The IACSP’s Counter-Terrorism Journal V20N2

Israel And Counter Terrorism Ops In The Mediterranean

Keep On Sale Until August 21, 2014

Before Snowden: A Look Back At NSA Spy Robert S. Lipka

Why We Are Losing The Cyberwar And It’s Mostly Our Fault Protecting Our Churches Kidnapping For Ransom: The Fueling Of Worldwide Terrorism Narco Terror: A Thriving Industry Of Pakistan Homeland Security Bookshelf

Summer Issue Vol. 20, No. 2 2014 Printed in the U.S.A. IACSP.COM

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Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

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I N T E R N A T I O N A L

SWAT Operations and Critical Incidents: Why People Die is the textbook at all OpTac International SWAT and Critical Incident Management Programs.

Copies can be purchased for $29.95 by calling 443.61.OPTAC(67822) and at ďŹ ner bookstores.

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Vol. 20, No. 2 Summer 2014 IACSP Director of Operations Steven J. Fustero

Page 18

Associate Publisher Phil Friedman

Israel And Counter

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

Terrorism Operations In The Mediterranean 2009- 2014

Book Review Editor Jack Plaxe

by Dr. Thomas B. Hunter

Research Director Gerry Keenan Conference Director John Dew

Page 42

Communications Director Craig O. Thompson

Before Snowden:

Art Director Scott Dube, MAD4ART International

A Look Back At An Earlier NSA Spy,

Psychological CT Advisors Cherie Castellano, MA, CSW, LPC

Robert Stephen Lipka

Counterintelligence Advisor Stanley I. White

by Paul Davis

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

Page 6

SITREP

Personal Security Advisor Thomas J. Patire

Page 10

We Are Losing The Cyberwar And It’s Mostly Our Fault, by David Gewirtz

Page 12

Tripping The Switch: Domestic Terrorism Targeting The U.S. Power

Grid, by Dr. Thomas B. Hunter Page 14

Kidnapping For Ransom Fueling Terrorism Worldwide, by Dr. Joshua Sinai

Page 18

Israel And Counter Terrorism Operations In The Mediterranean 2009-

2014, by Dr. Thomas B. Hunter Page 22

Assessing The Evolving Threat Of Suicide Terrorism, by Dr. Joshua Sinai

Page 26

Narco-Terror: A Thriving Industry Of Pakistan, by Sanchita Bhattacharya

Page 32

Homeland Security Education Directory (abbreviated)

Page 36

Church Protectors, by Todd Burke, Jim Weiss & Mickey Davis

Page 40

Secure Driver: Sensory Inputs For The Professional Driver, by Anthony Ricci

Page 42

Before Snowden: A Look Back At An Earlier NSA Spy, Robert Stephen

Lipka, by Paul Davis Page 46

Secretary At War: Robert Gates Discusses His New Book, by Paul Davis

Page 48

Homeland Security Bookshelf, by Dr. Joshua Sinai

Emergency Management Advisor Clark L. Staten Transportation Security Advisor Don L. Rondeau 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

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 © 2014. 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.

Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

Vol. 20, No.2

Palestinian boys watch a Hamas rally marking the anniversary of the death of its leaders killed by Israel, in Gaza City March 23, 2014. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

SITREP

T

Terrorism Trends & Forecasts 2014

he crisis in Ukraine escalated dramatically after Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, a move Western states condemned as illegal. Following a controversial referendum organized by proRussian authorities in Crimea, Russia quickly formalized the takeover, occupying Ukrainian military bases, ports and other installations. Russian troop build-ups along the border with Ukraine have prompted the U.S. to move troops close to the region. As of this writing, there is a bit of a chess match between the two super powers.

Libya’s ongoing crisis over its eastern oil terminals deepened when militias supportive of the General National Congress (GNC) clashed with gunmen loyal to the eastern pro-autonomy leader Ibrahim Jedran. The fighting risks aggravating a wider confrontation between Islamists and non-Islamists and their militias

The recent U.S. drone attacks in Yemen have heightened the tension in that fragile nation. Again, as of this writing, this hot bed or terrorism is a place to keep your eye on.

Last month the Philippines government and the

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Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country’s largest and best-armed insurgent group, signed an historic peace deal.

The Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) ends the 40-year conflict in the Mindanao region. Under the deal, the MILF is to become a political group, and a new autonomous Bangsamoro entity is to be put in place by 2016. Both parties stressed the remaining obstacles to implementing the peace agreement, including MILF disarmament and the danger posed by potential spoilers (see our report (http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/ regions/asia/south-east-asia/ philippines/248) on dismantling the rebel group).

2nd Quarter 2014 TRENDS Deteriorated Situations • Central African Republic, Libya, Ukraine, Yemen Improved Situations • Philippines Unchanged Situations • Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Burundi, Cameroon, China (internal), China/Japan, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Georgia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India (non-Kashmir), Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Kenya,

Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

Vol. 20, No.2

Korean Peninsula, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico), Moldova, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan), Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, North Caucasus (Russia), Pakistan, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, Somaliland, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Zimbabwe Future 2014 OUTLOOK Conflict Risk Alert • Libya, Myanmar, Yemen

Source: Crisiswatch.org

New Report: Iraniansponsored Cyber Attacks Increasing A new report released by the cybersecurity firm, Mandiant, a FireEye Company, concluded that the cybersecurity threat landscape is expanding at a rapid clip globally. This year’s report also highlighted the continuing emergence of Iranian-based attacks that are increasingly becoming more targeted.

In Mandiant’s annual MTrends: Beyond the Breach assessment of cybersecurity trends, the company noted, “One conclusion is inescapable: the list of potential targets has increased, and the playing field has grown.”

On the global actor front, Mandiant researchers pointed to an increase in activity from the Middle East and Iran specifically. In fact, “Iran-based threat actors have also grown more active over the past year,” the researchers said.

Mandiant’s research report on cyber trends made it clear that the issue of cybersecurity will remain at the forefront and will persist as a issue of great concern for both the public and private sectors.

To view the full report, please visit: https://dl.mandiant.com/EE/library/ WP_M-Trends2014_140409.pdf

Free Subscription For New Homeland Defense Journal The Homeland Defense and Civil Support Journal is a peerreviewed scholarly and professional journal published quarterly by the Homeland Defense and Security Issues Group, U.S. Army War College. As the threat of natural and man-made disasters increase, the paradigm for the employment of military

forces in support of cognizant civil authorities is increasingly less defined. The Department of Defense, federal, state, and local agencies are well served to fully understand the complexity of the domestic operating environment before critical decisions are made and executed.

HDCS is designed to provide a strategic multi-disciplinary colloquium pertaining to all fields of domestic security within the United States. Particular attention in our forums will be devoted to the military component of that security, as specifically portrayed in homeland defense (HD) and defense support of civil authorities (DSCA) missions, interagency interactions, challenges, and legal implications.

HDCS publishes review articles, original empirical research, and analytic/conceptual works that contribute to a better understanding of strategic HD and DSCA issues. Each article should analyze and include implications for policy and practice.

