The IACSP’s Counter-Terrorism Journal V19N4

A Look Into Exploding Targets As A Source For Domestic Terror

Keep On Sale Until February 22th, 2014

Dual JSOC Ops Meet With Mixed Success Cyber Attacks: Welcome To The Forever War IACSP Looks Back At The Hunt For Ernesto “Che” Guevara Are The XXII Sochi Olympics Really A Boon For Russia?

The Terrorist Threats Against China And Its Counterterrorism Responses Books: Active Shooters

Winter Issue Vol. 19, No. 4, 2013 Printed in the U.S.A. IACSP.COM

“A marvelous book! ... The most handy, the most accessible ‛how-to’ book to be aware of the threats that we’re facing.”

-- Frank Gaffney, Secure Freedom Radio

“You should consider Among Enemies a must-read if you travel overseas, whether on business or even to gain an understanding of the hidden threats you could face.”

-- William J. Esposito, Former Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

“An indispensable and authoritative companion for every business traveler engaging in overseas business activities.”

-- Dr. Joshua Sinai, The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

How prepared are you to protect your business secrets?

Each business day, some 35,000 executives, scientists, consultants and lawyers pass through the nation’s airports to destinations across the globe. They carry, along with proprietary documents and computer files, the latest in personal electronic gear.

Their goal is to further their interests, improve their bottom line, engage in transactions with foreign partners and maintain their competitive advantage.

On the other side, carefully watching most of those travelers, beginning the moment they arrive at the airport – and often sooner – are uncounted numbers of espionage operatives. These individuals work for foreign intelligence services and economic concerns. They, too, are pursuing a goal: to separate international business travelers from their trade secrets.

About the author Luke Bencie For the past 15 years, Luke Bencie has traveled to more than 100 countries on behalf of the U.S. Government as well as for the private defense industry. He has experienced, first-hand and sometimes painfully, the threat of espionage. He has seen the lengths to which foreign intelligence services and other hostile global competitors will go to steal American business secrets.

www.among-enemies.com Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

Vol.19, No.4

Vol. 19, No. 4 Winter 2013 IACSP Director of Operations Steven J. Fustero Associate Publisher Phil Friedman

Page 28

Senior Editor Nancy Perry

DUAL JSOC Operations:

Contributing Editors Paul Davis Thomas B. Hunter Joshua Sinai

Meet With Mixed Success

by Dr. Thomas B. Hunter

Book Review Editor Jack Plaxe Research Director Gerry Keenan Conference Director John Dew Communications Director Craig O. Thompson

Page 44

Art Director Scott Dube, MAD4ART International

The Hunt For

Psychological CT Advisors Cherie Castellano, MA, CSW, LPC

Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Counterintelligence Advisor Stanley I. White

by Paul Davis

South America Advisor Edward J. Maggio Homeland Security Advisor Col. David Gavigan

Page 6 SITREP Page 8 Cyber Attacks: Welcome To The Forever War, by David Gewirtz Page 10 FBI Report Raises Concern About Exploding Targets, by Joseph J. Kolb Page 12 Are The XXII Sochi Olympics Really A Boon For Russia,

by William La Follette & Kinan Baki Page 16 Ensuring Homeland Security: The FBI’s Hostage Team Rescue, by Dr. Thomas B. Hunter Page 22 The Terrorist Threats Against Russia And Its Counterterrorism Responses,

by Dr. Joshua Sinai Page 24 The Terrorist Threats Against China And Its Counterterrorism Responses,

by Dr. Joshua Sinai Page 28 Dual JSOC Operations Meet With Mixed Success, by Dr. Thomas B. Hunter Page 32 Germany’s BKA Is Active Against Terrorism, by Jim Weiss & Mickey Davis Page 36 Secure Driver: The Art Of Braking, by Anthony Ricci & Sean McLaine Page 38 Border University Brings Students Face-To-Face With HS Issues, by Joseph J. Kolb Page 40 An IACSP Q&A With David G. Majors, by Paul Davis Page 44 The Hunt For The World’s Most Famous Revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara,

by Paul Davis Page 46 New Book: Hezbollah: The Global Footprint Of Lebanon’s Part Of God,

review by Dr. Joshua Sinai Page 48 More Books: Active Shooter Bookshelf, reviews by Dr. Joshua Sinai

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, (571) 216-8205, FAX: (202) 315-3459 . 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.

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Personal Security Advisor Thomas J. Patire 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 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

SITREP

W

orld Trends & Forecasts

The recent mall attack in Kenya heralds a difficult period for Kenya, with the risk of recriminations high, despite President Uhuru Kenyatta’s call for national unity. In Central African Republic violence worsened, religious tension is rising and the humanitarian situation is dire.

Rebel Seleka fighters, who six months ago seized power, have become increasingly fractured and volatile. Seleka violence in the north west has displaced thousands and prompted fierce clashes with loyalists of former president François Bozizé, other rebel groups and local communities.

Khartoum’s decision to lift fuel subsidies prompted widespread violent protests in Sudan’s main cities in last month. National security forces quickly clamped down on the demonstrators, with reports from the doctors’ union suggesting over 200 civilians killed.

Long-awaited legislative elections in Guinea were marred by violent clashes in the run-up to polls. With the results still pending, opposition claims of widespread massive fraud prompted fears that a disputed outcome could trigger

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further violence between supporters of the opposition and President Alpha Condé’s Rassemblement du Peuple de Guinée (RPG).

Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) rebels launched a major assault on Zamboanga City in the southern Philippines island of Mindanao. Around 200 people, mostly rebels, were reported killed in the ensuing fighting with security forces, and over 100,000 were displaced. The attack highlighted the risk that peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front could be derailed by disaffected groups.

Fourth Quarter 2013 TRENDS Deteriorated Situations • Central African Republic, Kenya, Philippines, Sudan Improved Situations • Iran Unchanged Situations • Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Burundi, Cameroon, China (internal), China-Japan, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, DR Congo, Egypt, Eritrea , Georgia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India (nonKashmir), Indonesia, Iraq,

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Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Korean Peninsula, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Myanmar, Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan), Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, North Caucasus (Russia), Pakistan, Rwanda, Senegal, Serbia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe OUTLOOK Conflict Risk Alert • Guinea • Source: CrisisWatch.org

Report A Laser Incident The Growing Terror In cooperation with federal, Threat From Radical state and local law enforcement Women Converts agencies, FAA needs everyone’s help in reporting laser incidents. By Abigail R. Esman If you are the victim of a laser incident or you witness a laser incident, please report it to FAA. Here’s how:

If you’re a member of the public who witnessed an individual aiming a laser at an aircraft, send an e-mail to laserreports@faa. gov and include the following information: • Your name and contact information • Date and time you witnessed the laser incident • Location and description of the incident After the FAA has received your e-mail, FAA staff or the appropriate law enforcement agency may decide to contact you if additional information or clarification is needed. Thank you.

Source: ww.faa.gov/aircraft/ safety/report/laserinfo/

DHS Celebrates The Launch Of HSIN Release What is HSIN? The Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) Release 3 (R3) improves the ability to support law enforcement, emergency managers, and first responders with the tools and resources they need, as the government works together to make our nation safer, secure, and more resilient. For example, in support of security operations for Super Bowl XLVII, more than 500 HSIN users visited the site over 20,000 times to share information related to their mission and facilitate coordination between federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, international and homeland security partners.

To learn more about HSIN, visit our web page at: communicatehttp://www.dhs.gov/ homeland-security-information-network

The Investigative Project has just published an article on the threat from radical women converts around the world. Here’s an excerpt: If the allegations are true, then Irish-born Samantha Lewthwaite, whose husband Germaine Lindsay was among the suicide bombers responsible for the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks in London, is by no means alone among violent women converts to Islam.

L ast May, Michig an -b o rn Muslim convert Nicole Lynn Mansfield became the first American to die fighting with the Syrian rebels opposing the Bashar al-Assad regime.

And in 2005, Belgian convert Muriel Degauque blew herself up in a suicide bombing outside of Baghdad. Other examples include Jamie Paulin-Ramirez and Colleen La Rose, better known as Jihad Jane – American converts convicted in 2010 in connection with a plot to murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks for “insulting Islam” in his drawings of the prophet Mohammed as a dog; and Canadian Amanda Korody, charged with her partner John Stewart Nuttail, with “conspiracy, facilitating a terrorist activity and making an explosive device” in a failed attack on the British Columbia legislature on Canada Day last July.

It should be said up front that while the vast majority of converts to Islam are women (in the UK, officials say women comprise about 75 percent of the 5,000 people who become Muslim every year), radicalization among them is rare, and violent attacks – or plots to commit them – rarer still . But the numbers are growing, For the full article go to: http:// www.investigativeproject. org/4190/the-growing-terrorthreat-from-radical-women

Special Ops Command gain prices or e-mails promoting the sale of merchandise that ends Seeks Prototypes For up being a counterfeit product.

‘Iron Man Suit’ U.S. Special Operations Command wants its operators to be protected with what it informally calls an “Iron Man suit,” named after the fictional superhero.

Last month Socom announced it is seeking proposals for prototypes of the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS. The goal of TALOS is to provide ballistic protection to Special Operations Forces, along with fire-retardant capability, said Michel Fieldson, TALOS lead for Socom.

The Homeland Security Department and firefighters have expressed an interest in this technology as well, he said, and it eventually might become available for other service members.

For more information go to: http://www.defense.gov/news/ newsarticle.aspx?id=120975

Holiday Shopping Tips In advance of the holiday season, the FBI reminds shoppers to beware of cyber criminals and their aggressive and creative ways to steal money and personal information. Scammers use many techniques to fool potential victims including fraudulent auction sales, reshipping merchandise purchased with a stolen credit card, sale of fraudulent or stolen gift cards through auction sites at discounted prices, and phishing e-mails advertising brand name merchandise for bar-

Internet criminals post classified ads or auctions for products they do not have. If you receive an auction product from a merchant or retail store, rather than directly from the auction seller, the item may have been purchased with someone else’s stolen credit card number. Contact the merchant to verify the account used to pay for the item actually belongs to you.

Gift Card Scam The safest way to purchase gift cards is directly from the merchant or authorized retail merchant. If the merchant discovers the card you received from another source or auction was initially obtained fraudulently, the merchant will deactivate the gift card number, and it will not be honored to make purchases.

Thanksgiving has more been labeled Cyber Monday, meaning the e-commerce industry endorses this special day to offer sales and promotions without interfering with the traditional way to shop.

Scammers try to prey on Black Friday or Cyber Monday bargain hunters by advertising one day only promotions from recognized brands. Consumers should be on the watch for too good to be true emails from unrecognized website.

Along with online shopping comes the growth of consumers utilizing social networking sites and mobile phones to satisfy their shopping needs more easily.

Again, consumers are encouraged to beware of e-mails, text messages, or postings that may lead to fraudulent sites offering bargains on brand name products.

For more information on escams, please visit the FBI’s New E-Scams and Warnings webpage at http://www.fbi.gov/cyberinvest/escams.htm.

Cyber Attacks:

Welcome To The Forever War

By David Gewirtz

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ars have historically been finite events. Sure, there were long wars. The Thirty Years War in the early part of the 17th century spanned 1618 to 1648 and pretty much decimated central Europe. Legend has it that the siege of Troy lasted ten years before the Trojan Horse was wheeled through the front gate and Odysseus’ scheme ripped apart Troy from the inside out. Even the Cold War, which was fought more by spies and spymasters than troops in the field lasted only about 45 years, from the late 1940s to the early 1990s.

Granted, any war that lasts even a year is a long war, but there’s a difference between the long wars of the past and the forever war we’re in now.

While the goals of warfighting have remained relatively consistent across the many millennia of human history -- conquest, riches, destruction, punishment, religious fervor the most fundamental

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components of warfighting have changed in just the last few years.

Soldiers -- and the need to feed them, move them, and protect them -- are being removed from the equation. Throughout history, up to and including Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, wars involved the movement of men and material. Nations had to pack up and ship their soldiers,

weapons, food, ships, tanks, and so forth and transport them to a battlefield. This was enormously expensive, and -- more to our point here -- eventually the fighters wanted to go home and either one of the battling nations won or the folks back home ran out of the will to keep funding the enormous expense and throwing more of their family members in front of enemy weapons.

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Now, don’t get me wrong. This sort of war will continue, probably itself pretty much forever. But it won’t be one, ongoing, never-ending conflict. Like all wars in the past, the traditional “throw troops at the problem” wars will have definite beginning and end-points. They will exist, but even if they last decades, these wars will be finite.

But then there’s the forever war. If there’s a starting date that can be

picked for the forever war, it was 2007, when elements in Russia attacked Estonia via the Internet.

Shortly after, in 2008, I cited that incident and wrote an article for this journal entitled “The Coming Cyberwar,” where I outlined the various actions by nations and enemy actors that provided some evidence that a cyberwar was in the offing. In a 2009 speech, President Obama added a new WMD to our vocabulary: “weapons of mass disruption.” That’s disruption, not destruction. There is a difference.

That was then. This is now.

Five years later, it is clear that cyberwar is at the forefront of warfighting strategy. The United States has created its cyber commands.

The NSA has become a media anithero for vacuuming up as much meta-information as is inhumanly possible on both Americans and the vast populations outside the United States.

Just this year, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, declared, “When it comes to the distinct threat areas, our statement this year leads with cyber and it’s hard to overemphasize its significance.” Former Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, who served as FBI head for 12 years -- from 2001 to 2013 -- declared that the cyberdefense problem, “cuts across any of our disciplines, whether it be counterintelligence or counterterrorism as well as criminal.”

I’m about to draw a really ugly, zombie-apocalypse-style analogy for you, so make sure you send the kids out of the room.

We’ve all seen pictures of the crowds in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. We also saw the devastation and pain caused by the Boston Marathon Bomber. Now, imagine it’s New Year’s Eve. Times Square is crowded to its absolute limit, filled mostly with innocent Americans, exuberantly planning to celebrate the dawn of a new year. Suddenly. as the clock strikes midnight, a third of the celebrants -- still innocent Americans -- pull out knives and guns and begin uncontrollably stabbing and shooting everyone around them.

Innocent Americans, somehow mind-controlled, attack and kill their neighbors.

It’s a horrible picture, isn’t it?

Although this is merely a story, I introduced it as an analogy. So let’s make the connection to our forever war. For years now, criminals and cyberattackers have run botnets, vast networks of corrupted computers used for everything from distributed denial of service attacks to Bitcoin mining. The zombie part of the analogy is that the thousands or millions of computers “mindcontrolled” in botnets are computers belonging to regular computer users throughout America and the world. Malware is often used to

conduct warfighting. Cyberwar, from a cost perspective, is almost friction free. Victims’ computers can be turned into weapons of mass disruption without requiring an expenditure from their attackers, and then those computers can be used automatically to conduct attacks -- even as their attackers sleep, snack, celebrate, and scheme. Even worse, as I predicted back in 2008, cyberwarfare is a profit center.

Vast amounts of money are being made by cybercriminals -- and as the FBI’s Mueller stated -- there’s a substantial cross-over between nation state attackers and criminals.

Cyberattacks are being used to damage infrastructure, like the electric grid, nuclear centrifuges,

Just this year, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, declared, “When it comes to the distinct threat areas, our statement this year leads with cyber and it’s hard to overemphasize its significance.”

Worse, the mélange of attackers and defenders is almost impossible to track. Attackers range from nation states to private contractors to protest groups to organized criminal groups to teens who download free “attack kits” off the Internet, plus, since many attacks originate from zombie computers owned by friends and family, fellow citizens, it’s almost impossible to locate the nexus of battle, never mind figure out who’s participating in the overall war. Unlike Joe Haldeman’s 1974 classic “The Forever War,” our real forever war is being fought without soldiers and right here on Earth. The attackers may be legions of desktops and laptops and smartphones across the planet, but the victims are all too human.

There are thousands of cyberattacks every day, aimed at thousands of different victims, for thousands of different reasons, launched by thousands of different groups. It’s as if the Internet has become a modern-day Tower of Babel and instead of everyone speaking different languages and no longer working together, everyone has simply decided to turn on everyone else and fight it out -- forever.

It’s not a pretty picture. And the real horror story here is it’s unlikely to end forever.

Unless, of course, we nuke ourselves back to another stone age.

infiltrate networks and load botnet clients onto computers, which then can be called upon to do their masters’ bidding.

