since the attacks of 9/11, the United States Intelligence Community (IC) has undergone an extensive overhaul. Perhaps the greatest of these changes has been the formation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. As a cabinet-level official, the Director oversees the various agencies of the IC and reports directly to the President.

The IC today faces challenges as it never has before; everything from terrorism to pandemics to economic stability has now become an intelligence issue. As a result, the IC is shifting its focus to a world in which tech-savvy domestic and international terrorists, transnational criminal organizations, failing states, and economic instability are now a way of life.

• Provides a working definition of intelligence and a history of intelligence as practiced in the United States • Offers past and recent case examples of intelligence successes, failures, and lessons learned • Covers intelligence writing, military intelligence, the intelligence cycle, and laws governing intelligence Includes the latest developments in Homeland Security as related to Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the intelligence community as a whole • Examines collections, analysis, counterintelligence, and covert operations • Presents emerging threats and challenges Catalog no. K14365 / November 2012 / 374 pp.

ISBN: 9781466500037 / $79.95

Among Enemies:

View of the Renault headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris January 11, 2011. French carmaker Renault suspended three executives suspected of leaking information on its electric vehicle programme in an industrial espionage scandal with China. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen

Counter-Espionage For The Business Traveler

By Luke Bencie

E

spionage is nothing new. Sun Tzu, the author of the military treatise The Art of War, was not the first even 500 years before the Common Era to decry its significance.

Yet while the profession remains familiar, we ignore changes to the battlefield at our peril. Gone are the days when Soviet spies infiltrated the Central Intelligence Agency like some sort of real life Tom Clancy novel. Today there are more Russian operatives in Washington than in any point in history, but much fewer are spying on the American government.

What I am talking about is the explosion of economic and industrial espionage since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Countries and companies all over the globe are looking for an easy way to succeed in the new war for financial dominance, and often spying can be a cost-effective way to out-distance the competition. And you may be surprised to hear that some of the biggest aggressors are our closest allies! Of the nearly 200 UN recognized countries, at least half invest heavily in obtaining U.S. technologies. It is confirmed that 57 states are even engaging in undercover operations directed not against national targets, but American firms like yours. In my field for example, defense, foreign governments practice only 22% of total espionage, while corporations conduct nearly two thirds of all global intelligence gathering.

Chief Financial Officers have begun incorporating network security into their daily operations, and millions of business travelers leave the United States every year only to be spied upon and stolen from without them ever knowing. In my new book, I outline how you can face the startling statistics above and secure the information that matters most to you and your company. I can’t promise to turn you into a CIA officer, but I can help train you to think like one.

What follows is an excerpt from the new book, Among Enemies: Counter-Espionage for the Business Traveler (from Mountain Lake Press). Stay diligent and safe travels!

Yet unlike Jack Ryan’s intrepid fortitude in Tom Clancy’s books, the business world has not been so quick to respond. Only 5% of corporate

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“The most valuable commodity I know of is information.”

– Gordon Gekko, in the movie Wall Street Vol.19, No.1

The Risks of Business Travel in the 21st-Century Global Economy Have you ever wondered why you have to fill out an information card when you check in at an international hotel, or why your passport is photocopied or scanned? You might think you’re providing identity verification, but think again. In many countries, a representative from the “Ministry of the Interior,” or a bureaucratic equivalent, will drop by the desk each night to collect the information, so the local intelligence service can track who is in the country. That service will attempt to identify the individuals that should be considered persons of interest.

In my work, I’ve traveled to more than 120 of the world’s nearly 200 countries and stayed in thousands of places, so I’m familiar with the drill. I once checked into a popular hotel in North Africa. There, I had to forfeit my passport for two days while it was copied, my visa stamps studied, and my travel patterns analyzed. The bellboy trotted off with my luggage into a socalled service elevator. Before he delivered them to my room, half an hour later, someone obviously had opened and searched them. That little detour had set off my mental alarm bells, so I scanned my room with a surveillance-detection device I had purchased at a spy shop in London. The device looks like an automobile’s remote-entry keychain fob. It detected a microphone disguised as a button on the sofa. I didn’t remove or disrupt it, but thereafter I never spoke a word in the room.

Outside the hotel, I spotted an intelligence officer following my every move, but I never let on that I knew I was being surveilled. The agent knew I knew but never let on that he knew I knew. In other words, we both played the game and did our jobs.