As the newest refereed journal at the Army War College, you may receive the online (in .pdf format) HDCS Journal for free by simply signing up on our homepage at: http://www.csl. army.mil/homelanddefensejournal/JournalHome.aspx. The HDCS Journal is the first journal dedicated to DoD’s efforts in homeland defense and defense support of civil authorities.

Border Patrol Manpower Continues To Increase In RGV EDINBURG, Texas — More than two dozen newly hired Border Patrol agents from throughout the country reported for duty to the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector this week.

A group of new agents were administered the oath of office

by RGV Border Patrol Sector Chief Kevin W. Oaks. The newly hired agents come from a variety of states including Nebraska, New York, Wisconsin and Michigan, and will begin training at the Federal Law Enforcement Academy in Artesia, N.M. The agents are part of nearly 300 new employees scheduled to be assigned to the RGV in fiscal year 2014, and they received a special greeting from District-33 Texas Representative Scott Turner who was visiting RGV during the event.

The Rio Grande Valley Sector is part of the South Texas Campaign, which leverages federal, state and local resources to combat transnational criminal organizations. To report suspicious activity, call the sector’s toll-free telephone number at 800-863-9382.

Do You Know About TSA Pre™ ?

Travelers around the country are moving through airports with greater ease as a result of TSA Pre™, the expedited screening program that allows pre-approved travelers to leave on their shoes, light outerwear and belts and keep laptops in their case. TSA Pre™ is now at more than 115 U.S. airports and with nine air carriers (Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways,

Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways and Virgin America). But we have no intention of stopping there—we are looking for more opportunities to expand the TSA Pre™ population every day.

To date, tens of millions of passengers have enjoyed shorter screening times as a result of TSA Pre™.

Travelers interested in applying for TSA Pre™ should go here: (https://universalenroll.dhs. gov/orkflows?workflow=prec heck-pre-enroll) to begin the pre-enrollment process. All TSA Pre™ program applicants must then visit an application center— like the new center at Washington Dulles International Airport— in person to verify their identity and citizenship/immigration status as well as to provide biographical information, (e.g. name, date of birth, address, etc.) and fingerprints. You can find a full listing of the more than 200TSA Pre™ applications centers here: (ttps://universalenroll.dhs.gov/ locator). TSA Pre™ is just one way we are moving away from the one-size fits all security. But don’t just take our word for it.

IACSP News Many of our members are not receiving our bi-monthly CTS Enews (electronic security report) because we either do not have your email, or you are using a .gov or .mil email address for your membership record. If you would like to receive our CTS Enews, please send me an email with the email address you would like us to use. Also include your current address.

Please send the information to my attention to my personal email address: iacsp1@aol.com Thank you.

Steven J. Fustero, Dir. Of Operations IACSP

We Are Losing The Cyberwar And It’s Mostly Our Fault

By David Gewirtz

W

e are, at least numerically speaking, losing the war. We are, figuratively speaking, being overrun by cyberenemies from all quarters. The rate of growth in cyberthreats is exploding nearly exponentially. Whether it’s malware, advanced persistent threats, breaches, distributed denial of service attacks, or any of the other forms of cyber-based nastiness, it’s growing. Very, very quickly.

Let’s dive into some statistics that will help get your blood boiling.

Take ransom ware, for example. Ransomware is the form of malware that gets inside a computer, encrypts the data, and then demands a ransom payment be made through some obscure chain of procedures, at which time the criminal extorting the ransom might -- might -- provide a decryption key. Ransomware, like most malware, travels through a variety of means,

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from corrupted Web sites to email attachments opened by careless users.

In 2011, there were roughly 200,000 unique ransomware samples in the wild. When we talk about a malware sample, what we’re talking about is a captured malware infection and its unique fingerprint. According to McAfee Labs (part of chip-maker Intel) in their 2013 Q4 Threat Report, ransomware samples jumped from about 200K in 2011 to about half a

million in 2012. That’s a pretty big jump, more than a hundred percent year over year.

But that’s nothing. From 2012 to 2013, ransomware samples jumped from about half a million to almost 1.6 million. Sit down and think that through for a second. That means ransomware samples from 2012 to 2013 were more than double that of 2011 plus 2012 -- combined.

We’re talking more than twice the

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previous two years added together.

Of course, it’s not just ransomware.

Let’s move on to something called “malicious signed binaries.” To understand malicious signed binaries, you have to understand signed binaries. First, programs when they’re ready to run in a computer (or smartphone or tablet) processor are often called “binaries.” That’s to differentiate them from documents.

Documents are read. Binaries are executed or run.

Creators of software and of the operating systems they run on have long had a mechanism for making sure what you’re running is what you’re supposed to be running.

These are called “signed binaries” and they’re basically executable programs that have an authorization code (a signature) embedded in them. If a program has the wrong signature, it’s kept out of execution.

You can see where this is going right? Bad guys figured out how to sign binaries and make them look legit. Now, a computer that would normally reject a piece of malware because it wasn’t properly signed will happily execute something very bad, because it appears to have a valid signature. That’s a malicious, signed binary.

In 2011, there were very few malicious signed binaries, barely a rounding error in any chart. By 2012, however, the number of malicious signed binaries in circulation reached a little under two million.

Take a deep breath. Are you ready for this? By 2013 (just one year later), the number of malicious signed binaries, according to the McAfee report, reached more than 7.5 million. That’s almost a fourtimes growth in one year, vs. the previous two years combined!

Mobile malware samples, malware types running on mobile devices, were barely a factor in 2011. By 2012, there were well more than a million mobile malware samples.

And by 2013, that number grew to something over 3.75 million -- almost exactly a 300 percent growth year-over-year.

Of course, traditional malware wasn’t sleeping on the job. Traditional malware, the kind that helps bad guys tunnel inside your networks and live there, stealing all sorts of confidential information, that stuff grew to nearly 200 million samples in 2013, beating 2011 and 2012 combined.

Nothing seems safe, these days.

If you surf the Web (and who doesn’t?), malicious Web links in the U.S. grew by 720 percent from 2011 to 2012, according to a 2013 Threat Report by Websense.

While we don’t have the numbers for 2013 growth, it seems likely

that the worldwide 6x growth in malicious Web links (Web links that take you somewhere very, very bad) will have grown by another order of magnitude.

In fact, given the recent discovery of what’s being popularly called the Heartbleed bug, we can expect Web site security to decline even more. Heartbleed is a bug in the

Dell, which makes security appliances as well as computers, has been tracking how many overall malicious attempts were made and stopped using their tools. The company reports catching 1.06 trillion (that was “trillion” with a “T”) intrusion incidents that were detected and prevented. If you figure that there are about six billion people on the planet, that’s about 175 intrusion incidents for every

Dell reports catching 1.06 trillion (that was “trillion” with a “T”) intrusion incidents that were detected and prevented. If you figure that there are about six billion people on the planet, that’s about 175 intrusion incidents for every man, woman, and child, and that’s just in one year, with results from just one vendor.

security framework of most of the world’s Web sites that completely opens up secure communications (and what’s stored on the server) to outside criminals.