This is a form of warfare where the soldiers don’t need to be supplied or fed by the attackers, but are instead the victims’ resources, “turned” to do the nasty work of their corrupt controllers.

Let’s cut past the hyperbole for a moment. The key difference between traditional warfare and the forever war is that cyber makes possible the almost complete absence of the cost necessary to

and even dam controllers. Advanced, persistent cyberattacks are used to penetrate networks and camp out, siphoning off intelligence and economic assets (like intellectual property, credit card numbers and identity information) and are often undiscovered for months or even years.

Because the attacks and attackers no longer need to be facing each other on the field of battle (and there’s not even a need to fly unmanned drones into enemy territory), cyberwar has so little cost to conduct and so little risk to the attackers that it can be conducted, virtually forever.

About the Author David Gewirtz is Director of the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute, Distinguished Lecturer for CBS Interactive, Cyberwarfare Advisor for the International Association of Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, IT Advisor to the Florida Public Health Association and an instructor at the UC Berkeley extension. His personal site is at: DavidGewirtz. com His company site is at: ZATZ. com Follow him on Twitter at: @DavidGewirtz LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin. com/in/davidgewirtz

FBI Report Raises Concern

About Exploding Targets As A Source For Domestic Terror

By Joseph J. Kolb

Demonstration of an exploding target with a large amount of explosives.

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n a quiet Saturday morning in September 2007, a massive blast shook windows on the east side of Gallup, N.M., a small town in the northwest corner of the state flooding the local 911 system with calls from frightened residents. Fueling anxiety and speculation was the fact the explosion and 100 feet tall plume of smoke rose just across Interstate 40 from the mosque where the city’s large Palestinian population goes to worship. Since 9/11 there had been unsubstantiated rumors that some residents may have been involved in Islamic charities resulting in accusations of this incident being a dry-run for a terrorist bombing mission somewhere else in the country.

Explosives investigators from the ATF, FBI, and New Mexico State Police, converged at the location where they found the remains of a Mazda RX 7, with some of its parts found more than 100 yards away.

Lt. Darren Soland, New Mexico EOD, was shocked at the damage he had seen and quickly recorded his observations.

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“Upon my arrival at the incident scene, I observed a vehicle carcass still smoldering as well as brush which was burned and smoldering,” Soland said. “Upon initial examination it was apparent that there was some type of detonation which occurred within the interior of the vehicle. This was fact due to the pushing out of the vehicle carcass, its’ parts, and the debris / fire field. It was apparent that the detonation took

place within the front 1/3 of the passenger compartment.”

The EOD techs decided the cause of the blast was the detonation of a large amount of Tannerite, a popular binary compound used by recreational shooters to identify a distant target.

this, as to just how powerful the ammonium nitrate and aluminum flake compound actually is when mixed in large quantities and should it be sold unregulated to the public.

The Gallup man used a .308 caliber rifle. But taking a look at YouTube videos it is quick to see how binary compounds are being abused.

The issue currently being raised in law enforcement circles is exemplified through examples like

While the Tannerite brand is rapidly becoming a synonymous name for all exploding targets,

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other manufacturers exist with products called, Shockwave, Sureshot, White Lightening, Zombie Boom, Blue Thunder.

Binary exploding targets come in premeasured separate jars of ammonium nitrate and aluminum flakes. When the two are combined and struck with a high powered rifle shot a loud noise and a non flammable water vapor cloud is emitted to identify where the shot landed on the target. In the Gallup case, the shooter used a .308. But what isn’t discussed in the packaging of these products is that a trained bomb maker can use a blasting cap to detonate the mixed compound also.

This explosive potential has drawn the attention of the FBI for criminal or domestic terrorist purposes.

In a report released March 5 by the FBI’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center there is a tangible concern that “motivated criminals and extremists” may be turning to Tannerite as an alternative source for obtaining ammonium nitrate.

The binary product is benign in its separate packaging. As a result, Tannerite is not classified as an explosive by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowing it to be sold to anyone, anywhere, and of any age.

“The FBI assesses with high confidence recreationally used exploding targets(ETs), commonly referred to as Tannerite, or reactive targets, can be used as an explosive for illicit purposes by criminals and extremists explosive precursor chemicals (EPCs) present in ETs can be combined with other materials to manufacture explosives for use in improvised explosive devices (IEDs)” according to report. “The FBI considers its review of multiple incidents involving ETs is sufficient to make high confidence judgments about the potential risk posed by ETs in the United States.”

The FBI report continues to say, “that while the intended purpose of ETs is for verification of a successful shot on target, the FBI has identified multiple incidents where criminals and extremists have explored the possibility of employing the binary explosive mixture obtained from

ETs as a means to commit criminal and terrorist acts.”

A Missouri man who threatened to blow himself up in his mayor’s driveway using an IED containing 20 pounds of material harvested from exploding targets, in December 2011. In March 2009 a man attempting to purchase exploding targets at a gun show in Arkansas asked if they were capable of blowing up cars and if strapping them on a person would “make them go away.” In 2007, in preparation for a standoff with federal officials pending an arrest on outstanding charges, individuals associated with a militia/sovereign citizen group in New Hampshire hung containers of exploding targets around the

without any questions asked,” Lautenberg said following the Boston Marathon attack.”If we are serious about public safety, we must put these common sense safeguards in place.

Lautenberg called for a background check on all purchases of any size.

Fans of binary exploding targets contend this act, which according to govtrack.com, only has a 1 percent chance of becoming law, specifically targets them.

Currently an individual can purchase up to 50 pounds of black powder without a background check and unlimited quantities of smokeless and black powder

Some of these videos include the total demolition of a 1994 Chrysler LeBaron with 50 pounds of Tannerite ignited by a rifle shot.

perimeter of their property, which could be detonated via impact from a high-caliber rifle. Two .50 caliber rifles, numerous other firearms, and 30 pipe bombs were discovered in the residence.

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, and before his death, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) proposed the Explosive Materials Background Check to address the sale of black and smokeless gunpowder which was co-sponsored by Senators Charles Schuman (D-NY) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

substitutes, which binary targets essentially become after being mixed according to the Tannerite website but more safe and stable.

“It is outrageous that anyone, even a known terrorist, can walk into a store in America and buy explosives

This argument can be made for many household or commonly used items but then there is the

psychology behind the marketing.

None of these other products are marketed as “exploding” with the intent to be detonated with a highpowered rifle, or in a worse case scenario, a blasting cap, which are not difficult to come by for the motivated extremist.

Tanner said when used in the recommended quantity of a half pound, Tannerite is not dangerous and has himself stood by an exploding target unscathed emitting a puff and a vapor cloud. That may be so when used in the right quantity, but dozens of YouTube videos portray the potential of binary explosive targets when large quantities are placed in cars and appliances such as washing machines then detonated with gunfire. The resulting explosion demolishes the object and sends shrapnel flying at high rates of speed.

Some of these videos include the total demolition of a 1994 Chrysler LeBaron with 50 pounds of Tannerite ignited by a rifle shot.

This particular video was posted Jan. 3 and has received 34, 365 views. Another equally popular video was from 2010 where a Honda Accord was blown up with only 20 pounds of the substance.

These displays of the potential power of these compounds for “recreational use” is worth discussing. The facts are compelling, as Soland discovered walking through a debris field, binary compounds for exploding targets do pack a powerful punch. The logic of a recreational shooter reveling in a down range explosion is up to the beholder rather than just getting up and walking to the target.

Daniel Tanner, inventor and CEO of Tannerite, defends his product as merely for recreational use with no intent to be used in quantities greater than what is recommended.

“We most seriously have to look closely at these products from a law enforcement and homeland security standpoint,” Soland said.

“Ours is not the only product on the market with ammonium nitrate, you can find that in chemical ice packs,” he said.

About the Author Joseph J. Kolb, M.A., is an instructor in the Criminal Justice department at Western New Mexico University where he founded the undergraduate and graduate certificate program, in Border Security Studies.

Are The XXII Sochi Olympics Really A Boon For Russia?

By William La Follette & Kinan Baki

Barbed wires secure the mountain cluster of the Olympic village undergoing construction at the Rosa Khutor Alpine Resort in the western Caucasian mountains near Krasnaya Polyana, some 40 km (25 miles) outside of the Black Sea city of Sochi February 13, 2012. Rosa Khutor is hosting the Alpine and snowboard events at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

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n many ways the 1980 Summer Olympics was a bittersweet victory for the Soviet Union. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted then U.S. President Jimmy Carter to lead a boycott consisting of 65 countries against the XXII Olympic games being held in Moscow. However, despite the circumstances, the event proved to be a source of great pride for the people of the Soviet Union. As the first of such games ever held in Eastern Europe, the Soviets put on a stunning display of athleticism, laying claim to an astounding 195 medals, 80 of which were gold. Moreover, with the memory of the 1972 Munich Massacre still fresh in people’s minds, the Soviets’ seamless execution of the games bespoke to their ability to provide security for large-scale events.

Today, Russia finds itself in a similar situation, playing host to the XXII Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. The formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left Russia in political and economic tumult, as well as in want of an identity sufficient to match their former grandeur. Several previous bids by the Russian Federation to host Olympic events were unsuccessful, as Russia struggled to come to terms with capitalism and democracy. However, the stage is now set for a comeback, and they are going all out. Thus far, Russia is slated to pour a staggering $50 billion dollars into Sochi to bring it up to par for 2014, by far exceeding any other Olympic price tag thus far. Such expenditures have caught the attention of the world, and Russia now finds itself under pressure to perform. However, the spotlight might prove to be a double edged sword for the eager hosts.

Although Sochi is an idyllic venue capable of supporting a large influx of people, its geopolitical integrity raises several security concerns.

In particular, its proximity to the traditionally volatile regions of Chechnya and Dagestan, and, to a lesser extent, Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria, poses an acute security risk not only for the games themselves but also for the broader region.

Perhaps the most potent long-term threat posed by the 2014 Winter Olympics is large-scale exportation of violence not only towards Sochi, but other neighboring regions. In fact, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, it is possible that “terrorist activities in Sochi could take on an international dimension. Terrorists could carry out their preparations outside the North Caucasus. They could choose instead the Volga Region or other places where Islamic radicals

have established ties with others who share their views and have not been—until recently at least—under constant watch by the security and law enforcement authorities.”

In February 2013, Umarov, leader

cow in 2010 are a further indication of CE’s potency. Lubyanka was an especially bold target, as the Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters is located at one of the metro entrances. Thus, the Sochi

Fears over the potential repatriation of Chechen fighters are exacerbated by the global attention brought to the region by the Sochi Olympics. Much like the Boston Marathon bombing by the ethnically Chechen Tsarnaev brothers, a successful terrorist attack at the Olympics would thrust the Caucasus region back on to the world stage. of the Caucasus Emirate (CE), issued a statement “to notify followers that he had rescinded a previous order prohibiting attacks in Russia outside the Caucasus”. Moreover, he advocated the use of “’maximum force’ to ensure the games do not take place.” What is most alarming about this statement is the sheer strength behind his words. Already the CE has shown its capacity to execute attacks outside of its general region in more hostile environments. The 2002 Nord-Ost theatre siege by Chechen terrorists attests to their willingness and ability to export violence.

The 2011 Domodedovo Airport bombing and the Lubyanka/Park Kultury metro bombings in Mos-

Olympics threaten to further stoke the flames by providing a high profile target for regional terrorist groups to re-exert their strength.

Emboldened by this global event, these groups might once again look to expand their scope of violence.

Thus, the heightened potential for the exportation of terrorism will endure long after the games have concluded.

In the 1980 Olympics much of the world’s attention was focused on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, conflict is once again dominating the international arena. Although the war in Syria started out as a civil conflict, it has since morphed into a proxy war attracting fighters from all over the

Arab world. Largely respected for their battle discipline and ferocity, Chechens are also reportedly a part of the international mélange in Syria. Indeed, current FSB director Alexander Bortnikov recently admitted that approximately 200 fighters from the Russian Federation are fighting with the rebels in Syria. Whereas the exportation of Russian fighters to Syria might suit Russia’s immediate needs in terms of Olympic security, it carries significant future risks. According to CACI Analyst, foreign fighters “will potentially create a serious problem for Russian authorities after the civil war in Syria is over and the jihadists, trained in guerilla warfare, will seek to return to their homeland in Russia’s predominantly Muslim areas with the ultimate aim of continuing the jihad.”

Fears over the potential repatriation of Chechen fighters are exacerbated by the global attention brought to the region by the Sochi Olympics.

Much like the Boston Marathon bombing by the ethnically Chechen Tsarnaev brothers, a successful terrorist attack at the Olympics would thrust the Caucasus region back on to the world stage. Thus, it presents the perfect pretext for these experienced Russian fighters in Syria to return home.

In an attempt to obviate threats emanating from Dagestan, one of the more disruptive regions along the Caspian Sea, the Kremlin is implementing a preemptive campaign to replace local leaders with political sycophants. While these measures might bring initial control to the Caucasus, they set the stage for long-term grievances to take root in a region where violence is an everyday occurrence. In January 2013 President Putin “dismissed Magomedsalam M. Magomedov as the president of the Russian re-

public of Dagestan…”

Although his successor Ramazan Abdulatipov is ethnically from Dagestan, his loyalties reside with Putin’s United Russia party.

Months later, in June 2013, the Kremlin, using a “military style assault,” arrested Said Amirov, mayor of the capital city Makhachkala and several other political leaders. In a statement reminiscent of Soviet times, Abdulatipov advocated a deep investigation into the leaders of several districts that might sympathize with rebel fighters and isolate them from society. Of course, such methods are understandable in a region where bloodshed is endemic. However, it runs the risk of further isolating individuals as well as the local population who might not appreciate the Kremlin looking over their shoulder. In a region teaming with ethnic groups and an entrenched clan system, the Moscow backed leaders are going to find it difficult to prevent tensions from boiling over in the years to come.

As mentioned previously, Putin is staking his and his country’s reputation on these Games, and with good reason. The XXII Olympic Winter Games (although not the first time the Russians hosted an Olympics) will be of monumental promotional utility. By attempting to clear the hue of “red” left lingering from the past image of Soviet Russia, successfully implementing a safe and secure strategy plan, and, exhibiting one of the country’s most affluent cities will present a stronger, more powerful political and economic image to the world.

One of the most daunting challenges to Putin’s expectations is the security of the event. Of the many possible risks, two take the center stage: disruption from public unrest in the form of protest and riots, and terrorism mixed with ethnic conflagration. As a preemptive measure, the Kremlin has created a special security framework specifically for the event, which defends against the aforementioned risks. However, it is precisely Putin’s pragmatic, if not heavy-handed, methods to preventative security that may, in fact, pose the most significant challenge to the success of the Games.

Earlier this summer the FSB rounded up and arrested over 300 Muslims in Moscow with no explanation from the security services. The mass arrest was “justified as a preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi…”

Such tactics undoubtedly infuriate elements of the Russian Muslim population, of which a large minority

14

resides in the Caucasus Mountain region surrounding Sochi. Targeting Muslims may have the unintentional effect of igniting general unrest in the region, that threatens the tenuous stability in the Caucasus, and invite violence from Islamist terrorists. With the world’s eyes hooked on the XXII Olympic Winter Games, groups with grievances towards Russia may seek to steal the limelight.

External security measures enacted by the Kremlin include a ban on public protests, the deployment of tens of thousands of professional troops to the region, and even the use of the Pantsir-S short-range air defense systems. This security plan could be misconstrued as preparations for war. Although these measures are necessary to ensure security, the mere increased presence of Russian mili-

a Northern Caucasus ethnic group whose grievances are rooted in a longstanding history of mistrust and war with Moscow. In particular, they are incensed over the location of the winter Olympics in Sochi, the former Circassian capital. Moreover, it was the scene of what some describe as the first modern genocide in 1864. In the late 19th century after a protracted series of battles, the Russians finally defeated the Circassians. A period of ethnic cleansing ensued in which hundreds of thousands of Circassians were killed or expelled from the region. Only a small minority, loyal to the Tsar, was able to remain in the area.

However, their grievances never fully dissipated. Now, with the Olympic Games, discontent is stirring up local Circassian malcontent. In particular, they believe that their ancestral people are being brought to the brink of

Earlier this summer the FSB rounded up and arrested over 300 Muslims in Moscow with no explanation from the security services. The mass arrest was “justified as a preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi…”

Such tactics undoubtedly infuriate elements of the Russian Muslim population, of which a large minority resides in the Caucasus Mountain region surrounding Sochi. tary equipment and personnel in the Caucasus Mountain area brings back painful memories of the protracted Chechen wars spanning the past 20 years. This provocative gesture may be perceived as an affront to the active insurgency in the surrounding districts and ultimately invite unrest.