“Espionage? Are you kidding?

That’s the stuff of James Bond movies!”

“Steal trade secrets from me?

Ha! I don’t have anything that would interest a spy.”

“Hey, come on, the Cold War is long over.”

“Spies in hotels? Don’t you think you’re acting paranoid?”

These comments were made recently

by American businesspeople waiting for their flights at JFK International Airport. They had been asked what they knew about the theft of billions of dollars worth of information annually from business travelers just like themselves. Although a few expressed interest, none seemed fully aware of the threat – to them personally or to the business intelligence they carried.

If there were no risk or danger, would the FBI be actively fighting economic espionage? C. Frank Figliuzzi, assistant director of the Bureau’s Counterintelligence Division, testified June 28, 2012, before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

The hearing’s subject was “Economic Espionage: A Foreign Intelligence Threat to American Jobs and Homeland Security.”

Figliuzzi made the following points: • “In the FBI’s pending caseload for the current fiscal year, economic-espionage losses to the American economy total more than $13 billion. The health of America’s companies is vital to our economy, and our economy is a matter of national security.”

• “Each year, foreign intelligence services and their collectors become more creative and more sophisticated in their methods to undermine American business and erode the one thing that most provides American business its leading edge: our ability to innovate.”

• The threat is growing more pervasive due in part to “increasing exposure to foreign intelligence services presented by the reality of global business, joint ventures, and the growing international footprint of American firms.”

• There is great risk in losing or compromising important information or intelligence. Essentially, it has always been so.

Over the centuries, couriers for Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Genghis Kahn and other warriors routinely carried documents with news, orders or plans for ongoing wars and battles. If they were spotted, they were usually tracked, attacked and killed; their valuable intelligence taken and used by the enemy.

Think of yourself, the business traveler, as one of those couriers when you carry your company’s valuable

information. The enemy is an espionage operative waiting for the right moment to pounce. Whether physical, electronic or cybernetic, their thefts are usually so sophisticated you don’t even know they are occurring, and this poses the greatest threat of all.

Ever heard of Boeing? How about Archer Daniels Midland? Or, Dow Chemical, DuPont, American Superconductor, Ford, Apple, Lockheed Martin or Google? They represent only the tip of the economic-espionage iceberg, because all have been targeted successfully by operatives.

Losses of this type to U.S. corporations doing business internationally are difficult to track, because they don’t report them formally – and most companies don’t want to admit them – but by my own estimates they run as high as $300 billion a year.

Indeed, sometimes companies don’t even know their proprietary information has been stolen, until it appears in another company’s offering – or as a competitor’s product. In the 21st century, business information can be more valuable than governmental or military information.

Bottom line: As one of the 34,000 U.S. business travelers flying daily to domestic and international meetings, you and your valuable information are very much at risk.

legislation, a counterintelligence officer performs counterintelligence, defined as “information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage or assassinations conducted for or on behalf of foreign governments or elements thereof, foreign organizations or foreign persons or international terrorist activities.”

Let me further clarify: counter-espionage is actually a subset of counterintelligence. Counterintelligence encompasses many facets of the intelligence world, but counter-espionage focuses on one theme: repelling the penetration – or getting inside – by a foreign organization. Because no one is formally called a counter-espionage officer, for this book’s purposes just assume you’re receiving training as a counterintelligence officer.

Two Primary Rules for Business Travelers Conclusion You want to be aware of the risks to yourself and your information when you’re traveling. You want to understand how you can secure and protect your information from misappropriation or theft.

Here’s what you must do: • Rule 1. Assume at all times you are being surveilled by someone who wants your information.

If you do this, and do it consistently, you are taking the first and most important step in protecting your information from those who would take it from you.

• Rule 2. Learn to think and act like a counterintelligence officer.

What exactly is a counterintelligence officer? There are many definitions, depending on whom you ask – there are dozens of definitions in the United States alone, for example. But for the purposes of this book, we will use language from The National Security Act of 1947, the legislation that gave the CIA its power. According to that

As you can see, counter-espionage is not just something left for womanizing spies or government agents anymore. While you may find the task is less glamorous than you’d hoped, the financial (and personal) security that you ensure by following the rules found throughout Among Enemies makes it well worth the effort. Don’t leave your company vulnerable to global predators and take control of your competitive edge by learning to think like a counterintelligence officer.