This wasn’t the result of a nefarious act. Sadly, it was just bad coding that was never double-checked and somehow managed to find its way to most of the world’s servers.

Since its public announcement in early April, site operators have been madly rushing to update the OpenSSL code at the heart of the bug, but who knows how many passwords and security certificates have been vacuumed up worldwide before site operators (those that bothered to), actually fixed the bug. Given these malware growth rates, breaches are all too common. Vanson Bourne, a research company, surveyed 1,440 IT decision-makers at more than 500 companies and discovered that while 87 percent had suffered a security breach at some point in their history, nearly half suffered a breach in the last six months.

man, woman, and child -- and that’s just in one year, with results from just one vendor.

I’m going to wrap this up with a few more completely damning facts and figures. According to the 2012 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 43 percent of all data center breaches were accomplished in seconds. That means from initial attack to compromised system in less than a minute. Another 29 percent took minutes and four percent took hours.

But if you look at this from a defense point of view, bad guys basically walk up to almost half the sites they want to get into and don’t even take the time to knock on the door. Seconds to get inside.

Oh, but it gets worse. Yes, of course it gets worse. Did you really think there was any good news?

Once a bad guy, a criminal, an enemy actor, a teenager -- whoever -- breaches corporate systems, Verizon reports that almost 10 percent don’t get discovered for years. Years. Bad guys

are rummaging around inside these networks, stealing and modifying who-knows-what, for years. Almost 40 percent live inside compromised systems for months before discovery, nearly a quarter manage to last a week, and another 27 percent are inside for one or more days. Can you imagine the damage that can be done inside a network with days of access? Weeks?

Months? Years?

Worse, most companies and organizations don’t know they’ve been breached. Ninety-two percent of them have no clue whatsoever, and they only find out when law enforcement (59 percent of the time) or a third part fraud detection service (26 percent of the time) notifies them of the breach.

You know what bothers me most about all of this? According to Verizon, a full 97 percent of the attacks were easily avoidable if companies and organizations had merely instituted some level of moderate security controls. In other words, the bad guys are going all out because the victims are letting them.

What can you do about this? Simple.

Get your act together. Update your network security systems, update your software, make sure you patch regularly, and regularly audit your systems.

Don’t expect five-year old software and systems to protect you from the ever-increasing arms race that lives in the cyber realms. Be as vigilant in your networks and computers (and don’t forget all those BYOD and mobile devices) as you are in the physical world. After all, a cyberbreach today can often be even more costly than a physical breach.

As I have come to do with these articles, I leave you with one thought: Oh joy.

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 (IACSP), IT Advisor to the Florida Public Health Association and an instructor at the UC Berkeley extension.

His personal site is at: DavidGewirtz.com Hiscompanysiteisat:ZATZ.com Follow him on Twitter at: @ DavidGewirtz. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidgewirtz.

Tripping the Switch:

An Overview of Vandalism, Sabotage, and the Potential for Domestic Terrorism Targeting the U.S. Power Grid

A

By Dr. Thomas B. Hunter, DSS

cts of physical vandalism targeting systems and objects connected to the local and regional power grids are nothing new to law enforcement. Destruction of power poles (and their attached power distribution transformers in some cases), potshots fired at roadside equipment, theft of copper wiring, graffiti and damage to electrical power facilities have long been a fact of life in the United States.

(Author’s note: This paper examines only direct physical attacks on the U.S. power grid, and not attacks conducted via cyberbased technologies.)

These ongoing acts are facilitated, in part, both owing to the inherently widespread distribution and vulnerability of these systems nationwide - particularly in remote, rural areas. But of course none of these acts would occur were it not for a very small

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element within the general public – traditionally youths, often intoxicated, simply out for a night of “fun” - bent on random, senseless acts of vandalism.

There is no question, given these variables, that such acts will remain a fact of life in the U.S. far into the future.

In recent years, and particularly following 9/11, however, authorities have increasingly turned their attention to the more wanton acts of violence, particularly those exhibiting a higher than usual level of so-

phistication and effort. Today, local, state, and federal agencies have raised their level of vigilance regarding these acts, primarily owing to concerns of individuals committing acts that may today be defined as domestic terrorism.

List of Major Recent Incidents (2013-2014)

ing an eventual collapse of that tower. Authorities determined that the loss of the tower would have caused interruption of electrical power to the local area. The same report indicated that authorities did not view the incident, given the specificity of the targeting of the anchoring bolts and the likely outcome, not as one of vandalism but rather of sabotage.

January 2014 – An individual or individuals removed bolts from an electrical tower base, likely with the intent of facilitat-

21 August 2013 – An individual attempted to bring down a 100foot high-voltage power line near a Union Pacific railroad

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track in Central Arkansas by sabotaging the base of the tower via removing critical anchoring bolts holding the tower in place.

The perpetrator then attempted to connect a steel cable across the railroad tracks, intending that a passing train would then bring down the tower. In October 2013, FBI investigators arrested Mr. Jason Woodring, 37, a local resident, and charged him with this and other acts of sabotage targeting local power grid systems. One notable attack included in this list involved Woodring allegedly setting fire to a control house at a local substation. These actions resulted in the loss of power to the local community on multiple occasions.

16 April 2013 – An unknown number of individuals conducted what is, to date, the most complex and damaging attack yet against the U.S. power grid. Utilizing advanced knowledge of systems operations and operating in a near-military style manner, these persons sabotaged communications lines and fired small arms against an electrical substation near Santa Clara, California (see below for a more detailed assessment).

PG&E Metcalf Substation Attack.

Santa Clara, CA On 16 April 2013, an unknown individual, or individuals, conducted what has, to date, can be described as the most complex and concerted physical attack against a local U.S. power grid system. While the federal government has yet to officially term the incident as anything other than , and described by the former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time of the attack, as an incident of “domestic terrorism.”

To initiate the attack, the team opened and entered at least two manholes adjacent to the facility. Between 12:58am and 1:07am, they located and cut bundled strands of fiber optic cables in place to enable landline phone calls to 911 in the event of an emergency, complicating the station’s Standard

assault rifles, and, at 1:31am, opened fire on the facility itself. As disconcerting as the planned and specific targeting of the fiber optic cables proved in demonstration the advanced knowledge of the facility by the perpetrators, so to was their selection of targets within the substation.

On 16 April 2013, an unknown individual, or individuals, conducted what has, to date, can be described as the most complex and concerted physical attack against a local U.S. power grid system.

Operating Procedures (SOP) for to communicating with authorities. This purposeful and relatively swift action revealed the high likelihood that the perpetrators were previously aware of the substation’s emergency response routine, as well as the means used to contact authorities in the event of a problem at the facility.

Thus disabled, the attackers were then free to implement their plan to assault the facility itself, with little fear of a rapid response by police and other first responders.