Indeed, at least one major insurgency organization, the Caucasus Emirate (CE) has already declared the use of force against the Olympic games as an acceptable target. The placement of troops in the surrounding forest and mountain zones has a direct impact on local inhabitants. With added troops patrolling the surrounding villages and towns, abuses perpetrated by armed personnel with asymmetrical authority could further incite violent reactions from insurgent groups. Another point of protest comes from the Circassians,

extinction. In fact, the situation is so dire that at least one Circassian tribe “the Ubykh no longer exist in their homeland, with around 40,000 living in Turkey and a handful of families in other countries. Their language is extinct, with the last remaining Ubykh speaker dying in 1992.” While the situation has not yet boiled over, it is nevertheless a thorn in Russia’s side that is a direct result of the contentious location of the Sochi Olympics.

With national prestige on the line, the Kremlin can ill afford to have such unrest in the region.

Broad Circassian discontent in conjunction with an active CE insurgency only adds to Russia’s running tab of security vulnerabilities. Indeed, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “The big-

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gest threat for the Olympics would be if the Islamic extremists found a common language with Circassian extreme nationalists.” The prospect of a Circassian-CE alliance, whether or not it is formalized, risks upsetting more moderate elements of the general Circassian populous. Even the diaspora is voicing their opinion on the Sochi Olympics. Claims by the Telegraph that “peaceful Circassian activists, mostly living outside Russia but with roots in the North Caucasus, have already been protesting that the Winter Games should not be held near Sochi…” lends credence to the threat. Exploitation of Circassian sympathies can take on many forms and capacities. Storage of weapons and rations, quartering and providing fighters, or, more simply, providing ideological support for insurgents are just a few of the potential threats to Russia’s Sochi security plan.

Although Russia might have the economic capability to host the 2014 Sochi Olympics, they do so at the risk of perpetuating the cycle of violence in the Caucasus region.

As the Games draw ever closer, the pressure on the Kremlin to provide security is tantamount to that of the multitude of international athletes facing off for prestige and glory.

But such aspirations might prove to be more trouble than they are worth for Moscow. Although the security risks for the Olympics are manifold, its effect on the broader area should not be discounted. Sochi’s proximity to the North Caucasian Federal Districts threatens to further aggravate the already tumultuous region, as the Kremlin’s security footprint grows.

Moreover, several of the short-term solutions and measures set the stage for long-term grievances against the Kremlin, which puts its future security in peril. Such concerns have many people wondering whether the XXII Sochi Olympics are truly a boon for Russia.

About the Authors William La Follette is an International Politics and Security graduate student at the School of International Service (SIS) at American University, and a junior Research Associate at Security Management International, LLC. He can be reached at wlafollette@smiconsultancy.com .

Kinan Baki has received a Masters in Conflict, Security and Development from the University of Sussex, and is a Junior Associate at Security Management International, LLC. He can be reached at kbaki@smiconsultancy.com .

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Ensuring Homeland Security:

The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team

By Dr. Thomas B. Hunter January marked the 30th anniversary of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) federal law enforcement’s only full-time counterterrorism unit a highly trained group of special agents often called upon during the toughest times.

Operators are expert marksmen, proficient in close-quarter fighting, and have the tactical ability to breach fortified strongholds and launch assaults with speed, precision, and if necessary deadly force.

FBI Hostage Rescue Team

16

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I

ntroduction

With the release of best-selling books and films such as Blackhawk Down! and the Zero Dark Thirty, and particularly with the killing of former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Ladin, the once-hidden U.S. Army’s Delta Force and the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six have been dragged from the shadows and into the national stage. These elite military units, formally designated “Tier One” units by the Department of Defense (in addition to others that, as yet remain largely unknown), have conducted well-known and well documented operations around the world in defense of U.S. national interests.

Yet, while unclassified, the U.S. has long operated its own domestic “Tier One” unit, though its existence and popularity have interestingly been largely exempt from the notoriety of the aforementioned military units.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) is the nation’s primary, full-time counterterrorism tactical unit responsible for the safety and security of American citizens around the world. Established in 1983, in part due to the rising tide of global terrorism, the HRT is today part of the larger FBI organization known as the Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG) and based in Quantico, Virginia. The HRT’s area of operations (AOR) is literally worldwide, and includes virtually any operational environment.

According to the FBI, the HRT’s tactical responsibilities include, but are not limited to: • Hostage rescue • Barricaded subjects • Helicopter operations • High-risk raids, searches, arrests, and warrants • Mobile assaults • Manhunt and rural operations • Maritime operations • Cold/extreme weather operations • Dignitary protection • Force protection for FBI personnel overseas • Assistance to military special missions Organizationally, the HRT is divided into tactical units, much like its military counterparts. Each tactical unit is supported by highly trained helicopter assets, a tactical mobility team, and intelligence and logistics cadres. Its helicopter pilots are among some of the most highly trained in the world, with some former members of the U.S. Army’s elite 160th

So it was that on 18 February 2011, a force of nearly 20 pirates hijacked the American-flagged sailing vessel S/V Quest approximately 200 miles off the coast of Oman. Operating from small skiffs deployed from a mothership, the pirates were easily able to overtake and seize the defenseless vessel, taking all four Americans aboard hostage.

Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which trains and operates routinely with Tier One assets. HRT is also known to conduct training with these units, sharing tactics and lessons learned in an effort to combine knowledge and experience in pursuit of a common mission.

better ensure the safety and security of these vessels, there are a number of resources available to mariners, some of which are updated in realtime on the Internet for 24/7 access, in order to notify ship captains and ship owners of past and present threats to shipping.

The HRT’s early days, while its many operational successes were kept secret from the American public, its perceived failures were not. The incidents at Ruby Ridge Waco, specifically, brought HRT and the FBI a great deal of bad publicity, some of it deserved, as the FBI would later admit. However, that the HRT has largely operated following the mantra of the “quiet professional,” its successes, and indeed most of its operations, have largely gone unheralded.

Yet, just as commercial shipping companies must use these waters in order to conduct global trade, so do many private yacht sailors choose to risk the Gulf of Aden owing to its access to and from the Red and Arabian Seas, both of which border popular tourist destination locations.

The purpose of this article is to highlight some of the HRT’s operational activities conducted in recent years, and to demonstrate its global mission set and its role in protecting and defending American citizens worldwide.

February 2011: Gulf of Aden - S/V QUEST The Gulf of Aden is widely recognized as one of the most dangerous bodies of water in the world with regard to maritime piracy and ship hijackings. Professional mariners who frequent those waters have been well aware of this reality for years, though a vast quantity of commercial shipping must necessarily pass through that waterway en route to and from major commercial ports around the world. To

So it was that on 18 February 2011, a force of nearly 20 pirates hijacked the American-flagged sailing vessel S/V Quest approximately 200 miles off the coast of Oman. Operating from small skiffs deployed from a mothership, the pirates were easily able to overtake and seize the defenseless vessel, taking all four Americans aboard hostage.

The U.S. government, via the FBI’s legal attaché office in Nairobi, Kenya, Navy was notified of the pirates’ actions and diverted a nearby force of one aircraft carrier, a guided missile cruiser, and two destroyers to the area in order to assist with any efforts at effecting a safe resolution to the incident.

An HRT operator, then stationed in Nairobi, was quickly dispatched to a location on the Somali coast.

Meanwhile, a former HRT operator (who was also, fortuitously, working in the area) and a crisis negotiator were also flown by helicopter to the USS Sterett (DDG-104)

one of the destroyers shadowing the S/V Quest, in order to assess the situation and to facilitate communications between the pirates and the U.S. Navy. On the morning of 22 February, however, and despite the presence of two of the Somali pirates who had come aboard the destroyer to conduct negotiations, for reasons unknown one of the gunmen aboard the Quest fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at the Sterett, missing the destroyer (though this was later claimed in court to be an intentional warning shot designed to demonstrate the resolve of the hijackers), followed by small arms fire aboard the Quest.

Unbeknownst to the Americans, the gunfire was the result of an internal dispute between the pirates, during which time they shot and killed all four hostages, in addition to two of their own number.

A Navy SEAL boarding team, standing by for any contingency, was immediately deployed from the Sterett to the sailboat in response to the weapons fire and the obviously increased risk to the hostages, whose fate was then unknown.

During the boarding, brief hand-tohand combat ensued resulting in the deaths of two pirates – one of whom was killed with a combat knife - and the capture of 13 others. Two other pirates were found dead aboard the

arrested in Somalia by two HRT operators, working with unidentified military and intelligence personnel. He was, with cooperation of Somali authorities, extradited to the U.S. within days of the event.

In July 2013, Shibin lost his final legal appeals and was sentenced to 12 life terms in federal prison for his role in the crimes with no possibility of parole.

Quest as well, though their deaths were apparently caused prior to the overt outbreak of hostile action.

Navy corpsmen attempted to render aid to the Americans, each of whom had been shot by the pirates, but were unsuccessful in reviving them.

The former HRT member, who had followed separately from the SEAL team, assisted in processing the crime scene.

All fifteen pirates were arrested, brought back to the U.S., and later charged with piracy, hostage taking, and murder, all of which was facilitated by the experienced HRT member’s presence at the scene of the crime.

The pirates’ leader and the operational financier, Mohammad Saaili Shibin, who was intentionally not present at the actual hijacking, was eventually tracked down and

The pirates’ leader and the operational financier, Mohammad Saaili Shibin, who was intentionally not present at the actual hijacking, was eventually tracked down and arrested in Somalia by two HRT operators, working with unidentified military and intelligence personnel. He was, with cooperation of Somali authorities, extradited to the U.S. within days of the event. In July 2013, Shibin lost his final legal appeals and was sentenced to 12 life terms in federal prison for his role in the crimes with no possibility of parole.

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This event, while ultimately tragic and not requiring the deployment of a full HRT tactical unit, again demonstrated the value of placing experienced HRT members strategically worldwide so that they might be available to provide highly specialized tactical assistance to military forces in potentially volatile and highly fluid life-and-death scenarios.

April 2013: Arrest of Boston Marathon Bomber On 15 April 2013, two “pressure cooker” improvised explosive devices (IEDs) detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. Authorities were temporarily at a loss as to who might have perpetrated the attack, which had quickly been deemed an act of domestic terrorism (and thus immediately falling under the authority of the FBI). However, on 18 April, the FBI released pictures of two individuals it was seeking in connection with the attack. Upon the release of the pictures, two brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, apparently realizing they were now, or soon would be, wanted men, killed an MIT security guard, stole an SUV, and engaged in a gunfight with authorities as they fled the area.

By this time, the HRT stand-by counterterrorism tactical unit was already in Boston and had deployed to the streets to assist with the capture of the perpetrators. Given that the FBI, and local and state police were unaware of the suspects’ location, the HRT could not be deployed to a single location to prepare for an assault, as they had in many pervious operations. Rather, they, too, were at the mercy of the massive manhunt then underway in order to narrow down their quarry.

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Eventually, during their run for authorities, Tamerlan either fell from the stolen vehicle or jumped, but was quickly apprehended by police, though he was probably already mortally wounded by this time, and died later in the hospital.

Dzhokhar made good his escape, and disappeared in the SUV, thereby re-igniting the manhunt.

It was not clear what weapons the suspects might have, or if there might even be more than the one who was at that time driving the SUV. In addition, given the demonstrated willingness of the suspects to use improvised explosive devices, the possibility that they might be equipped with a stockpile of small arms and/or more IEDs, specifically, suicide belts, was of grave concern to law enforcement.

In the neighborhood of Watertown, a local resident, obviously aware of the ongoing manhunt, noticed a trail of blood on his property, leading to his boat. Perhaps unaware of the possible threat to his life, he lifted the tarp and identified a man covered in blood. He immediately phoned authorities, who arrived within minutes. Once there, authorities exchanged gunfire with Tsarnaev, though it is not clear if he was Among the first to arrive was a police helicopter equipped with FLIR (forward looking infrared) equipment, enabling its crew to see everything on the ground clearly, in a field of black and white. The helicopter crew immediately identified an individual hiding beneath the tarp and relayed the information to ground units. Once identified, HRT operators, working with the Boston Police and Massachusetts State troopers, formed a perimeter around the immediate area.

HRT operators took point in closing on the boat, well equipped and trained for engaging hostile targets at night, slowly closed in. Once it was clear no one could escape the boat, and that the suspect was trapped, they ordered him to exit the boat. He did not comply and HRT was forced to enter the boat to extract him.

Tsarnaev appears not to have resisted further, perhaps due to the fact

that he was weakened due to having been bleeding profusely from a number of wounds sustained during his run from authorities. Once secured by HRT, and examined for suicide and other explosive devices and weapons by bomb disposal technicians, he was then taken on a stretcher to a local hospital for treatment for his injuries.

Tsarnaev currently awaits trial on various federal charges.

May 2013: Alabama School Bus Kidnapping On 29 January 2013, 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes, a Vietnam War veteran, abducted five-year-old Ethan (last name withheld) from a school bus in Midland City, Arizona. Despite the heroic attempts of bus driver Charles A. Poland, who attempted to intervene to prevent the kidnapping (and whose delaying tactics facilitated the escape of 21 other children via the emergency exit at the rear of the bus),

Frustrated with the delays, and most likely the ongoing escape of the children, Dykes shot and killed Poland. He then grabbed the nearest child, an autistic boy named Ethan, and disappeared.

Unbeknownst to authorities at the time, Dykes took the child to a carefully prepared 6 foot by 8 foot concrete bunker located on his property in a nearby rural area. Once there, he locked the two inside the bunker and began what would quickly become six-day siege.

While securing himself and his hostage in the bunker, Dykes called 911 and gave authorities information on how to communicate with him; the only means being a PVC ventilation pipe fitted through the roof of the bunker, near the sole hatchway that led down into the confines of the small, homemade fortress. Very quickly thereafter, hundreds of police and other officials arrived on scene and cordoned off the area, drawing the national and international press to the scene.

The FBI, too, was notified, and immediately dispatched a team of negotiators from who took charge of the ensuing discussions with Dykes. Soon thereafter, the FBI onscene command team then notified the HRT, which already on 24/7 alert, deployed quickly to Alabama.

Then, an FBI DC-9 landed at a nearby airport and unloaded a cargo of specialized explosives, “flash bang” grenades, small arms, and other equipment that might be required by the HRT in any possible rescue attempt. This and other equipment, along with the HRT team members, were then delivered clandestinely to the scene.

While Dykes was, at times, reasonable, and did allow authorities to pass Ethan’s vital medication to treat his medical conditions, he refused to exit the bunker, or to release his hostage. Far more troubling was the authorities’ realization that Dykes had constructed improvised explosive devices (IEDs) specifically for this encoun-

ter. These conditions, a hardened bunker, young hostage with medical needs, and an array of IEDs of unknown design and placement, were clearly beyond the capabilities of the local police and SWAT teams. This incident required the specialized knowledge of the HRT - especially should Dykes directly threaten or begin to physically harm the child, and a direct assault become necessary.

It was at this time that the FBI employed its own arsenal of technology, including hidden video feeds and even the use of drones to maximize their tactical awareness. In addition, a team of U.S. Navy Seabees (engineers) worked with HRT personnel to construct a mockup of the bunker, again, should an assault become the final option. These actions, which may have seemed far too militaristic and heavy-handed to some observers, proved to perhaps have made the difference between life and death for Ethan in the events that followed.

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As the days wore on, the HRT continued to refine its plan. All the while. Dykes became increasingly erratic and less rational, and it was decided that the risks to Ethan were too great to allow the siege to continue. This was exacerbated by the discovery of an IED placed by Dykes in the ventilation pipe – proof to authorities that he indeed was prepared to repel any attack. These and myriad other factors combined to lead the FBI to conclude that a dynamic hostage rescue would be necessary.

To this end, negotiators convinced Dykes to come to the entrance of the bunker, thereby drawing him away from Ethan, who sat on a cot at the far end. Over the course of the week, both sides had developed a routine by which Dykes would ask for supplies, then he would climb partway up an 8-foot ladder, open the hatchway door, grab the supplies, then secure the hatch and quickly climb back down. As this pattern developed, the HRT realized that, during that moment, Dykes was vulnerable, being off his feet and off balance as he stood on the ladder. More importantly, he was the furthest away from Ethan.