About the Author Luke Bencie is the Managing Director of Security Management International, LLC, a Washington DC based security-consulting firm. His experience traveling to over 100 countries for the intelligence community and teaching the “Counter-Espionage for Business Travelers” course were the inspiration behind his new book Among Enemies: Counter-Espionage for the Business Traveler, which is available at bookstores everywhere, as well as online. He can be reached at lbencie@smiconsultancy.com

IACSP Q & A

Benjamin Runkle,

The Author of: Wanted Dead Or Alive: Manhunts From Geronimo To Bin Laden

PAKTIA PROVINCE, Afghanistan (Feb. 12, 2002) U.S. Navy SEALs search for al-Qaida and Taliban while conducting a sensitive site exploitation mission in the Jaji Mountains. Navy special operations forces are conducting missions in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 1st Class Tim Turner/Released)

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enjamin Runkle is a former paratrooper and presidential speechwriter with a Harvard PhD and a Bronze Star from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Runkle is the author of “Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts from Geronimo to Bin Laden,” about which the Washington Times noted: In “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” Mr Runkle accomplishes two seemingly contradictory feats. His colorful, fast-paced accounts of each manhunt appeal to those who enjoy a good adventure story, but his keen strategic insight provides ample material for further reflection.” Or, as former Delta Force commander “Dalton Fury” noted: Wanted Dead or Alive is “A tall-boy energy drink for our modern day specops warriors.”

Runkle has worked in the Department of Defense and on the National Security Council. His writing on manhunts and counterterrorism issues has been published in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, Small Wars Journal, and Military History Quarterly, amongst other publications.

Benjamin Runkle was interviewed by Paul Davis, an online columnist and contributing editor to the Journal.

IACSP: I enjoyed your book, “Wanted Dead or Alive.” The book was timely, as we saw the end of a long manhunt for Osama bin Laden this year. To begin, why did you write the book?

Runkle: I had the idea for the book in the spring of 2003 in that rarified air between submitting my doctoral dissertation, which was the history of arms races, and the two months of

waiting for my committee to read it. For the first time in five years I had free time to read.

One of the books I read was Max Boots’ great book “Savage Wars of Peace.” He has a throwaway line in the prologue to it where he describes watching the towers fall on 9/11, watching U.S. troops go after a terrorist in Afghanistan who had attacked America and being very much put in mind of U.S. troops going into Mexico to go after a bandit who had attacked America. In the later chapters he notes the similarities between the hunt for Augusto Sandino, which the U.S. Marines undertook from 1927 to 1932, and the U.S. Army’s pursuit of Filipino insurgent leader Emilio Aguinaldo from 1899 to 1901.

That got me thinking, yes, there are a lot of similarities, but he is almost too narrow in his outlook. We had done missions before that; the hunt for Geronimo into Mexico over almost the same terrain that Per-

shing later searched for Pancho Villa. In the modern age, we had manhunts of Manual Noriega, Pablo Escobar and Mohammed Farah Aideed. They were such great adventure stories that I wanted to learn more. Also, as you look at how many we’ve executed over the last 20 years, how many of these operations we initiated and conducted, that it’s a growing strategic problem. The threats posed to U.S. security by smaller and smaller groups of individuals, or sometimes one charismatic leader. And so it has great policy relevance as well I believe.

IACSP: Can you define what you call strategic manhunts?

Runkle: I define it as the deployment of U.S. military forces either overtly or covertly in the pursuit abroad of a single individual. By that I define as occurring outside the United States. There are some great stories about domestic manhunts,

such as the hunt for James Earl Ray and Eric Rudolph.

Someday someone will write a great history of the Whitey Bulger manhunt, for example.

But these manhunts don’t have strategic consequences.

IACSP: They are law enforcement manhunts.

Runkle: There are other manhunts that do occur abroad but they occur strictly within a law enforcement perspective.

Also, as you look at how many we’ve executed over the last 20 years, how many of these operations we initiated and conducted, that it’s a growing strategic problem. The threats posed to U.S. security by smaller and smaller groups of individuals, or sometimes one charismatic leader.

IACSP: Are strategic manhunts in your view a valid and useful part of counterterrorism?