The individuals who cut the underground cables then exited the manholes and, while speculative given the lack of CCTV coverage, likely then joined the rest of the team. They then obtained their weapons, later determined to be AK-47-style

The attackers did not, as might be expected in a routine incident of vandalism, simply spray gunfire randomly across the entire facility. Rather, they focused their fire on specific components of the station, apparently designed to cause the maximum amount of powercrippling damage as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Unusually, and demonstrating, again, what appears to be a above-average knowledge of the station’s equipment and systems (and their interaction), the gunmen concentrated their fire at an oil coolant tank. While this did not cause an immediate reaction from the leaking coolant, it did eventually cause the overheating and shutdown of multiple transformers. In all 17 transformers were shut down as a direct result of the attack. It required 27 days for utility work-

ers to fuller repair the damage and to restore the station to its previous operational capability.

The attack complete, the team then departed the scene, leaving behind no reported evidence of their crime, except scores of small arms shell casings, which later enabled the FBI to identify the weapon types.

To date, the FBI does not have any identified suspects nor any publicly-released information about whether this incident was an isolated one or, as many observers suspect, a potential rehearsal for future attacks.

This has raised concerns over the possibility of a domestic terror campaign perpetrated by experienced, knowledgeable, and violent actors.

Sampling of Local Incidents – New Jersey It is not only major incidents that are of concern for those involved in protecting the power grid. Given the aforementioned and well known vulnerability of the widespread systems, it is clear that other, smaller level incidents which have the potential for power grid disruption are also of concern, and are ongoing.

In a report released on 27 February 2014, the Regional Operations Intelligence Center (RIOC) in New Jersey released a report entitled “Suspicious Activity Regarding the Electrical Grid in New Jersey.” This report summarized numerous selected reports of these smallscale incidents. Among these were the following, excluding those known to be specifically related to the theft of copper wire, from 2013-2014: 26 January 2014 – Employees discovered a hole cut in the perimeter fence of an elec-

tric switching and substation of sufficient size for a man to pass through.

22 January 2014 An identified subject entered a Burlington generating station using false identification.

The subject claimed he had a gun (none found) and a bomb (package cleared).

Potential Protective Measures

The FERC report concluded that the year-and-a-half outage could result due to the fact that the three major power grids have limited interoperability, thus reducing their capability to reroute power to those regions suffering outages.

Conclusions:

Potential protective measures against small-unit assault tactics, techniques, and procedures include: • Use unpredictable security measures, including variable patrol times and routes, changing checkpoint locations and procedures, and periodically implementing additional measures • Conduct joint scenariobased training and exercises that emphasize cooperation among first responders • Conduct surveillance detection training and report suspicious activity • Identify high-value targets, increase security, and design a crisis reaction plan • Conduct conspicuous training and response exercises in and around potential targets • Use raised curbs, S-shaped entrances, and bollards outside a facility • Be aware of traffic patterns and proximity of parked vehicles • Use security cameras with opaque covers to conceal their operation • Limit non-employee access to interior areas • Establish controlled access points for delivery vehicles and limousine services • Issue employee parking passes and employee identification that includes photographs

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While a detailed examination and explanation of the U.S. power grid is beyond the scope of this paper, the FERC report concluded that the yearand-a-half outage could result due to the fact that the three major power grids have limited interoperability, thus reducing their capability to reroute power to those regions suffering outages. Clearly, such an outage would have catastrophic effects nationwide, not to mention the likelihood of billions of dollars in federal and state funds that would be demanded to mitigate the possibility of a repeat of such a blackout.

January 19, 2014: Employees found a broken door at a Linden generating station.

The steel door was pried open, causing a significant bend in the door, but nothing inside appeared to be disturbed.

October 14, 2013: Unknown subject(s) cut the chain on the front gate of an electric switching and substation in East Rutherford.

October 4, 2013: An unidentified white male tried to enter a Cherry Hill substation by climbing the fence.

When observed, the individual fled in a white Ford pickup truck. The subject has previously been seen taking items from a dumpster on the property.

August 7, 2013: A surveillance camera recorded an unidentified African American male wearing gloves and carrying wire or bolt cutters at a Jersey City switching station.

July 5, 2013: A surveillance camera recorded two unidentified unauthorized African American males entering a Jersey City switching station.

To date, none of these incidents have verified any connection to domestic terrorism; however, it is clear that individuals are targeting these facilities for unknown purposes and represent an ongoing risk to substation and power grid operations.

Small Scale Attacks Incidents and Potential Repercussions In 2013, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released a report assessing the risks posed by multiple small-scale acts of violence directed at the three primary sections of the national energy grid (Western, Texas, and Eastern). The resulting analysis revealed an alarming conclusion: if attackers targeted only nine of the nation’s critical electrical substations (the specific critical substations were not provided, for obvious security reasons) on a hot summer day when demand for electricity is historically at its highest level in a given year), these coordinated attacks could result in a nationwide blackout that could last as long as 18 months.

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As stated previously, the U.S. power grid, distributed nationwide, is and will remain vulnerable to attacks of all types by individuals intent on vandalizing or sabotaging these systems. To date, none have been conclusively linked to domestic terrorism. However, given the ongoing nature, frequency, and, in at least one major case, a complex approach to attacking a substation with the intent of causing major disruptions, increased vigilance and a focused effort at enhancing security, where possible, is obviously warranted.

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.

Source: Current Information Bulletin & Request for Information: “Suspicious Activity Regarding the Electrical Grid in New Jersey,” 27 February 2014. NJ Regional Operations Intelligence Center (NJ ROIC) Intelligence & Analysis Threat Unit

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Kidnapping For Ransom Fueling Terrorism Worldwide

By Dr. Joshua Sinai

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American missionary couple Martin (L) and his wife Gracia Burnham is shown in the hideout of the Abu Sayyaf Muslim guerrillas in Basilan island, southern Philippines. The American couple was kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf rebels in May last year. The United States and the Philippines have launched a joint military exercise to help Manila fight terrorism in the country, in Washington’s first significant expansion outside Afghanistan of its war on terror. REUTERS

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idnapping for ransom (KfR) is considered one of the primary sources of revenues that fuel the operations of numerous terrorist groups worldwide. In general, while the majority of worldwide kidnappings for ransom are perpetrated by organized criminal groups (including tribes in countries such as Yemen or vessel-borne pirates off the coasts of east or west Africa), this tactic is increasingly being used by land-based terrorist groups – especially those affiliated with Al Qaeda – making this criminal tactic for monetary gain a significant component in their warfare activities in conjunction with their killing attacks against their adversaries.

Although kidnappings have always been used as a terrorist tactic, in this new trend they are being frequently employed – even by supposedly religiously-based militant groups – for monetary ransom, rather than as coercive bargaining chips against their government adversaries to compel them to give in to their political demands or to release their imprisoned terrorists. Such tactics present governments with a serious dilemma, since, as with the justified insistence of governments not to give in to such coercive-based terrorist demands in general, governments risk having the terrorist kidnappers kill their captives when their ransom demands are not met.

It needs to be pointed out that kidnappings for ransom also differ from hostage taking situations in which a terrorist group will hold hostages in a barricaded location while being surrounded by counterterrorism forces, accompanied by negotiations that may or may not resolve the crisis without loss of life of the victims.