So, at 3pm on 5 February, as Dykes opened the hatch for what he apparently expected to be a routine delivery of supplies, he was instead met by HRT members who dropped two “flash bang” stun grenades through the hatch at Dykes’ feet. The grenades did not have the intended effect, however, and Dykes opened fire on the HRT team members who were attempting to gain entry. The HRT assault-

ers returned fire, killing Dykes, and rescuing Ethan, unharmed.

August 2013: Rescue of Hannah Anderson On 3 August 2013, 40-year-old James Lee DiMaggio, murdered the mother and brother of 16-year old Hannah Anderson, after inviting them over to his home under the false guise of hosting an overnight to celebrate his moving from Southern California to Texas the following day, as DiMaggio had been a long-time friend of the family. Instead, that night, DiMaggio killed both individuals and set fire to his home, before forcing Hannah into his vehicle.

The following day, Hannah’s grandparents reported both Hannah and her brother missing, and, having discovered the burned out home and under the assumption that DiMaggio had taken both children (the younger brother’s body not yet having been found in the ruins of the home) police activated the AMBER alert system, a nationwide notification system activated in the event of child abductions.

Given that the kidnapping was believed to possibly have crossed state lines owing to information obtained during the investigation, the FBI became involved, owing to the fact that such actions constitute a federal and not a state crime. In addition, as it appeared a hostage situation was underway, the HRT was placed on ready status and prepared further in the event it would be required to deploy.

It was at this time that an elderly couple in Idaho, riding on

Dykes opened the hatch for what he apparently expected to be a routine delivery of supplies, he was instead met by HRT members who dropped two “flash bang” stun grenades through the hatch at Dykes’ feet. The grenades did not have the intended effect, however, and Dykes opened fire on the HRT team members who were attempting to gain entry. The HRT assaulters returned fire, killing Dykes, and rescuing Ethan, unharmed.

20

horseback, came across who they believed was DiMaggio and the young Hannah Anderson. They relayed this information to authorities, who moved quickly.

The HRT, now with sufficient evidence to warrant a deployment, boarded their plane for Idaho, along with all necessary weapons and equipment as per standard operating procedure.

Authorities then began an aggressive search of the Idaho wilderness near the duo’s last reported location. Upon discovering the campsite, HRT deployed further into the wilderness, joining the teams of searchers.

Upon arriving at a location called Morehead Lake, trackers spotted DiMaggio with Hannah and were able to make a positive identification.

At that time, HRT took over the scene and quietly cordoned off the northern end of the lake, effectively surrounding the pair and precluding any chance of escape.

Once confronted by HRT operators, however, and ordered to surrender, DiMaggio opened fire on the agents. The HRT operators returned fire, killing the suspect immediately and freeing Anderson.

Anderson was found to be unharmed and was later reunited with her father. The HRT operators remained for several days as part of the investigation before returning to headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. It is worth noting here that, unlike its military Tier One “counterparts”, given the fact that HRT is a law enforcement unit, it is accountable in court for all actions, to include incidents from firefights to less frenetic activities such as investigations in which the team does not play an active tactical operational role.

Conclusions The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT, has proven a highly capable, effective, and well regulated tool in America’s efforts to ensure national security and the safety and security of its citizens at home and abroad.

While there will likely always be ongoing debate about highlytrained tactical teams (described by

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many detractors as “paramilitary”) teams operating as a part of law enforcement on the local, state, and/ or federal level, it is clear that HRT has functioned within its mandate and saved the lives of untold numbers of US citizens.

Given the fast paced, high-risk operations that the HRT is often tasked with resolving, there is no question that not all outcomes are ideal in retrospect. But tragic incidents, such as occurred at Ruby Ridge, are all incidents to which the FBI is held accountable, per federal law. It is under the aegis of these laws, which HRT is equally tasked to enforce, that the team is bound.

(Author’s Note: It is the author’s opinion, aside from the factual article written above, that the U.S. is fortunate in that it, unlike many modern states, possesses a tactical capability to resolve counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and other dynamic problem sets as outlined in the introduction, and that this team is able to draw on the expertise of its military counterparts to continually hone its skill sets in all areas.

In this way, the overwhelming numbers of successful operations, many of which the public may never be made aware, can better help defend a free nation such as the United States.)

About the Author Dr. Hunter is a former senior intelligence analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), focusing on terrorist tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP). He has published numerous articles on topics relating to civilian and military special operations, counterterrorism, and hostage rescue.

He has also published an introductory book on international targeted killing operations entitled Targeted Killing: Self-Defense, Pre-emption, and the War on Terrorism.

References: One such example is the real-time International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) Piracy and Armed Robbery 2013 map found online at: http://www.iccccs.org/piracy-reportingcentre/live-piracy-map.

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A woman mourns at the cemetery of Beslan. One thousand children and parents were taken hostage

by Chechen separatists on the first day of the new school year on September 1, 2004. After three days of siege, Russian forces stormed the school and some of the rebels blew themselves up. A total of 333 hostages -- more than half of them children -- were killed in the chaos and hundreds were wounded. To match feature RUSSIA-BESLAN/ REUTERS/Stringer

The Terrorist Threats Against Russia

And Its Counterterrorism Responses

By Dr. Joshua Sinai

A

(Editor’s Note: This is part of a continuing series, which began in our last issue (Fall) with: The Terrorist Threats Against India And Its Counterterrorism Responses. In this issue Dr. Joshua Sinai continues to explore these same subjects in Russia and in China. Dr. Joshua Sinai is a Washington, DC-based consultant on terrorism & counterterrorism studies. He is the author of “Active Shooter – A Handbook on Prevention” (ASIS International, 2013). He can be reached at: joshua.sinai@comcast.net)

s of late 2013, the terrorist threats against Russia and its counterterrorism measures are in the spotlight, propelled by the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that were perpetrated by two brothers of ethnic Chechen origin (one of whom was reportedly monitored by Russia’s security services), as well as the preparations for the Sochi Winter Olympics, scheduled for February 2014, with Islamist terrorists likely to exploit the worldwide media attention that will be associated with the events which are located close to the North Caucasus. In response, Russia is boosting its counterterrorism measures in the North Caucasus republics, as well as in other parts of the country.

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Terrorist Threats Russia’s primary terrorist threats originate in the turbulent North Caucasus region’s republics of Chechnya, Daghestan, Ingushetia, and KabardinoBalkariya, where extremist ethno-nationalist and Islamist militants have been waging an insurgency against Russian rule for the past decades.

Russia has confronted several categories of terrorism since the times of the Russian Empire, ranging from the 19th century’s revolutionary anarchists to today’s secessionist Islamic extremist ethno-nationalists, particularly in the North Caucasus seeking to liberate the North Caucasus from continued Russian presence. This represents a reversal of terrorist threats for Russia because at

conducted a double suicide bombing of the Moscow subway, killing 40 and injuring more than 100.

• On Jan. 24, 2011, a Chechen terrorist conducted a suicide bombing at the Domodedovo airport international arrivals hall, killing more than 36 people and injuring around 180.

• Within the largely Muslim North Caucasus region, the Chechen insurgency poses the most significant threat to Russia. In recent times the largely ethno-nationalist insurgency has taken on a global jihadist nature, with al Qaida affiliated groups providing funding, fighters, and materiel to the Chechen separatists. This explains how the Chechen-American Tsarnaev brothers (and, reportedly, their mother, as well) allegedly became adherents

tive regions. Like other nations’ counterterrorism agencies, the NAK attributes success in countering terrorism to the three elements of preventing terrorist attacks, arresting suspected terrorists, and minimizing the damage from terrorist incidents – all of which are driven by efficient coordination between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. In 2013, Alexander Bortnikov, the FSB’s Director, served as the NAK’s Chairman.

Complementing the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) also employs counterterrorism units, as well as units tasked to counter extremism, a task previously performed by the FSB. Like other counterterrorism organizations, Russian security agencies also monitor extremist websites to investigate their agendas, key players, and possible

Russia’s ineffectual response to the 2004 Beslan school siege, with its special forces incurring heavy casualties, exposed significant deficiencies in its counterterrorism capability, especially in areas such as incident command, intelligence management, and disseminating public information about such events. the height of the Cold War the former Soviet Union (and its Eastern European allies, such as East Germany, as well as Cuba) was a major state-sponsor of terrorism, with its security services providing active support to Palestinian, Armenian, and South American terrorist groups.

In recent times, significant North Caucasusoriginated terrorist incidents against Russia have included the following: • In September 1999 Chechen insurgents attacked apartment buildings in Moscow, killing some 200 people and injuring several hundred. In retaliation, Russian troops invaded Chechnya.

• On October 23, 2002, Chechen insurgents attacked the crowded Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. An estimated 129 people were killed during the rescue attempt by the Russian security forces.

• Between February and August 2004, a series of suicide bombings in the Moscow subway

by North Caucasus insurgents killed an estimated 80 people.

• On August 24, 2004, Chechen and Ingush insurgents attacked Russian interior forces in Nazran, Ingushetia, killing 80 troops, while on the same day two Russian passenger aircraft were blown up almost simultaneously, killing 90 people.

• On September 1-3, 2004, Chechen and Ingush insurgents attacked a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, holding more than 1,100 of them hostage. Russia’s rescue operation resulted in more than 300 deaths, including 186 children.

• On November 27, 2009, Chechen insurgents bombed a high-speed Moscow-to-St.Petersburg train, killing 26 people, with 100 injured.

• On March 29, 2010, Chechen terrorists

of global Salafist militancy. Threats by these militants are expected to grow in early 2014, as demonstrated by a video message posted online by Doku Umarov, an Islamist extremist, announcing that it is the duty of Muslims in the North Caucasus region to attack the February 2014 Winter Olympics, in Sochi, Russia.

Counterterrorism Organizations Insurgent terrorist attacks against Russian and locally-administered forces are frequent, with Russian counterterrorist forces responding with what are considered harsh law enforcement and military measures to counter these militants.

Russia’s ineffectual response to the 2004 Beslan school siege, with its special forces incurring heavy casualties, exposed significant deficiencies in its counterterrorism capability, especially in areas such as incident command, intelligence management, and disseminating public information about such events.

This led to an overhaul of its counterterrorism-related security and law-enforcement agencies, including establishing new counterterrorism coordinating bodies. These changes were codified in March 2006 into “The Law on Counteraction to Terrorism”, which replaced the previous 1998 version. In accordance with the law, the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s intelligence service (and successor to the KGB) serves as the chief agency to combat terrorism, with a new National Antiterrorist Committee (NAK) – comparable to the American National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) – established as the top coordinating body. The NAK is tasked with coordinating the counterterrorism policies and operations of 17 federal security agencies, with additional regional counterterrorism committees carrying out its functions in the country’s administra-

targeting. With some of these websites posting their material outside Russian borders, these are monitored, as well.

Conclusion The bombing of the Boston Marathon by ChechenAmerican extremists demonstrated that the terrorist threats against Russia also affect Western countries that have sizeable Chechen and North Caucasus diasporas. To prevent such attacks from recurring, it is likely that Russian-Western cooperation in counterterrorism has been increasing, with frequently held working group meetings and other forms of intelligence-related exchanges, now that the involvement of global Salafi jihadism in the North Caucasus’s ethno-nationalist secessionist movements has become a major concern for Western counterterrorism planners.

The North Caucasus-based terrorist threats against Russia are likely to intensify in preparation for the Sochi Winter Olympics, scheduled for February 2014. Primarily Chechen-based terrorists will likely seek to exploit the extensive worldwide media attention associated with such events, which are located close to the North Caucasus.

In response, Russia’s security services will be bolstering their counterterrorism measures in the North Caucasus republics and the regions where the Winter Olympics will be played, as well as in other parts of the country.

About the Author Dr. Joshua Sinai is a Washington, DC consultant on counterterrorism studies. He is the author of “Active Shooter – A Handbook on Prevention” (ASIS International, 2013). He can be reached at: Joshua.sinai@comcast.net.

The Terrorist Threats Against China And Its Counterterrorism Responses

By Dr. Joshua SinaiSinai

T

Armed police officers patrol an ethnic Uighur area in Kashgar, in Xinjiang province. The biggest threat to China’s grip on its ethnically divided far western frontier comes from homegrown anger exploding in violence, not from Pakistan-based terrorists officials have blamed for the latest bloodshed. China said ringleaders of the separatist “East Turkestan Islamic Movement” (ETIM) who trained in Pakistan orchestrated the assault that killed six in Kashgar city, Xinjiang region, where many Muslim Uighurs resent the presence of Han Chinese people. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

he People’s Republic of China (PRC) is known for its advanced military and cyber warfare capabilities, but, on a much smaller scale, it faces significant low-level terrorist threats by domestic groups that require considerable government resources to counter. The primary terrorist threat comes from extremist elements among the Muslim Uighur population in the Xinjiang autonomous province in the form of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Such terrorist threats are expected to escalate in the coming years, with the outbreak of the Arab Spring in early 2011 and continuous upheaval in neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan serving to exacerbate the unrest among China’s Muslim Uighur population.

The Terrorist Threats For China, the primary terrorist threat is presented by a minority of extremist elements among the country’s Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim community, who consider their region of East Turkistan as part of their historical links to Central Asia. Historically, the Uighurs (meaning “allied”) were an important trade link as

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“middlemen” between China and the rest of the world, as they lived along the legendary Silk Road, with many working as caravan drivers transporting Chinese goods. In the current period, however, many Uighurs consider China’s presence in their northwestern autonomous province of Xinjiang as a form of colonialism, triggered in part by the large migrations of the ethnically Han Chinese to the region, who now constitute an estimated 40 percent (or higher) of the local population (after

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constituting some 6.7 percent in 1949). Thus, of the province’s estimated population of 22 million, approximately 10-11 million are Uighurs and 8.5 million are Hans (with smaller ethnic minorities also living in the province). Tensions between the two communities have escalated over the years, due to factors ranging from the Hans being better off economically, charges that China has attempted to refashion the Uighurs’ cultural and religious identity, and the country’s intolerance of any ex-

pression of political dissent. In response, China’s official policy is that it respects ethnic minorities and has greatly improved the quality of life in the province by raising its economic, public health, and education levels, although this has not satisfied the Uighur community. Nevertheless, since the early 1990s, Uighur discontent has sparked separatist movements for independence, led by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which has emerged as the primary terrorist group threatening China and has conducted numerous attacks against the country.

The Chinese government claims (with some justification) that ETIM is linked to al Qaida and that its operatives have received training in jihadi camps in Pakistan. It is also reported that ETIM fighters are linked to the Pakistani Taliban in Pakistan’s northwestern regions along the Afghan border. It is known that in the 1980s and 1990s many Uighur militants had traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan,

Chinese citizens operating in dangerous conflict zones around the world are also subject to terrorist attacks, especially when they happen to be in areas targeted by local terrorist groups. In one such example, in June 2013 an alleged Taliban attack in the northern Pakistan area of Gilgit-Baltistan caused eleven fatalities, including two Chinese citizens (it is not known if the Chinese citizens were part of the intended targets). The attack’s chief plotter was reportedly arrested in early September of that year by Pakistani authorities.

ernments of neighboring countries where ETIM militants find support and safe haven.

Counterterrorism Measures

China’s counterterrorism measures are conducted by the government’s security, intelligence and military agencies, which are led by the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and their paramilitary police and internal security forces, including the border defense force, which also playing a role in protecting the country’s borders, especially in Xinjiang, against infiltration by terrorist networks associated with the ETIM.

China is the world’s largest one-party state, with a population estimated at 1.35 billion. As a one-party state, maintaining internal security is a top priority for Chinese national security planners. As a result, the country’s national security is protected by a variety of governmental intelligence, law enforcement, and military organizations. Protecting the

In addition to its role in foreign intelligence, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) is the country’s primary domestic intelligence and security agency. It monitors domestic political dissidents (in its role as a secret police) and operates the system of Public Security Bureaus, which are equivalent to police forces or police

China is the world’s largest one-party state, with a population estimated at 1.35 billion. As a one-party state, maintaining internal security is a top priority for Chinese national security planners. As a result, the country’s national security is protected by a variety of governmental intelligence, law enforcement, and military organizations.

where they were exposed to Islamist extremism, whether via madrassas, the Taliban, or the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Since then many ETIM militants have slipped in and out of Xinjiang into neighboring countries where Islamist terrorist groups operate.

stations, which conduct criminal investigations, border control, public order, and counter-terrorism.