Runkle: Yes. There is a great debate among academics over the difference between “manhunts” and “decapitations.” A decapitation strategy is where you declare that you are at war or at conflict with a separate organization and you try and take out the whole leadership class, in essence. You’re not killing someone because he is Joe Smith. You’re killing him because he is the new number two in said organization. And if that organization did not exist you would not care about this person. There are academic debates about whether this works. I fall on the side that it is a necessary but likely insufficient tool of counterterrorism. There are three outcomes generally from a manhunt. You have a kill and you achieve your broader strategic objectives.

You capture Geronimo and end the Apache Wars and you capture Noriega and you’re able to promote democracy in Panama and end the threat to American citizens. There are cases where you can capture or kill the individual but fail to achieve your broader strategic goal.

Examples are Pablo Escobar is killed but the drug trade from Columbia does not diminish significantly. Saddam Hussein and al Zarqawi where captured and killed respectively, but that didn’t end the insurgency in Iraq. And finally, there are cases where sometimes you can fail to capture or kill someone but still achieve your broader strategic objective. They never captured Augusto Sandino, but they were able to promote at least a stable and strategic ally in Nicaragua.

I’ve found in doing the research for the book that in pursuing an individual you force them to go to ground and become operationally ineffective as a leader of his organization. Peter Bergen in

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his book “Manhunt” does a good job outlining this and there are in the cases of Pancho Villa and Augusto Sandino, they just can’t pursue their broader strategy of overthrowing the government and the United States if they are on the run. It is not always sufficient because quite often in that leader’ absence someone else will emerge to take up his mantle, either a subordinate, someone in the same organization or even potentially a rival.

Pablo Escobar was killed, but then the focal point of Columbian cocaine export just shifted to the Cali Cartel. Emilo Aguinaldo had been on the run so long in the Philippines that his provincial commanders were essentially where the leadership was coming from in the insurrection. To conclude this point, I think that to be successful you not only have to target the guy, you also have to target the broader organization.

IACSP: This reminds me of Patrick McGoohan’s brilliant 1960s TV series The Prisoner.

We did not learn who “Number One” was until the end of the series, but each week a new “Number Two” was in control of the “village.”

Runkle: I saw The Simpsons’ parody and the remake, but not the original.

IACSP: The remake was awful in my view. Check out The Prisoner on DVD. McGoohan was quite brilliant and way ahead of his time in dealing with intelligence organizations, state secrets, enhanced interrogations, drugs, computers and surveillance. But in response to your point, are there not times when one leader is so terrible or effective that he should be taken out even though he will quickly be replaced? Pablo Escobar is a good example. He was vicious, murderous and threatened the Columbian government. As you noted, the Cali Cartel took over the drug trade, but they were less of a public threat than Escobar.

Runkle: I agree, but I think it is a conditional case-by-case basis. There is great line that I quote in the book. One of the elements of the 82 Airborne are jumping into Panama and a LT who wrote this very obscure book, one of the first first-person memoirs involving Panama, writes about being in the C-130 and about to jump, and they are basically like football players, hitting each other on the shoulders, getting psyched for their combat jump, and said something to the effect that “we all knew that Noriega was someone who deserved to be gotten.” As a former paratrooper I can very much relate to this.

But there are a lot of questionable strategic cases. I think the Joseph Kony case is questionable whether killing or capturing him will do much to end the horrible human tragedy in the various wars of Central Africa. There is always another guerrilla leader looking to exploit trafficking in human misery and chaos there.

There is no doubt that Joseph Kony is an evil person who deserves to face justice, whether in The Hague or the working end of an M-16 or AK-47, so I think you’re right in that regard.

But there are cases where you can actually accidently promote more viscous leaders.

IACSP: Then we should take them out as well.

Runkle: That is part of the broader support network.

IACSP: Imagine if we had taken out Saddam Hussein in that airstrike prior to the Iraq War? How many lives would have been saved?

Runkle: The British went to General Schwarzkopf in 1990 with a proposal, ironically called the “Yamamoto Option.”

They believed they figured out his pattern where his helicopter would fly to visit the troops in Basra during the buildup of Operation Desert Shield. They proposed that they take Saddam out. There are a lot of interesting “what ifs.”

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IACSP: What is the success record for U.S. manhunts?

Runkle: If we exclude Joseph Kony because it is ongoing, I have about eight out of eleven.