Terrorist groups generally employ a supporting network, such as, in certain countries where lawlessness is pervasive, of corrupt local merchants or tour and transport operators to identify foreign visitors for potential kidnap operations.

Hostages are either held in the countries where they are captured or taken by their captors into a second neighboring country.

In Kenya, for example, humanitarian relief workers and foreign tourists have been kidnapped by al Shabaab-affiliated terrorists and then held in nearby Somalia, where the group maintains its safe havens.

According to various organizations that compile such data, countries of high risk to the threat of kidnapping for ransom by terrorist groups include (in alphabetical order): Afghanistan, Algeria, Colombia, Iraq, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.

Four factors make such high risk countries especially vulnerable to kidnappings by terrorist groups: weak and failing central governments, widespread anarchy and lawlessness in the countryside, the presence of terrorist groups that establish their own safe havens in such ungoverned territories, and the presence of foreigners – whether tourists, employees of multinational corporations operating in such resource-rich (e.g., petroleum extraction) but high risk environments, or humanitarian relief workers.

(reporters and photographers), humanitarian relief personnel, and other foreigners active in the country.

Other long-standing kidnapping for ransom campaigns by terrorist groups include the Philippines, where Abu Sayyaf operatives abduct foreign nationals for long periods of time in exchange for large ransoms. Other regions include the Latin and South American countries of Mexico and Colombia, although the rate of kidnapping in Colombia has reduced significantly as the FARC insurgency has weakened and the central government has increased its control over the country’s territory, while narco-criminal organizations in Mexico have escalated their kidnapping for ransom activities.

Thus, in an impoverished country such as Yemen, armed tribesmen often collaborate with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)linked militants to take foreign hostages in order to exchange them for ransom. In other countries, such as Mali, the instability and anarchy that led to the French-led interven- According to various reports, the total tion in early January 2013 unintentionally amounts that have been paid in terrorist ranresulted in increasing the risk of kidnapping of soms from 2008 to 2014 range between $60 foreigners throughout the Sahel region, with million to more than $70 million (with these the most prominent example the hostage take- amounts, which are unverified, likely to be over by an Al Qaeda affiliate of the natural higher than these projections) with an average gas plant near the town of Amenas in eastern Algeria (although it could also be considered a botched operation, since the hosAccording to various organizations tage takers were killed and no ransom was paid that compile such data, countries of to the group). On the other high risk to the threat of kidnapping hand, Al Qaeda-affiliated groups, such as Boko for ransom by terrorist groups Haram, operating in Nigeria and Niger conduct include (in alphabetical order): numerous kidnappings Afghanistan, Algeria, Colombia, of foreign workers, resulting in substantial ranIraq, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, som payouts. In another significant conflict zone Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, where terrorist groups opSyria, Tunisia, and Yemen. erate, the Syrian civil war has witnessed numerous kidnappings for ransom of foreign nationals, particularly media personnel

of between $3 million to $5 million paid for high profile captives – often depending on the locations of the kidnapping incidents, with ransoms in the Sahel or Yemen estimated to be higher than those in Syria.

Once the ransom payouts are distributed to the various operatives involved in a kidnapping operation, including intermediaries, these funds are generally used to pay for a group’s weapons and explosives procurement, training camps, travel, and, for certain groups, such as the Mokhtar Belmokhtar-led faction in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), personal enrichment of their top leadership.

kidnapped by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, leader of the AQIM faction al-Mulathameen Brigade, with the Canadian government reportedly negotiating a $1.1 million in ransom (with this figure is not verified), through a third party, to secure his release.

• In 2009 Saharan jihadist operatives kidnapped a group of European tourists in Mali and held them for ransom.

Following the payment of ransom, most of those kidnapped were released, with the exception of Edwin Dyer, of the UK, who was murdered • In August 2011, Warren Weinstein, an American aid worker, was kidnapped in Lahore, Pakistan. As of

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U.S. special forces Sergeant Mark Godfrey (C) trains paramilitary soldiers on camouflaging techniques at the 18th Infantry Battalion headquarters in Campo Uno, Basilan province, in the southern Philippines. U.S. special forces are training Philippine troops on Basilan to fight the Abu Sayyaf rebels, who have made millions of dollars out of kidnapping Filipinos and foreigners. REUTERS/str

High Profile Cases Recent high profile KfR cases include the following: • In November 2008 David Rohde (a reporter for The New York Times) and two associates were kidnapped and held for ransom by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

After being held captive for eight months, Rohde and one of his associates escaped and made their way to safety.

• In 2009, Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler was

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mid-2014 he was still being held captive by his alleged Al Qaeda (or AQ affiliated) kidnappers.

• In January 2012 Giovanni Lo Porto and Berndt Muehlenbeck, aid workers for the relief organization Welthungerhilfe, were kidnapped in Multan, in the Pakistani Punjab province.

• On January 16, 2013 terrorist operatives linked to Al Qaeda in Mali took over the Amenas gas plant in eastern Algeria, holding its employees hostage. Although the hostage takers’ demands

included the release of Islamists held in Algerian prisons, ransom was also considered a motive for the attack.

In February 2013, Boko Haram, the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group, kidnapped a French family in Cameroon, with a ransom of $3 million reportedly paid for their release.

In December 2013, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) kidnapped Swiss, Austrian and Finnish personnel in Yemen, eventually releasing them in exchange for a reported (although not verified) payment of $22 million, which was arranged by intermediaries from a nearby Gulf Arab country.

In February 2014 five Malians working for the Red Cross were kidnapped by the Islamist Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) in Gao, northern Mali.

In early March 2014, 13 nuns and three attendants were released from their three-month captivity, following their kidnapping from their monastery in the ancient Christian town of Maaloula in Syria. It is reported (although not verified) that Qatar had paid a ransom of $4 million for their release.

Government Responses While some governments, particularly the United States, adhere to a strict policy of not paying ransom to kidnappers, other countries do accede to the kidnappers’ demands. At the June 2013 G8 summit at Lough Erne in Northern Ireland, for example, while the assembled government leaders agreed to ban such payments and also called on private corporations to refuse to provide money to terrorist kidnappers because they encourage more kidnappings, in practice the agreement does not appear to be holding, with countries such as France, Italy, Japan, and Spain reported to continue to meet the

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demands of the kidnappers of their nationals. It is difficult to find fault with such concessions to terrorist demands on humanitarian grounds, since these governments face domestic backlash when their citizens are paraded on hostage videos with threatening guns to their heads if they do nothing to obtain their release.

Moreover, the corporations that employ many of the kidnapped personnel often lobby their governments to permit them to pay ransom to secure the release of their employees. An additional factor is that in many countries it is legal to pay ransom for criminal kidnappings, thus blurring the legal line between criminal and terrorist kidnapping incidents.