The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) administers the country’s provincial and local police departments. In counterterrorism, Unit 8341 General Security Regiment provides security for government buildings and personnel, and conducts counterintelligence and antiterrorism operations. The special police force and intelligence unit is maintained by the General Staff Department.

Significant ETIM-linked terrorist incidents include the February 1992 bus bombings in Urumqi, in which 3 civilians were killed and 29 wounded; an attack in August 2008, shortly before the Beijing Olympics, in which 16 military police personnel were killed; and an attack in February 2012 in which an estimated dozen people were killed near China’s border with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

In an additional incident, on April 23, 2013 a religiously extremist-inspired clash with police resulted in the death of 21 people in the Uighur area of Kashgar, in the northwest province of Xinjiang. Nineteen suspects were arrested, along with what were described as homemade explosives, weapons, and flags of the separatist ‘East Turkistan’ state.

Multilateral and Bilateral Counterterrorism Cooperation

country against terrorism is a tiny sub-component of China’s extensive overall expenditures on national security, with most resources devoted to protecting against military threats by adversary countries. China’s counterterrorism program consists of the full range of government intelligence and security responses, including establishing cooperative bilateral relationships with the gov-

An important component of China’s counterterrorism program is the establishment of counterterrorism cooperation programs with international and regional organizations, as well bilateral ties with allied states. China cooperates with United Nations counterterrorism bodies and is one of the founding members of the Global Counterterrorism Forum and the International Center for Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism, which was established in Abu Dhabi (see

TSG Intel Brief, February 18, 2013). China also participates in regional workshops held throughout Asia on countering terrorist funding. It also conducts joint counterterrorism training exercises with allied countries, such as Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Thailand.

Since Xinjiang shares borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and some of these countries include minority communities of Uighurs, China has cultivated close diplomatic ties with these neighbors – most notably through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. With many of these neighbors facing their own threats

counterterrorism in the Ministry of External Affairs, and the Chinese delegation was led by Qiu Guohong, Director General of the Department of External Security Affairs in the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

China – Pakistan CT Cooperation With China concerned about ETIM’s links to insurgent groups in Pakistan, where some ETIM operatives have also found sanctuary, Beijing and Islamabad have established strong cooperative relations in counterterrorism through numerous programs intended to eliminate the ties between Uighur separatists and Pakistanbased Islamist militant groups. China has also sought Islamabad’s support in ensuring the security of Chinese

China is cognizant that a potentially unstable Pakistan would increase the anti-regime activities of its Islamist militants (who are also linked to ETIM), so Beijing provides extensive assistance to upgrade Islamabad’s counter-terrorisms capabilities. by militant Islamist groups, they have been generally cooperative. As an example, in August 2006, Uzbekistan extradited a Canadian citizen of Uighur ethnicity to China, where he was convicted for alleged involvement in ETIM activities.

China – India CT Cooperation Despite their historical enmity and the Sino-Pakistani alliance, China also cooperates with India in joint counterterrorism initiatives. Interestingly, one of the reasons for such cooperation is that both China and India (although for separate reasons), face domestic terrorist insurgencies that have some connections to Pakistan’s Islamist insurgent groups. In a recent example of such cooperation, in mid-April 2013 both countries held their annual dialogue on counterterrorism, with the Indian delegation led by Navtej Sarna, the Additional Secretary in charge of

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personnel working in Pakistan, with several Chinese nationals killed in Pakistan since 2004.

Pakistan has assisted China’s counterterrorism efforts in several ways.

In October 2004 the Pakistani army killed Hasan Mahsum, an ETIM leader, with Pakistani security forces arresting and extraditing numerous Uighur militants in Pakistan since then. In addition, effective coordination of the two countries’ intelligence services and Pakistan’s pre-emptive security measures against ETIM have prevented several potential operations by the group, including a plot (in collaboration with Pakistani operatives) to kidnap Chinese diplomats in Islamabad during the Beijing Olympic games in 2008 and also at the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic in 2009.

In another form of support, the Pakistani government has endorsed China’s policies on Xinjiang, includ-

ing Beijing’s crackdown during the July 2009 riots in the province, in which some 200 people were killed.

China is cognizant that a potentially unstable Pakistan would increase the anti-regime activities of its Islamist militants (who are also linked to ETIM), so Beijing provides extensive assistance to upgrade Islamabad’s counter-terrorisms capabilities. China has ensured that Islamabad is an Observer member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, where the two countries discuss, among other issues, the threat of terrorism. Beijing has also provided several hundred million dollars in counterterrorism assistance to Islamabad in recent years, including airport and border control scanning equipment, as well as anti-terrorism training to Pakistani police officers. Several joint antiterrorism exercises have been held by both countries.

In another component of China’s diplomacy with Pakistan on counterterrorism, Beijing has engaged with Pakistan’s religious parties, recognizing their potentially moderating influence on jihadi elements in Xinjiang. This led to visits to China of the pro-Taliban Qazi Hussain of the JI and Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman of the JUI, who spoke highly of SinoPakistan relations.

China – U.S. CT Cooperation

Cooperation in counterterrorism between China and the United States increased following 9/11, as the Bush Administration sought Beijing’s cooperation in the campaign against al Qaeda and the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban. In August 2002, Washington designated ETIM as a terrorist organization. However, tensions have broken out between the two countries over several disputes, such as the U.S. refusal in May 2006 to hand over five Uighurs who had been captured by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2001 (and held in Guantanamo Bay) despite Chinese requests for their extradition, with four of them eventually resettled in Bermuda.

China – Israel CT Cooperation Despite Beijing’s close military ties with Tehran, China and Israel share

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similar interests in thwarting terrorism, with security leaders from both countries conducting numerous bilateral meetings. Since Israel is effective at managing its own domestic security, in December 2011, for example, Israel’s paramilitary Border Police unit hosted a delegation from China’s police force, with the Chinese cadets instructed in counterterrorism, including “dealing with disturbances” (with Israeli officials stating that such training included a human rights component that emphasized “the principle of proportionate use of force”).

Conclusion While it is difficult for outside observers to assess the full magnitude of the terrorist threat represented

by ETIM, since the numbers and lethality caused by such incidents cannot be independently verified, it can generally be assumed that the Chinese government’s extensive intelligence and security apparatus has it under manageable control, resulting in a substantial decrease in such incidents since the 1990s, when they were at their highest. As a result, no significant ETIM-related terrorist incidents are likely in the short-term.

Nevertheless, although not a likely proximate cause for ETIM-related terrorism in the long-term, one of the vulnerabilities of China’s exponential economic growth over the years is that, despite rising per capita incomes and living standards for its citizens, the country’s one-party state is unchanged, leading to a rise in popular protest, which is requiring Beijing to expend extensive resources to maintain domestic security for the longterm. Finally, the precarious situation in Afghanistan, following the 2014 pullout of U.S. and NATO forces, with the Taliban as well as al Qaida likely to challenge the Hamid Karzai regime in Kabul, is of great concern to China because the ETIM may feel emboldened if the Taliban and al Qaida gain strength in Afghanistan.

About the Author Dr. Joshua Sinai is a Washington, DC consultant on counterterrorism studies.

He is the author of “Active Shooter – A Handbook on Prevention” (ASIS International, 2013). He can be reached at: Joshua.sinai@comcast.net.

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Dual JSOC Operations Meet With Mixed Success Dr. Thomas B. Hunter

ARMY.MIL

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I

ntroduction

Activated in 1980, the Joint Special Operations Command, better known as JSOC, is a sub-unified command of the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). It stands apart from SOCOM, however, in that the units assigned to JSOC are most notable as the country’s “Tier One” units. These include, but are not limited to the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta (“Delta Force”) and U.S. Navy’s Naval Special Warfare Development Group (known more commonly as “SEAL Team Six” or “Dev Group”).

JSOC has and is regularly called on to conduct some of the military’s most complex and high-risk operations, with such historical examples as the following: • (1980) Operation Eagle Claw (“Desert One”): the attempted rescue of American hostages in Iran, • (1983) Operation Urgent Fury: the rescue of American and other civilians from the island of Grenada, • (1989) Operation Just Cause: the rescue of imprisoned alleged American CIA operative Kurt Muse (Operation Acid Gambit), and the attempted capture of wanted Gen. Manuel Noriega (later Operation Nifty Package), • (1993) Operation Gothic Serpent: the failed attempt to capture warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, • And scores of operations (some ongoing) conducted to support ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet, despite JSOC’s long operational history, never has it been called on to conduct more operations worldwide than following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in September 2001. Since then, JSOC has seen its personnel numbers and its operational budget increase dramatically, in order to meet the new and growing threat. Many operations have since become public knowledge; however, the vast majority of its actions are conducted covertly (known popularly as “black ops”), and therefore will likely never become public knowledge.

Recently, however, a number of operations have been made public by both the White House and the Department of Defense, with the result being the publication of news articles, books, and even several Hollywood movies. Such was the case in early

October 2013 when it was revealed in the press and by the Pentagon that JSOC’s two primary Tier One units had conducted nearsimultaneous operations, both with similar goals: the capture or killing of wanted senior terrorists. The following is intended to provide overviews of these two operations, outlining their successes and failures.

Delta Force: Capture of Abu Anas al-Libi Tripoli, Libya 05 October 2013 In the early morning hours of 05 October, a team of Delta Force operators conducted a covert operation to capture senior Al Qaeda planner Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai (though better known by his Al Qaeda alias Abu Anas al-Libi). Al-Libi had previously been indicted in the Southern District of New York, according to the Department of Defense, ”in connection with his alleged role in Al Qaeda’s conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and to conduct attacks against U.S. interests worldwide, which included Al

Qaeda plots to attack U.S. forces stationed in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Somalia, as well as the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.”

Given the high-level nature of the target, and the covert nature of operation and the forces that would be assigned to carry it out, the operation was approved at the highest level. Following a series of briefings provided by the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and JSOC senior commanders detailing the suspected location and crimes committed by al-Libi, President Obama authorized JSOC to conduct a covert action to apprehend the long-wanted senior terrorist. It had been made clear that this action would be carried out across the Libyan border in order to reach the terrorist’s known safe house.

Following the approval of the operation, a Delta Force squadron, already located in the region due to prior activities in the area, was assigned the mission of apprehending al-Libi.

Al-Libi was known to be hiding in the Libyan capital of Tripoli; a fact confirmed

ince then, JSOC has seen its personnel numbers and its operational budget increase dramatically, in order to meet the new and growing threat.

Many operations have since become public knowledge; however, the vast majority of its actions are conducted covertly (known popularly as “black ops”), and therefore will likely never become public knowledge.

SEAL Team Six: Attempted Capture of Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr Barawa, Somalia 05 October 2013

by multiple clandestine and covert military and CIA assets (likely including assets from the highly classified Special Activities Division, which works frequently with JSOC assets), as well as NSA communications intercepts.

Once his location had been confirmed, the joint operation was undertaken in the early morning hours, in order to maximize the element of surprise. Delta commandos, clad in face masks (balaclavas), burst into al-Libi’s home. Such was the level of surprise that the operators did not need to fire on the home’s inhabitants, and quickly subdued al-Libi.

It has been alleged that the operators then administered an unspecified sedative to their captured quarry (a common technique in such high risk actions, particularly in densely populated locations), in order to make his extraction less combative, and the team’s exfiltration less prone to counterattack by any allies of al-Libi who might be awoken by the commotion and decide to fire on the extraction team.

This did not transpire, and the team was able to extract safely and without incident.

Following their exit from the city, Anas was then taken to a classified U.S. military location outside of Libya (typically a US warship operating offshore) for immediate interrogation and eventual processing for federal prosecution. No Delta Force or other JSOC personnel were killed or injured, nor were any Libyan civilians harmed during the action, thus suggesting that this covert action was a complete success.

The Libyan government quickly issued a denial of any knowledge of the operation termed it a “kidnapping,” and demanded an explanation from the White House.

The U.S. government’s response came from Secretary of State Kerry, who stated, “We hope that this makes clear that the United States of America will never stop in the ffort to hold those accountable who conduct acts of terror.” He added, “Members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations literally can run but they can’t hide.”

Al-Shabaab is a Somalia-based terrorist organization, closely affiliated with al-Qaeda.

It has conducted dozens, if not hundreds, of terrorist attacks of all types, and therefore has in recent years (dating back at least to 2006) become the most feared terrorist group in the Horn of Africa. Given its shared anti-American ideology, al-Shabaab has been active in its efforts to combat American and United Nations forces operating in the region. For these reasons, senior group leader Ahmed Godane (alias Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr) was placed on the U.S. wanted list – a task assigned to JSOC.

NAVY.MIL

At approximately 2:00am local time, the assault element of the SEAL team approached the beach in small boats with noisebaffled engines to reduce sound emissions.

Specifically, his location had been determined to be a two-story villa located only approximately 200 meters from the water’s edge, and notably near the town mosque. Therefore, given the littoral nature of the target location, the task of apprehending the terrorist was assigned to the Navy’s elite maritime commandos, SEAL Team Six, elements of which were also located in the Horn of Africa, due to the requirements of ongoing operations.

NAVY.MIL

At approximately 2:00am local time, the assault element of the SEAL team approached the beach in small boats with noise-baffled engines to reduce sound emissions. Once on shore, they proceeded to the villa compound without arousing the suspicions of the terrorist’s guards, who were apparently alert and vigilant against any potential assault. To further enhance their stealth, the SEALs were largely equipped with suppressed weapons.

Yes, while Delta’s operation resulted in this successful capture of a wanted terrorist, with no injury or loss of life, it’s maritime counterpart, SEAL Team Six, did not experience equal beneficial consequences.

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Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

Like al-Libi, U.S. and allied military and intelligence services, working together, were able to pinpoint Zubeyr’s location to a seaside village known as Barawa, approximately 180km south of Somalia. Barawa, a fishing village of some 200,000 inhabitants, was widely known as an al-Shabaab sanctuary.

The terrorist group rules the town according to its own Islamic Sharia laws, a reality accepted by the town’s inhabitants who are unable and unwilling to contest this reality.

Despite this, and precisely how the team was discovered has not been made public; however, press reporting indicates that the Vol.19, No.4

commandos may simply have been noticed by civilians who were simply wandering around the area, conducting their usual nightly routines.

The SEALs managed to enter the terrorist’s compound and split into two elements. According to open source reporting, at least six SEALs entered the villa and opened fire, killing one al-Shabaab terrorist. Another element remained outside to provide security for the entry team and to assist in the extraction to the beach, eliminating any guards as necessary.

Now alerted to the assault, the terrorist leader’s guards and the SEALs exchanged gunfire, resulting in an ever-widening running gun battle. It quickly became clear to the SEALs that their hopes of quietly extracting Zubeyr were now impossible. Moreover, the SEALs noted that an unexpectedly large number of civilians, to include children, were either already present at the location, or were being drawn to it by ongoing commotion. This information was relayed to by the SEALs to the command element, and it was at this time that the Navy commander gave the order for SEAL Team Six to withdraw, without having located its quarry. The risks for collateral

damage were too high and increasing as the fighting became more focused on the area near the terrorist’s seaside villa.

Given this order, the SEALs conducted a fighting withdrawal from the scene and made a hasty withdrawal to the waiting small boats.

From there, they managed to extract from the beach and make their way back to the safety of a waiting nearby US warship.

Conclusions These two examples provide an excellent example of the highly fluid, dangerous, and covert nature of the operations conducted on a routine basis by the teams that fall under JSOC command. Success, while enjoyed by Delta Force during its operations, was denied to SEAL Team Six owing to factors as simple as civilians simply going about their daily lives. It is these myriad dynamics that make JSOC (and its often attached CIA operators) the true tip of the spear when conducting counterterrorist operations in defense of the nation. Recent successes, such as the killing of Osama bin Ladin, have been tempered by such tragedies as the downing of the US Army CH-47 Chinook weeks later that killed

(among many other US and Afghan personnel) 15 operatives from SEAL Team Six’s Gold Squadron. Yet, the men of JSOC’s Tier One units continue to wage America’s covert war against terrorism, despite the risks inherent in their unique mission set.