IACSP: That is a pretty good record. Your book reads like a thriller. I can see a film being made from every chapter. Can you briefly discuss Geronimo?

Runkle: Geronimo was one of the more interesting ones. Think of The Hunger Games. What would happen if you put the eleven targets of U.S. manhunts onto an island together and they had to fight each other until only one survived?

IACSP: Sounds like a Twilight Zone episode. I’d like to see that. I’ve read that Geronimo was one tough, cruel and viscous man.

Runkle: The Apaches conducted a very brutal kind of war and Geronimo was even more brutal than most. He one of the toughest and most strategically astute of the people we pursued. The Hollywood myth of the old West has sanitized him. In the train ride after he surrendered to the very cruel exile they had to endure, which was strategically effective, he sold his buttons. People wanted his autographs. Although for the next 20 years he was technically a prisoner, he was in demand at Wild West shows.

IACSP: Why didn’t you include the 1967 hunt for Che Guevara in Bolivia?

Runkle: I researched the chapter but the publisher would not give me the space.

IACSP: I see a sequel.

Runkle: The Che Guevara case is important as I say in the conclusion of the book because it is something of a role model for future cases. We put a quarter of the Army into the hunt for

Geronimo and we invaded Panama with 23 thousand troops. I think the day of that type of manhunt is probably passed. The prototype will be much closer to what we did with Che Guevara, where 14 U.S. Green Berets went and trained the 2 nd Bolivian Ranger Battalion and then two CIA officers went down and embedded with those troops to provide intelligence to them. Training indigenous troops and providing intelligence support is much more likely what we will see in the future.

IACSP: The Che Guevara case brings us to question whether it’s better to kill or capture the man we are hunting. I understand that the U.S. wanted Guevara alive but the Bolivians wanted him dead.

Would it have been better for the Bolivians to slap Guevara’s butt in a prison cell?

Runkle: Most military commanders will tell you they would rather capture an individual, because of the possibility of gaining follow-on intelligence to combat the network they lead. Che Guevara is one of the exceptions.

The Bolivian government did not want world uproar over a trial of Guevara so they executed him. Osama bin Laden is an interesting case. Were the U.S. troops sent there with a kill order? I personally don’t have any problem with that. The difficulty of trying him, given the chaos that it would have produced, is almost unimaginable. And with him was such a huge trove of potential intelligence; computers, drives, a hundred thumb drives of information, that basically they got all the same intelligence via the site exploitation that they would have received through interrogation. There

are also cases, like Saddam, where you want to put them on trial as a way to move onto the next chapter.

IACSP: How important will advance technology and mass communications be in future manhunts?

Runkle: I am a bit of technology skeptic. Thank God the SEALs had the helicopters and the assets they did, but it still comes back to human intelligence and getting inside a person’s network and the support of the local population.

IACSP: Who are the heroes in your book?

Runkle:The book is dedicated to U.S. Special Operations forces, the quiet professionals. People whose names we’ll never know that have endured these sacrifices for a hundred

years. But it is amazing that a lot of bad guys are still considered heroes, like Geronimo. Pancho Villa is considered a national hero even though he committed massacres. Sandino was a bit of a nut job. He had no claim to leadership in that country but he is lionized. Che Guevara is the perfect example. He was captured because the Bolivian peasants hated him. They didn’t want anything to do with him.

There is this romantic image of him, but nobody wanted the revolution he was selling.

IACSP: I see a sequel here, what with unpublished chapter on Che Guevara and the death of bin Laden. I’d be interested in reading your sequel.

Runkle: That is certainly a possibility.

IACSP: Thank you for speaking to us.

Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

Vol.19, No.1

“AMU is A trUsted AUthority in the intelligence community.”

Supervisory Special Agent Michael Collett Graduate, School of Security & Global Studies Michael Collett knows the value of career-relevant education and chose AMU based on its reputation in the U.S. Intelligence Community. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Army Special Forces, and California National Guard, Command Sergeant Major Collett embarked on a 20+ year career with the Drug Enforcement Administration. Today, he leads counter narcoterrorism operations and recently received the prestigious American Military University President’s Award.

Learn More at www.amuonline.com/JOC

Art & HumanitiesJournal | Business | Education &| Homeland Management | Public Service & Health Science & Technology | Security & Global Studies of Counterterrorism Security International Vol.19,| No.1