Conclusion Based on current trends, kidnappings for ransom by terrorist groups are likely to continue on an upward trajectory, particularly in countries experiencing high-intensity terrorist activities, such as (in alphabetical order) Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

In another trend of concern, with al Qaida leader Ayman alZawahiri’s August 2011 call on Muslims to kidnap Westerners (citing their success in abducting American humanitarian aid worker Warren Weinstein, from his home in Lahore, Pakistan, in August 2011), the organization’s worldwide affiliates are likely to target high profile Westerners for kidnappings not only for ransom but for use as bargaining chips to free prominent Al Qaeda and AQ-affiliated operatives, such as Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who is currently imprisoned in the United States.

About the Author Joshua Sinai is a Washington, DCbased 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.

Israel And Counter Terrorism Operations

In The Mediterranean, 2009-2014

By Dr. Thomas B. Hunter, DSS

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the media in front of a display of M302 rockets, found aboard the Klos C ship, at a navy base in the Red Sea resort city of Eilat March 10, 2014. Netanyahu, displaying on what Israel said were seized Iranian-supplied missiles bound for militants in Gaza, called on the West not to be fooled by Tehran’s diplomatic outreach over its nuclear programme. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

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ntroduction

Since the first international recognition of the state of Israel in 1949, that nation has been embroiled in a constant state of conflict, not only in overt wars between itself and its Arab neighbors, but also against numerous terrorist organizations seeking its demise as a nation. Regardless of the political landscape by which one views the conflict, the United Nations has recognized Israel’s right to exist as a country, as well as its right to self-defense. In this latter aspect, the nation has been forced to adapt to virtually all forms of armed conflict in the defense of its borders.

With regard to terrorism, Israel has faced two primary enemies: Hamas and Hezbollah, though numerous other groups have surfaced over the years to take part in hostilities against that state. Some of these groups have been short lived, while others, including the aforementioned, have proven resilient and posed a constant threat to the safety and security of Israel. Such has been the variation in groups and their own specific goals, tactics, and weapons, Israel has been forced to impose strict controls over its borders, and nowhere more so than in the southern region around the Gaza Strip.

In 2005, however, Israel formally declared a unilateral withdrawal of its military forces from the Gaza Strip, thus ending its de facto occupation. This had the effect of more clearly transferring control of the area to the Palestinian Authority, thereby transforming it into a self-governing territory.

Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been governed by Hamas, an elected entity that has been recognized both as a legitimate political organization as well as a terrorist group by various nations and international bodies since its formation. Attacks against Israel have been carried out by, among others, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, involving suicide bombings and rocket and mortar attacks, in addition to small arms fire, to include sniping actions.

Regardless of how one defines Hamas or other anti-Israeli terrorist groups today, in 2012 the United Nations recognized the Gaza Strip as part of the State of Palestine. It has therefore, ostensibly, enjoyed the same rights as other nations, with United Nations protections over access to humanitarian conditions and supplies in order to sustain its population.

Today, the Gaza Strip has a population of approximately 1.76 million people.

Terrorism and Arms Procurement In order to support its ongoing terrorist campaign against the state of Israel, Hamas and other terrorist organizations have sought to clandestinely obtain weapons of all types, to include small arms ammunition, hand grenades, land mines, explosives, and related equipment necessary for the production of improvised explosive devices (IED). Moreover, indigenous production of these devices, as well as other weapons, has long been undertaken to both provide and supplement the stockpiles of terrorist groups.

While suicide vests and devices have proven a preferred weapon for individual attacks, the primary threat to southern Israel from the Gaza Strip has been the various rockets employed by terrorists both in Lebanon to the north and in the Gaza Strip to the south.

The Qassam rocket, for example, which was first fired in 2001, has undergone numerous modifications in an effort to increase range, accuracy, and payload. To date, at least three

versions have been identified, though the handmade nature of the weapon makes each rocket essentially unique. These rockets have proven to be one of the most effective weapons in terms of sowing fear and actual casualties among the Israeli population.

Methods of Illicit Smuggling Yet, while indigenous production of IEDs and other weapons both in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere has provided terrorists with the means to carry out ongoing attacks, this limited production has been insufficient, on its own, to enable terrorist groups to conduct attacks on a level conducive to a sustained unconventional war fighting campaign.

To this end, groups have long been supplied via external sources sympathetic to the Palestinian people as well as antagonistic to the existence of Israel as a state. Of these benefactors, Iran has proven a consistent ally to these terrorist groups, providing advanced weaponry via a clandestine network, to virtually

While suicide vests and devices have proven a preferred weapon for individual attacks, the primary threat to southern Israel from the Gaza Strip has been the various rockets employed by terrorists both in Lebanon to the north and in the Gaza Strip to the south.

any group willing to undertake such attacks. Yet, despite their willingness (and that of other sources) to provide weapons and equipment, such has been the ever-increasing robustness of Israel border security that infiltration of this war material has become correspondingly difficult.

(and even some far from its shores, as distant as the Red Sea, for example. The majority of these boardings have proven innocent, devoid of any materials usable by terrorists, and been permitted to continue their legitimate massage through these waters. However, some major seizures in the eastern Mediterranean have also resulted from these actions, to include the following:

Clearly, given the nature of the terrain of Israel, overland transportation of these materials has been the primary method of weapons smuggling. Whether by clandestine tunneling from Egypt into Israel, or overland means, terrorist groups have never stopped attempting to smuggle every manner of weapon and equipment via maritime means, specifically, via ships and boats claiming to be innocent commercial fishing, cargo, or other legitimate vessels.

Shayetet 13 Many decades before Israel implemented the Gaza blockade, it formed its own maritime commando unit, known today as Shayetet 13. Roughly equivalent to the US Navy’s SEAL Teams, S13, as it is better known, has conducted the vast majority of “high risk” boardings of vessels attempting to enter the blockade zone, and even some outside that

M/V Francop, an Antiguan-flagged vessel, was intercepted by the Israeli Navy, utilizing S13 boarding teams, approximately 160 km (100 miles) off the Israeli coast, near Cyprus. A thorough inspection of the Francop revealed 320 tons of weapons, including 9,000 mortar shells, thousands of 107mm Katyusha rockets, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Israeli officials later stated they had determined the cargo was destined for Hezbollah militants.

It is for this reason that Israel imposed, on 3 January 2009, an official naval blockade of a specific maritime boundary around the shores of the Gaza Strip – to deter and, if necessary, intercept any illicit attempts to smuggle terrorist-bound weapons and equipment into that territory. Since that time, the Israeli Navy has conducted hundreds of boarding operations, resulting in rare but sometimes spectacular quantities and types of weapons and equipment, bound for terrorist groups targeting Israel.

Maritime Counter-Smuggling Operations The Israeli Navy has conducted hundreds of maritime interdictions of vessels it deems in violation of its self-imposed quarantine zone

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region, to include the Red Sea (see following examples). It should be noted that S13’s Raids unit also contains a smaller direct action team, similar to the US Navy’s Naval Special Warfare Development Group (known more popularly as SEAL Team Six).