About the Author Dr. Hunter is a former senior intelligence analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), focusing on terrorist tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP). He has published numerous articles on topics relating to civilian and military special operations, counterterrorism, and hostage rescue. He has also published an introductory book on international targeted killing operations entitled Targeted Killing: Self-Defense, Pre-emption, and the War on Terrorism.

References: It should be noted, that for Operational Security (OPSEC) reasons, these names are changed on occasion in order to preserve their covert nature and to help defeat both friendly and enemy identification of these units, particularly when deployed overseas. 2 Statement by Pentagon Press Secretary George Little on the Capture of Abu Anas al Libi, October 06, 2013. http://www. defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=16294 3 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ africaandindianocean/libya/10359895/Libya-asks-US-for-explanation-over-arrest-ofal-Qaeda-leader.html

Germany’s BKA (FBI equivalent) Is Active Against Terrorism

By Jim Weiss and Mickey Davis

A BKA officer works on voice identification in an investigation case. (Photo courtesy of Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt, BKA)

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G

ermany’s Bundeskriminalamt, Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA), is not as large and as powerful as the U.S.A.’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, but it is active against terrorism in addition to its other federal police duties.

The basis for authorizing the BKA are laid out in Germany’s constitution called Basic Law (originated as West Germany’s constitutional equivalent).

The Bundespolizei is Germany’s primary federal police force. Under the German constitution, each of the 16 federal states of Germany has the right to police itself. Because of this, each state has its own state police force.

BKA’s Mandate According to the BKA (“The Bundeskriminalamt the Profile”), it is a subordinate agency to the Federal Ministry of the Interior and an essential part of a comprehensive system of crime control in partnership with the law enforcement forces of the federal government and the 16 individual German states. It also helps police forces in the German states avoid duplication of effort.

To co-ordinate crime suppression at national and international levels, the BKA was established as the central office for police information and communications, as well as for the German Criminal Investigation Division (CID).

By acting as an information and communications center, the BKA provides support to the federal and state police forces to prevent and prosecute crimes involving more than one German state, or those of international or otherwise considerable significance.

A number of centralized systems and facilities for the German police are maintained at the BKA. All important reports about criminal offences and perpetrators not of a strictly local or regional nature are sent to the BKA and analyzed there. This is also where the most important police messages come together. New crime tactics are investigated

and developed at that location to ensure that the police are always state-of-the-art in terms of science and technology.

Data received at the BKA is stored in electronic databases.

These are subject to strict data

the German police provides a dependable response.

The laboratories at the BKA are state-of-the-art. From using physics, chemistry, or biology to recover physical evidence from items used to commit

The BKA can also conduct investigations of internationally organized trafficking in weapons, ammunition, explosives, drugs, counterfeit currency, money laundering, organized terrorism, and serious cases of computer sabotage.

protection provisions; compliance is monitored by the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection on a regular basis.

The central computer is used for searches by the German police. Whether information is needed by patrol officers on local streets, or by border control officers at a German airport, the computerized search system of

crimes, to comparing firearms or analyzing speech, the staff of the BKA is familiar with all of the modern methods of investigation. Upon request, it also prepares expert opinion in the fields of identification and forensic science for the police and judicial authorities.

Besides its function as a central agency, the BKA also has

to carry out law enforcement tasks in certain cases of international and serious crime.

Highly qualified specialists from the BKA can quickly be sent to crime scenes in Germany and other countries, and the BKA staff, who have gained experience all over the world, participate in explosives and incendiary investigations, crime scene investigations, and person identification.

The BKA can also conduct investigations of internationally organized trafficking in weapons, ammunition, explosives, drugs, counterfeit currency, money laundering, organized terrorism, and serious cases of computer sabotage.

If a German citizen is kidnapped or taken hostage in a foreign country, the BKA will also deal with the case, provided that a competent state police agency has not yet been determined in Germany.

History Post-World War II, the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation or BKA--a federal equivalent to our FBI--was created.

In 1951, the Federal Border Protection Force (Bundesgrenzshutz or BGS) with 10,000 police officers was established.

Later, it took over the German Passport Control Service. BGS

later became the backbone of a reorganized federal police force that is known as German Federal Police, Bundespolizei, or BPOL. Neither Germany’s Federal Police nor the BKA have the power to call up the state police forces of the individual federal states, but such help can be requested.

A home-grown German terrorist unit, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and its era added to the growth of the BKA. Until then, the BKA had been a relatively small agency coordinating the efforts West Germany’s 11 state police forces, 18 years before Germany became unified.

Today the BKA’s main support comes from the German Federal Police. When special attention is needed in the field to make arrests, serve warrants, and take part in other dangerous law enforcement activities, one of the world’s earliest and best known counter terrorism units, GSG-9 of the BPOL, is often called in to perform special operations/ SWAT-type work. (The massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics led to the formation of GSG-9 in 1973.) The Baader-Meinhof Gang -- Also during this period, the German terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang-also known as the Red Army Faction (RAF)--operated. Human Intelligence and combined police efforts disrupted the gang’s terrorist activities, and led to the arrest of its leaders in 1972. Leadership in these efforts is attributed Horst Herold and Alfred Klaus of the BKA. According to Kriminalhauptkommissar (Senior Captain, detective) Peter Ammon of the Bavarian State Police, since 1990 the German Secret Service (Federal Intelligence Service, Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND) successfully used an undercover agent to infiltrate the members of the RAF. Orders came from BKA leaders to arrest two members of the terrorist organization: Wolfgang Grams and Birgit Hogefeld. The

34

During the visit of a foreign government leader on invitation from the chancellor, security with police motorcycle escorts were provided. The protected VIP is in the black limo behind the police motorcycles, and the BKA officers are in the black Mercedes Benz with blue light; they are on their way to or from the airport. (Photo courtesy of Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt, BKA)

GermanPolBKABundes19a. A Bundespolize police officer checks the identification of man whose activities attracted her partner’s and her attention.

The central BKA computer is used for identification and other police information on such data searches by the German police. Whether information is needed by patrol officers on local streets, or by border control officers at a German airport, the computerized search system of the German police provides a dependable response.

The laboratories at the BKA are state-of-the-art.

From using physics, chemistry, or biology to recover physical evidence from items used to commit crimes, to comparing firearms or analyzing speech, the staff of the BKA is familiar with all of the modern methods of investigation. Upon request, it also prepares expert opinion in the fields of identification and forensic science for the police and judicial authorities. (Photo courtesy of Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt, BKA)

task fell to members of GSG-9.

The arrest was to take place at a rural railroad station in Bad Kleinen in June 1993.

telephone and Internet communications. BKA investigators, supported by GSG-9, arrested a terrorist cell of three Muslim extremists who had wanted to build a bomb capable of killing as many people as possible.

BKA, Nuts and Bolts

Due to the terrain, it was feared a large-scale police operation might be discovered. The number of officers was reduced, and the command decision was not to wear their ballistic vests.

As the arrests were being made, terrorist Grams shot two police officers, killing GSG-9 Polizeikommissar (Police Lieutenant) Michael Newrzella. Officers reported that Grams suddenly fell backward from the train station’s platform onto the railroad tracks and fatally shot himself in the head. Allegations were that the police had shot Grams, but five different courts ruled in favor of the police version of Grams’s death, including the European Court of Human Rights in 1999.

The BKA today -- In 2004, the BKA set up the Joint AntiTerrorism Centre in Berlin, and in 2005, the “International Coordination” Division. In 2007, the anti-terror database went into operation, and in 2009 there was an expansion of the laws governing the BKA to include averting dangers from international terrorism. BND, the German Secret Service, monitors

In another case, the BKA, in collaboration with the U.S.A.’s CIA, NSA, and Germany’s federal home secret service (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), discovered extensive terrorist email activity taking place between Germany and Pakistan. A member of a terrorist cell who had been under observation since 2006 was seen suspiciously observing a U.S. Air Force base in Hanau.

The investigation led to a rented house where the terrorists had amassed 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide and military-grade detonators from Syria.

In 2007, a conversation was overheard mentioning targeting a disco that was usually filled with soldiers. A ninemonth investigation followed, involving the activities of a gang of 300. In a joint BKA/ GSG-9 operation, they found the location where the terrorists had stored a hydrogen peroxide mixture and 26 military-grade detonators, and were attempting to build car bombs for “American sluts.”

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Training -- The selection, training, and rank structure of BKA officers is somewhat similar to training programs of the 16 federal state police forces and the federal police (Bundespolizei). After three years of basic police-style training, graduates begin their careers with the rank of Kriminalkommissare (KK) (detective lieutenant).

The basic training course begins with six months of law study (law theory) at a federal law university.

The second semester they spend with the BKA learning about various kinds of crime.

The third semester, under the guidance of a training officer and after going through a firearms training program, they are involved in practical study with a local Criminal Investigation Division (CID), such as CID Nuremberg of the Bavarian State Police. The fourth semester is a theoretical study about special crimes such as organized crime, business crime, drug trafficking crime, internet crime and political crime. International police cooperation (legal assistance) is also a very important topic during this time, In their fifth semester, the BKA officers-in-training work in other practical studies within the BKA. During the sixth semester they write their bachelor’s thesis

During the visit of a foreign government leader on invitation from the chancellor, security escorts were provided. BKA officers are in the black Mercedes Benz car with a blue light on the roof. Such BKA officers are members of the Close Protection Group which protects the members of Germany’s constitutional bodies and their foreign guests of state. These BKA officers are the most visible part of BKA, providing around-the- clock, 24 hour protection. (Photo courtesy of Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt, BKA)

In both Sri Lanka and Thailand BKA officers were sent after the tsunami catastrophe, to identify the bodies of German tourists.

This photo was taken by a BKA officer in Thailand. (Photo courtesy of Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt, BKA

The central BKA computer is used for identification searches by the German police. Whether information is needed by patrol officers on local streets, or by border control officers at a German airport, the computerized search system provides a dependable response. These two Bundespolize police officers are checking the identification of man whose activities have attractive their attention. The Bundespolize is Germany’s primary federal police force.

The GSG-9 officer in this photo is seen during the time period where BKA and GSG-9 took down the German terrorist BaaderMeinhof Gang, also known as the Red Army Faction (RAF).

There is no longer a final exam as there was previously. Instead, officers write a paper after every main topic is taught.

Expansion -- The BKA is authorized under the German Constitution (Basic Law) to set up central agencies at the federal level for police information and communications as well as for criminal police work.

co-operation. In the 1970s and 1980s, the terrorist activities of the Red Army Faction influenced its work. Today, besides continuing its battle against terrorism, the BKA concentrates on dealing with the growth of international drug trafficking and the spread of organized crime.

acts as the national central office for Interpol, Europol and the Schengen Information System.

The Schengen Information System is a result of the European agreement involving open borders among the nations participating in the agreement. This helps prevent national borders from becoming an obstacle in the fight against crime. All official communications between the German police and other countries are routed through the BKA. In this way, important information can be compiled and uniform application of legal provisions is ensured.

It is also the possible for an applicant with a university degree in law to become a Kriminalrat (level three, top police administrative/command rank) at once.

Within the BKA there are also technicians/specialists with university degrees in chemistry, physics, biology, or other subjects who become civil servants with a civilian rank.

According to the BKA, the agency’s role and expansion have been closely tied to the national and international development of crime. In its early years, the BKA served as the national central police agency, with the additional role of ensuring international

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 created a great challenge for the BKA as well as for the security agencies at national and international levels. A new state security division of the BKA was developed to strengthen its investigative potential in the fight against international terrorism, and to combat politically-motivated crime.

Further, with the unification of Germany and the beginning of the 21st Century, the BKA faced the challenges of rapid growth in the fields of information and communication technology, something the criminals also use for their own purposes.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 created a great challenge for the BKA as well as for the security agencies at national and international levels. A new state security division of the BKA was developed to strengthen its investigative potential in the fight against international terrorism, and to combat politically-motivated crime.

With the creation of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Centre at the BKA in Berlin, information on international terrorism is collated and analyzed by various agencies.

These measures are supplemented by the newly founded division of International Coordination, with the goal of further improvement of the co-operation with its international partners. The BKA

The BKA now has more than 5,500 employees from 70 different professional groups.

About the Authors Lieut. Jim Weiss (Retired) is a former Army light infantryman, school-trained Army combat engineer, a former schooltrained (regular Army) Army military policeman, former State of Florida Investigator, and a retired police lieutenant from the Brook Park (OH) Police Department.

He has written and co-written hundreds of articles for law enforcement and safety forces magazines, most notably Law and Order.

Mickey (Michele) Davis is an awardwinning, California-based writer and author. Her young adult novel, Evangeline Brown and the Cadillac Motel, won the Swiss Prix Chronos for the German translation. Mickey is the wife of a Vietnam War veteran officer.

Secure Driver:

The Art Of Braking

By Anthony Ricci & Sean McLaine

I

n one of our previous articles, we discussed braking. In this installment, we would like to expand on the topic and show how braking affects our driving in real world situations.

As a security driver, a majority of your time will be spent operating your vehicle in a manner that will make the boss happy. Smooth stops and turns are a must if you expect to keep your job. Occasionally, there will be a request to make time on your way to an event, and whether you oblige is a choice you will have to make yourself.

There may come a time, however, when your principle may be in danger.

If this ever happens, speeding up is not an option . . . it is a necessity that you better be prepared for.

Chances are good that you spend most of your time driving the same routes to the point they are almost memorized. Next time you are traveling these familiar routes, do some critical thinking and look for spots that the road shark can jump up and bite you

36

if you are not prepared. Are there blind curves with a turn close to the exit of the corner? Are there places on a windy road where back–toback curves go in opposite directions? Are there any long, wide straight portions where the width of the road would cause you to feel you aren’t going as fast as you are?

The math example we used in our last article showed how the forces on the car increase with speed. 40X40=1600 and 80X80=6400 which is four times more. We use this to demonstrate that as our car’s speed doubled

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from 40 mph to 80 mph, the forces on the car increase to the point that our braking distance quadruples. It is important to be aware of any long wide roads because in an emergency it is easy to go much faster than you think. Because of this increase in braking distance at higher speed you could easily miss a turn if you did not move your braking point back a substantial distance.

Even ABS and Electronic Stability Control can’t keep you from going off the road if you have your foot to the floor and all four tires screaming.

If you are approaching a curve traveling too fast and you get heavy on the brakes putting you on the edge of control, you have to be very careful with your steering inputs. Let’s break this scenario down into two possibilities.

1) You must, must, MUST, get on the brakes before you turn the wheel. This will set the weight properly on the tires that do the steering. Even under extreme circumstances, you shift the weight in the curve by how much you turn the wheel. This allows you greater feel for the weight shift and better control as opposed to turning and then applying the brakes. The second loads up the side of the car and then the application of the brakes puts all of the car’s weight on the outside front tire.

This could lead to the back bumper leading the way through the rest of the turn.

2) If you are into the turn and you are so hard on the brakes that the front end is just not turning, you will have to let up on the pedal a bit. A very SMALL lift on the pedal will do the trick. If you pop the brake up all the way, again the back bumper might lead the way. With the car off balance and grip being added to the front end, the car will want to turn

more. You may need to relax pressure on the steering wheel a slight amount. The best way to get a feel for this is through a course that specializes in performance driving.

are approaching a crest in the road, or a curve where the road drops away toward the outside of the turn, make sure you do more braking before the road drops away.

Now, let’s say we approach one of those pesky turns I mentioned earlier where there are back to back turns that go in different directions.

If you enter the first turn (let’s say a turn to the left) to quickly, you will get to the end of the turn close to the right side of the road.

When you are on the right side of the road near the center of a right turn, you have to crank the wheel pretty hard to get through the turn between the sidewalks. Choosing a speed that will get you through the first turn may not work for the combination. If you are moving too fast at the end of the first turn, it may be impossible to get the car slow enough to get the car through such a tight right turn.

Lastly, if you are trying to turn onto a side street that is at the end of a curve you may be used to seeing the street before you apply the brakes. At higher speed this may cause you to pass your intended turn. In these instances, you have to plan ahead and apply the brakes before you can see the road to make sure you get to safety.

The slope of the road matters also. If you are traveling up a hill, the grip you get is a combination of the car’s weight down the slope and the weight on all four tires in relation to the car’s vertical axis. Therefore, your braking ability will increase going into an upslope, and decrease on a downward slope. If you

The best thing you can do to help yourself is to have a plan before anything goes wrong.

Another thing to practice, is to increase your speed (to a point that is still within legal limits, yet faster than you would go with the boss) to keep up your skills should the need arise.