While a detailed examination of the original formation of this unit, its development of the decades, as well as its weapons, equipment, and other aspects is beyond the scope of this paper, it is sufficient to note that training and selection for S13 is rigorous, generally considered the most challenging in the Israeli military. The dropout rates for candidates are high, though those who make it through this training and on into S13 as full-time operators are considered among the best in the world.

Given their high level of experience and training, they often share these skills in joint train-

Munitions are displayed at the port of Ashdod November 4, 2009. According to the military the arms were found on the Antigua-flagged Francop vessel, intercepted overnight in the Mediterranean Sea, 100 miles (160 km) from Israel. Israeli naval commandos have boarded the ship carrying Iranian-supplied rockets destined for Lebanon’s Hezbollah group and taken the vessel to an Israeli port, the government said. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

zone. It has also conducted many well documented operations on land targeting terrorists and terrorist leaders in Israel as well as in neighboring countries.

Shayetet 13 is comprised of three primary units, each roughly company-sized: • Raids (counterterrorism direct action, hostage rescue, etc.)

• Above water (small and high-speed boat operations) • Under water (hydrographic reconnaissance, underwater offensive and defense operations, etc.)

Of these, the first two are those primarily responsible for boarding operations targeting ships suspected of smuggling weapons and arms into the Gaza Strip and throughout the

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ing operations conducted with the US Navy SEALs and Special Boat Units (SWCC), as well as other nations.

Maritime Interdiction Operations Following is a partial list of major maritime countersmuggling operations conducted by the Israeli Navy, utilizing S13 commando teams as the primary boarding force: March 2014: The most recent major maritime operation involving S13 and the Israeli Navy occurred on 5 March, when the M/V Klos C, a Panamanian-registered cargo ship, was boarded by S13 in the Red Sea. The vessel had been suspected of carrying Iranian weapons bound for militant groups in the Gaza Strip. This was proven true when,

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several days later, the ship was docked in Eliat and inspected by the IDF. Beneath a heavy cargo of Portland cement, inspectors discovered a cargo of long-range missiles, 181 mortars, and 181,000 rounds of small arms ammunition.

March 2011: Acting on intelligence that Iran might be attempting to smuggle weapons into Israel en route to Hamas, the M/V Victoria was stopped by Israeli missile ships, then boarded by S13 via high-speed boats approximately 200 miles from the Israeli coast. The Victoria, under Israeli control, was directed to the port of Ashdod for inspection. Upon arrival, it was discovered that the ship carried some of the most advanced weaponry ever seized in a maritime operation. This included: 6 Chinese-made C-704 anti-ship missiles, 2 British-made radar systems (for use in missile guidance), and 2 missile launchers. Other weapons included 2,270 mortar rounds, and almost 67,000 rounds of small arms ammunition.

November 2009: M/V Francop, an Antiguanflagged vessel, was intercepted by the Israeli Navy, utilizing S13 boarding teams, approximately 160 km (100 miles) off the Israeli coast, near Cyprus. The vessel was then towed to the port of Ashdod for inspection. Upon arrival, a thorough inspection of the Francop revealed 320 tons of weapons, including 9,000 mortar shells, thousands of 107mm Katyusha rockets, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Israeli officials later stated they had determined the cargo was destined for Hezbollah militants.

January 2002: The M/V Karine A was seized in the Red Sea in a long-range operation conducted by the Israeli Navy and spearheaded

by S13 boarding teams, though backed by the Israeli Air Force, given the distance to the target. Once taken under control, the ship was sailed to the port of Eliat for inspection. Most notable with regard to this seizure was not only its size (at 50 tons of weapons, one of the largest yet encountered by the Israeli Navy), but by the variety and quantity of weapons. These included, in addition to the standard small arms, two and a half tons of raw explosives (almost certainly destined for use in suicide bombings), Katushya rockets, anti-tank mines, and advanced AT-3 Sagger anti-tank missiles.

The Gaza Flotilla Raid Not all Israeli Navy boarding operations, however, have met with such success. In fact, one such recent action caused significant backlash with regard to public relations for the state of Israel, in addition to the loss of life of unarmed civilians. On

31 May 2010, the so-called “Gaza Freedom Flotilla”, a collection of six unarmed civilian vessels set out from various ports in the region to provide, ostensibly, humanitarian aid to Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip by the Free Gaza Movement – its ninth attempt to break the blockade.

Given the proven history of arms smuggling, however, and the fact that a wellknown naval blockade was in place around the Gaza Strip, the flotilla of six ships was an obvious target for boarding by the Israeli Navy and S13 commandos. This fact was not lost on the flotilla organizers, who were intent on bringing global attention to their assertion that the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip were living under a virtual stranglehold by the Israelis. It was their intention, as a later United Nations report concluded, that they intended to exploit this military blockade for their own public relations campaign.

As the convoy neared the established coordinates for the blockade, the Israeli Navy warned the vessels not to violate the established maritime boundaries surrounding the coastline. Both the Israeli Navy and the flotilla organizers’ own video and audio crews documented this effort, ostensibly to verify the conditions of the confrontation that was bound to ensue. Despite these warnings, the flotilla of six ships continued towards Gaza and were then deemed legitimate targets for military boarding operations, and Israeli military vessels converged on the scene.

While most of the boardings by 71 S13 commandos, broken down into independent teams targeting specific ships, went relatively without incident, the boarding of the largest ship, M/V Mavi Marmara, quickly turned into a worst-case situation.

As fifteen S13 commandos fast roped onto the topmost deck of the ship from a hovering Blackhawk helicopter, they were immediately set upon by activists, who attacked them with non-lethal and potentially lethal weapons, such as Molotov cocktails and steel pipes. This incident was fully documented by an IDF vessel moving adjacent to the Mavi Marmara, using infrared nightvision video equipment.

What happened immediately prior, however, remains in dispute. The activists claimed that the S13 commandos opened fire with live ammunition, and their actions were simply in self-defense. What is not in dispute is the fact that nine activists were killed during the boarding action by S13 utilizing their close quarters weapons.

All of the dead were shot multiple times, according to the UN after-action report,

indicating purposeful use of their firearms

by S13. The report, however, in part based on reviews of reports filed by the Turkish and Israeli governments, could not resolve which actions took place first, nor if the shots were fired in self-defense.

Regardless of what actually occurred on that vessel during the boarding, the political fallout was swift and largely focused on the Israeli military’s use of force against unarmed activists. The UN report, as stated, while finding fault on both sides, failed to make a conclusive determination as to who was actually to blame for the deaths and injuries that resulted. Inspections of all vessels revealed no weapons or equipment that could be used by terrorists; however, the UN report also revealed that the ships were also not carrying enough humanitarian aid cargo to justify their actions in entering a well-known blockade zone, casting some question as to their true intentions in entering the quarantined maritime area.

Conclusions Every nation, according to the United Nations and other international institutions, has the right to self-defense. Despite this, the admittedly unique example of pro-Palestinian terrorism set against the Israeli military intent on preventing the introduction of illicit weapons into the hands of local terrorist groups provides a demonstrable need for maritime counterterrorism forces capable of conducting such operations. S13 has proven its value in conducting high risk, at sea boardings – notably, though with the cited exception, using non-lethal force when possible.