Remember, going fast doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t get where you are going.

About the Authors Anthony Ricci is President of ADSI and Sean McLaine is the Lead Instructor at ADSI.

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IACSP University Spotlight

Border University Brings Students Face-To-Face With Homeland Security Issues

By Joseph J. Kolb

E

very day when Alexander Balcazar arrives at the University of Texas at El Paso for classes he can’t help but look south across Interstate 10 and see rows of pastel colored cinderblock houses.

Like so many others in El Paso, Texas, Balcazar too had a long-standing ambivalence of his proximity to the geopolitical, economic, and transnational criminal implications of being so close to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, once known as “The Murder Capital of the World”. That all changed for the 22-year-old Junior Sociology major last summer when he attended the Homeland Security Scholar’s Academy at UTEP.

“I didn’t realize what was occurring along the border, and I live here,” says Balcazar, who has lived in El Paso for 10.

Balcazar is one of a growing number of students who come to El

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Paso each summer to not only experience first- hand the border security experience but to also contribute to solutions by conducting issue specific research.

Started in 2010 as a program sponsored by the National

Center for Border Security and Immigration at UTEP, the academy brings students from around the country to El Paso for a 10-week summer immersion program introducing them to Homeland Security agencies and border issues.

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The unique aspect of this program is not so much passive exposure to a list of agencies that include the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the El Paso Intelligence Center, and Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Opera-

tions, but the opportunity to conduct firsthand research in a homeland security related topic with a UTEP faculty member. The beneficial element of this program is its proximity to real life and real time border issues. Literally walking distance from the UTEP campus, the border fence that separates El Paso from Cd. Juarez is, as Balcazar says, “An eye opening experience.”

understand the goals and operations of DHS agencies, and become aware of career opportunities in DHS,” Victor Talavera, Program Manager, National Center for Border Security & Immigration.

“Scholars work on solving and or providing answers to real world homeland security related challenges and research questions. “

Balcazar, who is looking at a career in public health, said he was shocked at the pervasiveness of child pornography and suffering along the border. On a visit to an immigrant detention center he saw how ironic life on the border can be.

“There was a bus full of migrants being deported back to Mexico and they were staring at us college students on the outside of the bus and we were staring at them; it was very surreal,” he said.

Blacazra’s research project involved an analysis of healthcare disparities among different generations of migrants.

He found that citizenship does have an impact on access to healthcare and the newer an immigrant is to the U.S., the more limited it becomes.

Academy officials are already seeing compelling research stem from this immersion on the border which they hope will strengthen the border as well as eliminate some of the ambiguity that affects policy making for immigration and border security.

“The Homeland Security Scholar’s Academy pilot was developed to provide undergraduates with the opportunity to be involved in research related to homeland security,

“This program prepares this nation’s best and brightest for possible future homeland security related careers,” Talavera says. “It also introduces them to new career possibilities and or the importance of enrolling in graduate programs that addresses a national need for HS-STEM related graduate level expertise.”

Talavera says scholars are expected to gain a better understanding of border security and immigration issues from the strategic location of the Academy on the U.S./Mexico border, their involvement in border security related research, and their exposure to the culture and environment of a major border city with a significant presence of the different DHS components.

“This program prepares this nation’s best and brightest for possible future homeland security related careers,” Talavera says. “It also introduces them to new career possibilities and or the importance of enrolling in graduate programs that addresses a national need for HS-STEM related graduate level expertise.”

Students are provided the opportunity to work on NCBSI research with UTEP professors engaged in new or ongoing research projects that have border security implications. Past projects include Aging & the U.S. Naturalization Exam: Finding Optimal Conditions of Practice for Boosting Older Adult Learning and Recall; Chinese Cyber Warfare: The Threat to the U.S. Government and Commercial Sectors; Data Anonymization that Leads to the Most Accurate Estimates of Statistical Characteristics; Humans for Sale: Modern-

Day Slave Trade Routes; Understanding Hispanic Children’s Respiratory Health on the U.S.-Mexico Border; Ground Penetrating Radar and Tomographic Imaging of the Underground Border; Economic Insecurity Among Immigrants Living Along the Border; The Effect of Religious Primes and Leadership on Conformity and Compliance; Importance of Photographic, Target, and Perceiver Factors in the Perceptual Identification of Own-and Other Race/Ethnicity; Bioterrorism: How Well is the Border Community Informed; and, Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere: Implications for National Security.

Talavera said applications are accepted from undergraduate students from any U.S. college or university. The application package consists of the completion of the formal application, official transcripts, two letters of recommendation from their home institution, and a formal essay. The deadline is usually sometime in March. The email for further information is, ncbsi@utep.edu.

About the Author Joseph J. Kolb is the founder of the undergraduate and graduate Border Security Studies certificate program at Western New Mexico University.

An IACSP Q & A With

David G. Major

Protesters carry portraits of Edward Snowden during a demonstration against secret monitoring programmes PRISM, TEMPORA, INDECT and showing solidarity with whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and others in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg gate July 27, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

(Editor’s Note: David G. Major served in the FBI and rose from a street agent to a senior executive. He specialized in counterintelligence and was involved in nearly all of the major espionage cases of the past 30 years. He recruited, ran and handled agents, double agents and defectors, as well as caught spies. Major also worked against radical groups like the Black Panthers and the KKK.)

M After his retirement from the FBI, Major founded the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, where he provides counterintelligence, counterterrorism and security training for the government and corporate sector.

40

ajor became the first FBI official to be assigned to the National Security Council and he served as the Director, Intelligence and Counterintelligence Programs in 1985 and 1986. He briefed and advised President Ronald Reagan on counterintelligence matters and he was instrumental in an administration counterintelligence effort that led to more than 80 Soviet KGB and GRU officers being expelled from the United States.

Major was named to the original Board of Directors of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. and he remains a current member of the board. He is also a frequent lecturer at the museum.

Major is a graduate of Syracuse University and served as a US Army Captain in the Chemi-

cal Corps and then the Armor Branch from 1966 to 1968.

David G. Major discussed counterintelligence, counterterrorism and national security issues with Paul Davis, an online columnist (Threatcon) and a contributing editor to the Journal.)

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IACSP: When I was doing security work in the Defense Department some years ago, I attended the annual OPSEC (Operations Security) conferences in Washington, D. C. and I recall hearing you speak as an FBI official several times at those conferences. Your talks were always informative and

interesting, so I’m glad we were able to interview you here.

Major: Thanks.

IACSP: You’ve had an inter-

esting FBI career, so to begin; would you give us an overview of your FBI career?

Major: I joined the FBI after

being in the U.S. Army for five years and I was motivated to do counterintelligence. Most people who join the FBI don’t, they want to be cops. But my Vietnam experience showed me that there are kinetic wars and there are the secret wars.

I joined under Hoover, which dates me, and they first sent me to Sarasota, Florida and then I went to Newark, New Jersey. It was one of the best assignments I ever had, because Newark was a playground for spies. There are a huge number of intelligence officers who operate out of the United Nations under diplomatic protection and they often come over to New Jersey, because it is a target-rich environment and it is a great place to conduct operations. I learned my craft there and had the opportunity to go to the very first formal training the FBI did in counterintelligence. It is hard to believe that it took so many years before the FBI finally offered a six-weeklong training course. I also saw some big and interesting cases in Newark. Then I went to the Washington field office and I handled a number of major and significant defectors. I worked recruitment operations, double agent operations, wire taps, surveillance, and all the things you do in counterintelligence.

IACSP: That must have been an interesting time.

Major: After ten years as a

street agent, I was promoted to headquarters, where I was in the counterintelligence training unit. I trained FBI agents how

to do CI and trained the CIA on how to operate in a hostile environment. I had the opportunity to be the very first FBI agent to go to Moscow and walk the streets to look at surveillance being done against our people.

At that time we didn’t have a legat (FBI legal attaché) in Moscow. My assessments turned out to be absolutely true when a defector came to us in 1987 and basically said what the KGB was doing to the CIA was exactly what I predicted they were doing. I later had an opportunity to go to Baltimore and was the supervisor for counterintelligence and counterterrorism in Maryland and Delaware. I was there for the Johnny Walker spy case. When he was arrested they brought him into my office and I remember looking at him and thinking this is the Rudolf Abel and Julius Rosenberg of my generation.

IACSP: Yes, Walker caused a good deal of damage to the U.S. Navy by selling naval communication secrets to the Soviets.

Major: He was bad, but I didn’t know it would get worse.

When I worked in Newark I actually worked with CIA officer Rick Ames in handling a major defector, and it turned out Ames was a spy. And when I was in FBI headquarters before I went to Baltimore, the man right across the hall from me was none other than Bob Hanssen. I also trained Edward Lee Howard to go to Moscow and he too turned out to be a spy.

I’ve been told that the common denominator seems to be me in all these cases (laughs).

IACSP: These spies fooled a lot of people before they were eventually caught.

Major: Because Johnny Walk-

er was such a big case, I went to the White House. I was the first FBI agent ever to be assigned to

He was bad, but I didn’t know it would get worse. When I worked in Newark I actually worked with CIA officer Rick Ames in handling a major defector, and it turned out Ames was a spy.

HANSSEN

AMES

the National Security Council, not as a liaison officer, but as a staff officer, advising President Reagan on counterintelligence and security policy. One of our successes was we did the first and only large, massive expulsion of Soviet KGB and GRU officers from Washington, New York and San Francisco. I later returned to FBI headquarters as an executive overseeing a number of programs. One of the things I saw at the White House was there was no strategic training for counterintelligence. There were case studies but there was no center of excellence to study counterintelligence, so that was my motivation to retire and form the Center of Counterintelligence and Security Studies, which I’ve now been operating for a number of years.

IACSP: What kind of training do you do at the CI Centre?

Major: We’ve trained over 100, 000 people. We train area studies, we train counterintelligence strategy and tactics, counterterrorism strategy and tactics, and we do investigative skills like interviewing and surveillance, and then security awareness kind of things. All of our 55 courses are unclassified. And then we created this database called SPYPEDIA, which is the single most

WALKER

comprehensive database in the world. We track every single espionage case in the world, terrorism attacks as they take place, plus cyber attacks.

IACSP: Is this open to the

public?

Major: It is a membership database at www.spypedia.net.

IACSP: How do Cold War CI programs differ from CI programs in the age of terrorism?

Major: Espionage is espionage

is espionage. Motivation of why people become traitors remains the same. There is nothing new about the insider threat, espionage is always based on an insider threat. Successful espionage does not take place outside the box; it takes place inside the box.

The vast majority have always been volunteers. That has not changed. Two percent of all the cases we’ve seen are blackmail cases. But one thing that has changed is that espionage in the digital world is a new phenomenon. The people are stealing the information digitally, they are transferring the information digitally and that leads to larger volumes of lost information.

IACSP: How serious problem is economic espionage?

Major: We began to get a handle on economic espionage in 1996 when we passed the law on economic espionage. People who do economic espionage tend to be older, and many of them are doing it digitally. The number one target - I find this fascinating - is information technology.

IACSP: Who is committing economic espionage? Is it other countries like China and Russia, or company against company?

Major: Yes and yes. The number one entity conducting economic espionage is China. From 1949 when the revolution was successful until 2000, there were only five people in the United States who were charged with being agents of Chinese intelligence.

The first was charged in 1985.

We’ve gotten better and they have become more aggressive. Up to today, 2013, there have been 121 Chinese espionage cases. The vast majority of those cases are in the private sector. They will steal anything; trade secrets of any kind, not just defense information. If it has value, the Chinese will try and target it and steal it.

IACSP: Anyone else worth mentioning?

Major: Iran is the number one diverter of our technology. They don’t target economic espionage, they don’t try to steal your information, they try to steal your stuff.

IACSP: Are they successful?

Major: Yes. There are 44 cases.

IACSP: A while back I interviewed former CIA officer Gary Berntsen and he said working against the Iranians was like working against the Nazis in World War II. Major: Their intelligence service is very aggressive. They do assassinations. We teach a course on Iranian intelligence.

IACSP: How do CI programs mesh with counterterrorism programs?

Major: There has been an overlap between them. We’ve had cases where the person was trying to support terrorism by conducting espionage. The biggest difference between them is terrorism tends to be someone on the outside trying to attack something on the inside and not necessarily the intelligence community. They are trying to attack society. Since 911, there have been 148 plots, which led to 390 people being arrested.

The CI and the CT methodology

I recall some years ago the British police raided an apartment in Manchester and came across an al Qaeda training manual and one of the chapters was called “The Spy Is An Eye.” In the manual al Qaeda told their terrorists that they had to first be a spy.

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of investigating them - with one who wants to steal your stuff, and the other one wants to blow you up - are very similar. One of the things that overlap are the great techniques that evolved over the years in the CI business called the “false flag” case, where you find someone is a clandestine agent and for one reason or another they are not active. So the government uses a false flag to try to reactivate them. That has been a useful tool. That tool has also been used extensively in the counterterrorism business.

IACSP: Thankfully, they have been successful.

Major: When people ask me about the Boston Marathon attack, I say when Boston went bang, my first reaction was that we’ve been lucky. Because there have been over 50 cases just like Boston where the person was interdicted. We watch and track these cases, but the average American is not aware of them, so they see Boston and say Oh, my God! After Boston, people asked how come the government didn’t know about this guy who had been on the Internet and posted a youtube? And then Edward Snowden leaks NSA information and the same people ask why we are monitoring the Internet? You can’t have it both ways.

IACSP: Good point. I recall some years ago the British police raided an apartment in Manchester and came across an al Qaeda training manual and one of the chapters was called “The Spy Is An Eye.” In the manual al Qaeda told their terrorists that they had to first be a spy.

Major: Every good terrorist attack is predicated by good intelligence collection. Overt sources and covert sources if you can, that’s what they say in their manual. It is an intelligence mission, but instead of stealing something,

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they just blow it up. So using the same good CI techniques, you’re targeting an intelligence collector.

IIACSP: What is your take on the Edward Snowden case? Is he a spy or just a leaker?

Major: No, he is not a leaker.

Snowden has so closed the line that it is shameful that anyone claim he is a whistleblower. It is premeditated espionage. He presents himself as someone who went to work for NSA and, oh, my God, I’m so shocked at what NSA is doing to its own people.

So he becomes a whistleblower.

But as the story unfolds, he doesn’t just talk about NSA is doing against American citizens, he then starts talking about what NSA is doing world-wide. He says he joined Booze Allen and NSA to steal the secrets. That is premeditated espionage.

IACSP: Like a straight penetration agent.

Major: Absolutely! Then he starts revealing some very sensitive foreign intelligence operations.

There is no limit to what this man will give up. He gives up the black budget and the Washington Post publishes it, there is nothing in there that is relevant to whistle blowing. It is pure espionage.

This has nothing to do with civil rights and people who say it does has nothing about the intelligence business.

IACSP: I find it curious that he’s talking about freedom and then he goes to the most oppressive governments in the world, the Chinese and the Russians.

Major: He is in a very dangerous position now, because he has very little value. He provided his value, so now he is a burden. He is a man without a country.

IACSP: Thank you for speaking to us.

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The Hunt For “Che”

A Look Back At The Hunt And Capture Of The World’s Most Famous Revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara

By Paul Davis

L

ong before the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the U.S. hunted and helped capture another notorious enemy - Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Argentine doctor and Communist revolutionary, who joined Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution and helped run the post-revolutionary government, was an ardent critic and foe of the United States.

“Many, many Vietnams,” Guevara proclaimed in the 1960s. “Two dozen Vietnams is our goal.”

Guevara called for Communist revolutions throughout the Third World. He noted that as the U.S. was involved in military action in Vietnam, they would be

44

overwhelmed with combating multiple insurgencies around the world.

America, he said, would retreat from its role as the anti-communist world policeman, leaving the Third World to become Communist.

In the 1960s, Guevara, along with Castro, was a hero to Communists, Socialists, left-wing students, intellectuals and entertainers, and the U.S. was concerned with his influence. After he disappeared from Cuba after renouncing his Cuban citizenship, the U.S. was worried about where he would end up.

He ended up in Bolivia.

How the U.S. helped hunt and capture Guevara in Bolivia is detailed in a book called “Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World’s Most Famous Revolutionary.” The book was written by veteran journalists Mitch Weiss and Kevin Maurer.

In a recent interview with coauthor Mitch Weiss, he said he noted that very little was written about the Green Beret mission to Bolivia.

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“Usually it was a paragraph or two in a book about Che, saying the Green Berets went down there and trained the Bolivians,” Weiss said.

“For the most part, every book was centered on Che and didn’t focus on the Green Berets or the Bolivians.”

Weiss and Maurer based their book on extensive interviews with key members of the Green Berets tasked with training the Bolivian Rangers for the hunt, the Ranger officer who captured Che Guevara, and the CIA operative sent to gather intelligence for the Bolivian unit.

They also reviewed numerous

documents, government records, books on Guevara and Guevara’s own writings.

Weiss, an investigative journalist for the Associated Press, won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, and he is also the co-author, along with Maurer, of another book about Green Berets, called “No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan.”

Weiss said he and his co-author saw the Che hunt as a classic mission, a traditional Green Beret kind of mission, where they trained foreign troops and then those troops went out and did the fighting. Except in this case, those troops were after a world-famous revolutionary.

“Che was “Revolutionary Chic,” Weiss said. “He was young, handsome, articulate and a terrific writer,” Weiss said. “In his green fatigues, his scraggly beard, the beret he wore – he looked like a revolutionary.”

Weiss went on to say that Guevara’s writings appealed to many people in the 1960s who believed that wealth should be distributed and that the U.S. was imperialist.

“He had that kind of appeal,” Weiss said. “But Che was also the guy who killed people, exported revolution, and took land from people. There were two Che Guevaras.”

When Castro took over Cuba on January 1, 1959, Weiss said Guevara had Castro’s ear. He was his spiritual advisor, so to speak. One of the first things Castro did was to appoint Guevara to command La Cabana, where he oversaw trials and executions.

As Weiss and Maurer note in their book, it was a bloodbath.

Guevara later held various positions in the government, including the head of the economy. Then Guevara became a globe-trotting ambassador for the Cuban Revolution.

“His theory was that they should be exporting Cuban-style revolution,” Weiss said. “The Soviets at the time believed that conditions had to be right and the Communist Party had to lead the revolution, but Che believed that you could take a small group of men, put them in a rural area and get the support of the farmers and people, and they could lead the revolution.”

He was trying to replicate the Cuban Revolution, but Weiss said Guevara

didn’t realize that Cuba was a unique country. They had a long history of revolution and most of the people in Cuba were tired of the dictator Batista.

home of the Green Berets, has a number of statues there, but there should also be a statue of Major Shelton. He is a true American hero.”

Although Guevara was not militarily trained, he wrote “how to” books on revolution. He wanted to prove his theories by exporting a Cuban-style revolution in other countries.

Weiss said Major Shelton was outgoing and very personable. He loved being around people. He grew up in Mississippi during the Depression and picked cotton and did odd jobs to support his family before he enlisted in the Army. He could relate to common soldiers because he was a common soldier. He fought in Korea and was wounded twice and earned a Silver Star. He worked his way up to sergeant and then became a second lieutenant when he was 28, the cutoff age, which is why he was called “Pappy.”

“He first goes to the Congo and he fails. Then he ends up in Bolivia,” Weiss said. “Che was not a very good military tactician and every mistake you could possibly make in Bolivia, he made.”

Weiss said he first alienated the Bolivian Communist Party, who could have supplied him with a pipeline.

But Guevara wanted to lead the Bolivian revolution alone. He was an egomaniac.

Two, he picked the wrong part of the country. Weiss said he went to a remote area of Bolivia, instead of going to a place closer to where the mines and the unions were.

“There was actually some unrest at the mines, but Che picked an area of the country that was God-forsaken.

There were hills and mountains and thorns and brush – and no people!”

Weiss said. “How are you going to get recruits when there are no people around? The only people that were around were the Quechua Indians, who didn’t speak your language.”

Weiss notes that there were a couple of times when Guevara and his men went into the villages to recruit and Guevara gave speeches. In the end there was no response, as they didn’t understand a word he said. “He wasn’t so much a revolutionary as he was a fugitive out there. It was like he was on “America’s Most Wanted” at the end. He had no army; at the most, he had maybe 50 people.”

Half of his unit was made up of hardcore Cubans brought over from Cuba, and the other half were Bolivians, who really didn’t want part of the hardship of guerrilla warfare.

And Guevara made so many tactical errors, Weiss said. At one point, he divided up his men into columns, which was the worst mistake he made, Weiss said, because one column became the lost column. They couldn’t communicate with each other.

“The Green Beret Unit we sent down there was led by Major Ralph “Pappy” Shelton,” Weiss said. “Fort Bragg,

Shelton served as a Green Beret in Laos and the Dominican Republic.

When he knew he was to be stationed in Latin America, he took courses and immersed himself in the culture and the language. “If you look at his hand-picked, 16-man Green Beret unit in 1967, there were a lot of African-Americans,” Weiss said.

“It was an integrated unit. Shelton cracked jokes, but he could be tough.

He epitomized the American soldier.

He was the best.”

Weiss said he and his co-author wanted to bring Major Shelton to life and tell what he did in Bolivia. Shelton oversaw an accelerated program to train the Bolivian Rangers, which included a young captain named Gary Prado. Captain Prado became famous as the Bolivian Ranger who later captured Guevara in the Bolivian jungle.

Shelton wanted to help the people of La Esperanza, the village where he trained the Rangers. He entertained the villagers with his guitar and singing and he helped build a school there, as he wanted the children to remember the American soldiers. They could look at the school in later years and see something tangible.

Along with the Green Beret team, the U.S. sent two Cuban-American CIA agents to Bolivia. Felix Rodriguez and Gustavo Villoldo were both veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and both were fervent anti-communists.

“Felix Rodriguez was a guy who loved Cuba and the United States. All he wanted to do was find a way to get back to Cuba, overthrow Castro and restore democracy,” Weiss said. “He was fearless and a dedicated antiCommunist. He was recruited by the CIA to go to Bolivia and help hunt and capture Che, and Rodriguez felt that

if he couldn’t get Castro, Che was the next best thing.”

Rodriguez’s mission was to assist the Bolivians and gather intelligence. The Green Berets were under strict orders not to go into the field; they were to train the Bolivians only. But the CIA agents were under no such orders.

Rodriguez traveled to the village of La Higuera on October 8, 1967 when he heard that Captain Gary Prado captured Guevara after a fire-fight.

Guevara was held in a school house and Rodriguez interrogated him and they posed for the now-famous photo.

Rodriguez tried to save the life of Guevara, as the U.S. wanted to transport him to the U.S. base in Panama for further interrogation. But the Bolivians ordered Guevara’s execution.

“Can you imagine the world-wide brouhaha about an imprisoned Che Guevara?” said Humberto Fontova, the Cuban-American author of “Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.” “The Bolivians adopted a ‘policy of shoot, shovel and shut up,’ ” Fontova said. “The Che Guevara case is important as it is something of a role model for future cases,” said Benjamin Runkle, author of “Wanted Dead or Alive: Manhunts From Geronimo to Bin Laden,” in a past interview in the Journal. “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.”

Runkle believes that the prototype will be much closer to the manhunt for Guevara, where a Green Beret team trained a Bolivian Ranger Battalion and two CIA agents were embedded with those troops.

“Training indigenous troops and providing intelligence support is much more likely to be what we see in the future,” Runkle said.

As Weiss and Maurer note in “Hunting Che,” Major Shelton and his Green Beret team took 650 Bolivian Rangers and in a short time, turned them into the effective fighting force that captured the legendary Che Guevara.

About the Author Paul Davis is a frequent contributor to The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security Int’l.

IACSP Reader’s Lounge

HEZBOLLAH:

THE GLOBAL FOOTPRINT OF LEBANON’S PARTY OF GOD

By Matthew Levitt Georgetown University Press $32.95, 426 pages Reviewed by Dr. Joshua Sinai

A Supporter of Hezbollah gestures as he stands at the site of a car bomb in Beirut’s southern suburbs, August 15, 2013. The powerful car bomb struck the southern Beirut stronghold of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, killing 20 people, wounding 120 and trapping many others inside damaged buildings, witnesses and emergency officials said. REUTERS/Hasan Shaaban

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W

ith its enormously unpopular involvement on the side of President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war against the regime’s primarily Sunni opposition, the Shiite-based Lebanese Hezbollah now finds itself facing the most severe existential crisis since its creation in the early 1980s. Matthew Levitt’s “Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God,” a meticulously detailed examination of Hezbollah’s origins as an Iranian proxy in Lebanon and its forays into terrorism, could not come at a better time.

The book sheds new light on the targeting of Western and Israeli interests in Lebanon and abroad (where Hezbollah also runs extensive criminal enterprises), and the consolidation of its power among Lebanon’s Shiite population and the country’s political system — all of which are now being threatened by its controversial involvement in Syria’s civil war.

Mr. Levitt is a former deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of the Treasury who currently serves as a senior fellow and director of a program on counterterrorism at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. To research his book, he accumulated a vast collection of Hezbollahrelated documents, including indictments and transcripts of the trials of its members around the world about their illicit activities, which provides the book with important details about how Hezbollah’s far-flung terrorist and criminal networks operate.

Hezbollah (“Party of God” in Arabic) has multiple identities, Mr. Levitt writes. It is a social and religious movement representing the country’s Shiite community and one of the dominant political parties in Lebanon. It is also Lebanon’s largest and most powerful paramilitary force, which was created by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the early 1980s to serve as its Lebanese Shiite proxy, and has since carried out numerous terrorist attacks on behalf of its Iranian patron, which has provided it with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. Hezbollah is also a proxy of the Syrian regime, and allegedly carried out an assassination in February 2005 on its behalf of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon’s Sunni prime minister, who had opposed the Syrian government.

What is so significant about Hezbollah’s current predicament, which Mr. Levitt discusses toward the end of the book, is that over the years the party has branded itself as the primary Islamic resistance to Israeli “aggression” in Lebanon — although with Israeli forces withdrawing from south Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah has been left with demanding that Israel withdraw from the relatively inconsequential Shebaa Farms, which constitute a tiny uninhabited territory along the common border claimed by Lebanon but occupied by Israel.

Mr. Levitt’s manuscript was completed prior to the recent conflagration between Hezbollah’s forces and the Sunni rebels in Syria, which has turned Lebanon’s Sunni community against the Shiite party (including a series of bombings by Sunni militants against Hezbollah-controlled neighborhoods in Beirut). Now the party has lost its brand as the spearhead of Islamic resistance against Israel, with Hezbollah forced (in the most awkward way) to rationalize its new mission of fighting fellow Muslims on behalf of an unpopular Syrian tyrant.

Much of Mr. Levitt’s book focuses on Hezbollah’s international activities. These consist of criminal and logistical support networks that raise funds for the organization in geographically disparate regions such as the United States (including cigarette-smuggling and money-laundering enterprises), South America’s Tri-Border, Venezuela and Mexico (narcotics trafficking) and Africa (diamond smuggling), with Hezbollah’s operatives exploiting Lebanon’s Shiite diaspora communities in those countries as their safe haven.

There are also numerous accounts of the activities of its military-procurement agents in the United States and Canada — many of whom have been arrested and convicted for such crimes. Mr. Levitt’s accounts of these wide-ranging illicit enterprises are riveting.

Hezbollah’s most notorious terrorist operation was the October 1983 suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, in which 241 American servicemen were killed.

This was followed by numerous other largescale terrorist attacks, such as the bombings of Jewish and Israeli targets in Argentina in 1992 and 1994. It also had a role in the June 1996 bombing by Saudi Hezbollah (its Saudi Arabian counterpart) of the Khobar Towers housing complex in Dhahran, in which 19 U.S. servicemen were killed, with several hundred others wounded.

Not all of Hezbollah’s terrorist operations have succeeded, however, and Mr. Levitt discusses numerous plots against Israeli and Jewish targets in faraway regions such as Azerbaijan, Turkey and Thailand that were thwarted, as a result of either successful preventative measures or incompetence by the plotters. Such plots have been on the increase in recent years, especially in retaliation for Israel’s alleged assassination in February 2008 of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s longtime terrorist mastermind, with the most recent attack taking place on July 18, 2012, at Sarafovo Airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, when a bomb allegedly placed by a Hezbollah operative killed several Israeli tourists (while injuring others) who were boarding their resort-bound buses.

Especially intriguing is Mr. Levitt’s account of Hezbollah’s efforts to recruit Israeli Arabs to spy on its behalf against potential Israeli targets, with some of these individuals recruited during their stays in European countries.

Mr. Levitt concludes that “it is high time the international community conducted a thorough and considered discussion of the full range of Hezbollah’s ‘resistance’ activities, and what to do about them. With this book, I hope to kick-start that discussion.” This book’s astute documentation of Hezbollah’s criminal and terrorist enterprises should do just that.

This review originally appeared in The Washington Times. Reprinted by permission.

About the Reviewer Joshua Sinai, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on counterterrorism, is the author of “Active Shooter: A Handbook on Prevention” (ASIS International, 2013).

IACSP Reader’s Lounge

Active Shooter Prevention Bookshelf

By Dr. Joshua Sinai

Marine Corps Police officers evacuate mock hostages during a training exercise to respond to a shooting at Quantico Middle High School in Quantico, Virginia May 9, 2013. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

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ith active shooter events becoming increasingly prevalent, frequent and lethal over the past several years in the United States and overseas, several important handbooks have recently been published to aid law enforcement and public safety practitioners in the techniques and protocols involved in effective response and post-incident mitigation. The following two books are among the best publications on responding to active shooter incidents.

J. Pete Blair, Terry Nichols, David Burns and John R. Curnutt,

Active Shooter: Events and Response (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2013), 264 pages, $69.95. [Hardcover] This important and authoritative book provides a highly useful and well-written overview of significant active shooter events from 2000 to 2010 (with a mention of the Newton, CT incident in the Preface), which is accompanied by chapters on “preparing for the event,” “en route and actions outside the building,” “entry and confronting the threat,” “post-engagement priorities of work,” and “civilian response to active shooter events.” Of particular interest is the authors’ distinction between active shooter events that are conducted by “deranged” individuals (e.g., the Virginia Tech massacre) and those that are perpetrated by terrorist organizations (e.g., Beslan, Russia and Mumbai, India). The book’s authors are veteran law enforcement practitioners, currently working at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University-San Marcos, which has trained more than 40,000 law enforcement officers from across the United States and foreign countries in active shooter response and post-incident mitigation.

Based on the authors’ extensive experience in training and research into active shooter events, the information presented in this book truly is, as they claim, “state-of-the-art, evidence-based best practices.”

Scott M. Hyderkhan,

The Active Shooter Response Training Manual (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Kinetic Tactical Training Solutions LLC, 2013), 265 pages, $76.33 [Paperback] The Active Shooter Response Training Manual is a highly authoritative and indispensable technical resource handbook for law enforcement and public safety practitioners involved in responding to active shooter events because it provides such personnel with the techniques and protocols necessary to respond effectively to mitigate such threat situations. The author is a retired master sergeant of the U.S. Army and currently works as a law enforcement officer for the City of Mercer Island, Washington. Based on the author’s extensive military and law enforcement experience, this manual is designed to assist in the creation, planning, and execution of Active Shooter Response (ASR) training at an agency’s operational and tactical levels.

The manual begins by discussing the ASR mission and operation (in terms of situation, mission, execution, service and support, and command and signal), and then outlines the principles of training and the components of a training plan. The next chapters explain the fundamentals of a response team’s “movement and maneuver” (e.g., shooting, moving, and communicating and the critical functions of finding the threat, fixing the situation, finishing the event, and following-through with post-incident mitigation measures), as well as the components of close quarter battle (CQB), and the individual and collective tasks involved in such responses. The next chapter discusses command post command and control (including perimeter control) considerations. The next to last chapter outlines the components involved in task and sub-task performance evaluations (such as assessing a mechanical breach, clearing stairwells, entering and clearing a room, and conducting movement to find and “finish” the threat – including performance measures to assess the effectiveness of such training exercises). The final chapter provides a highly useful discussion and listing of the specialized equipment that is necessary for a team to respond to active shooter incidents. The manual is accompanied by a supplemental training video and PowerPoint presentation, which complements and enhances the volume’s text.

About the Reviewer Dr. Joshua Sinai is a Washington, DC consultant on counterterrorism studies. He is the author of “Active Shooter – A Handbook on Prevention” (ASIS International, 2013). He can be reached at: Joshua.sinai@comcast.net.

Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

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