It is also clear that even the most highly trained forces will never operate without the reality that they will be called on to undertake the mist risky of actions, nor can it be guaranteed that lethal force may not be necessary. Yet, the Israeli example has shown, strictly from a maritime interception perspective, that such a capability is critical for those states seeking to keep their shores safe from enemies seeking to do their population harm, particularly in this modern era of terrorism and counterterrorism.

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.

Assessing The Evolving Threat of Suicide Terrorism

By Dr. Joshua Sinai

A policeman watches as a bus, destroyed in an earlier explosion, is towed away in Volgograd December 30, 2013. A bomb ripped apart a bus in Volgograd , killing 14 people in the second deadly attack blamed on suicide bombers in the southern Russian city in 24 hours and raising fears of Islamist attacks on the Winter Olympics. REUTERS/Sergei Karpov

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he tactic of suicide terrorism has long been employed by certain types of terrorist groups, particularly (although not exclusively) those that are religiously-based, as an important modus operandi in their warfare. In recent times, suicide terrorism, which characterizes much of terrorist operations in regions such as the Middle East and Afghanistan/Pakistan, has expanded to include the Russian Federation, with the Caucasus Emirate (CE) and its affiliated groupings making worldwide headlines when they deployed cells of suicide operatives – whether males or females known as “black widows” – to detonate themselves prior to holding the Sochi Olympics in February 2014.

In response, an estimated 60,000 security personnel-strong ‘ring of steel’ was erected by Russian security services around the Olympic games’ sites, which succeeded in deterring and foiling additional suicide bombing operatives from succeeding in their attacks, thereby depriving the perpetrating groups of the worldwide publicity they had sought for their cause.

is that in the former no escape is intended for the attacker who is deliberately recruited for that purpose, while, in the latter, although the attacker is aware that his death is likely, he still expects to be able to escape from the scene of the incident and resume warfare later on.

With the tactic of suicide bombings continuing to be extensively employed against civilian and military targets in high intensity war zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, what is the nature of suicide martyrdom bombings and how do they differ from ‘conventional’ terrorist tactics?

For religiously-based terrorist groups – and particularly those that are Islamic – by conducting such suicide operations once the ‘martyr’ is killed the perpetrator (whether male or female) is considered entitled to special status in paradise and on Judgment Day, including special benefits (which, in some cases, are monetary) and honors for his/her family in the community.

Defining Suicide Terrorism

Role of Groups is Crucial

Suicide terrorism is a premeditated tactic in warfare in which the attacker detonates an explosive that is strapped to one’s body with the premeditated intention to kill himself (or herself) together with as many victims as possible, in order to spread fear and panic beyond the incident to the wider society, and coerce the targeted adversary to pay attention and concede to the perpetrating group’s grievances and demands. The crucial element that differentiates the tactic of ‘suicide’ from ‘conventional’ terrorist warfare

Most suicide attacks are commissioned by organized groups directly or even by what are termed self-starter cells. In the case of one such self-starter cell that had conducted the July 2005 bombing of London’s transportation system, their leaders were recruited, trained and instructed by senior al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan prior to their return to England.

This is one of the reasons why the December 2013 Volgograd suicide bombers – even though their identities and affiliations were not known – were likely

aided in conducting their operation by their group’s accomplices, just as any potential suicide bombers during the Sochi Olympics likely would have been aided by their group’s supporting infrastructure.

Organized groups are essential in mobilizing and deploying suicide operatives because it is easier for such organized entities to transform susceptible individuals into becoming martyrdom bombers for their cause by radicalizing, recruiting, indoctrinating, training and arming them, sometimes even in a matter of a few days.

Prior to their operations, a group will videotape the suicide operative’s martyrdom statement, with such videos extensively

used in their post-attack propaganda campaigns. It was likely, therefore, that if suicide operatives had been underway during the Sochi Olympics that their martyrdom statements would have already been videotaped and were awaiting their broadcast via the groups’ online media venues.

Groups that employ suicide bombers in their operations get their ‘oxygen’ from extremist religions and ideologies that glorify martyrdom into an afterlife in that religion’s version of paradise – which is a concrete reality in the communities where these bombers are indoctrinated. It is important to note that such religious justifications for martyrdom operations

In the case of one such selfstarter cell that had conducted the July 2005 bombing of London’s transportation system, their leaders were recruited, trained and instructed by senior al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan prior to their return to England.

are not specific to any single extremist variant of religious or political ideology, with suicide terrorist operations conducted over the past several decades by widely disparate groups ranging from the Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Lebanon (SSNP), as well as the Lebanese Hizballah, the Palestinian Hamas, al Qaida and its affiliates, the Taliban, as well as the Caucasus Emirate.

toward their intended targets and catch them completely off-guard and unprepared to prevent their bombing, unlike a ‘conventional’ attack in which an operative would leave an explosive bomb at the incident’s location, which could be detected as a suspicious package. This is especially the case when a government’s security measures are in place that restrict the movement of a suicide operative toward one target but not another one that may be less protected, thus making such operatives human directional ‘smart bombs’.

While tactically beneficial for their organizing groups, such suicide operations produce few strategic benefits with no suicide bombingsdominated campaigns ever leading to the defeat of their targeted government. A terrorist group such as Hizballah, for example, was generally more effective militarily when it resorted to conventional tactics against the Israeli military in southern Lebanon in the late 1990s, which was also the case in its Not all major terrorist operations Summer 2006 war with involve suicide tactics. For example, Israel in which it fired an estimated 4,000 rockets in the March 2004 bombing of trains into Israel (and in which it succeeded in killing 44 in Madrid, which killed 191 persons, Israeli civilians and118 the attackers did not intentionally soldiers), and Hamas’ firing of rockets and mortars blow themselves up at the time, into Israel in 2007-08 they did so only later when they caused substantially more physical and psychologiwere about to be captured. cal damage on its targeted populations than its previous campaigns of suicide attacks (with an estimated 80 percent or more of such attacks eratives to voluntarily and intentionally give thwarted by Israeli security services in the up their lives for their group’s cause – it must past). Similarly, al Qaeda’s affiliates in Iraq, be reinforced by the group through intensive Syria, and Yemen, as well as the Taliban indoctrination and hate propaganda among its in Afghanistan, while extensively employsupporting community, whether in religious ing suicide bombings in their warfare, also houses of worship or political clubs, schools, organize themselves into guerrilla units that media and even music such as customized engage government forces in battle, with ‘urban rap’ which is popular among the their success in such battles enabling them to young generation that is recruited for such expand the territories under their control in the those countries. intentional self-death operations.

A spectrum of grievances – whether legitimate under international law or alleged – against their adversaries motivate terrorist violence in general. For the cult of death through suicide martyrdom to succeed – especially for its op-

Tactical and Strategic Benefits?

While the destructiveness of all types of terrorist attacks is calculated to produce specific political benefits for the group’s cause, what makes the tactic of suicide bombing so attractive to their organizing groups is the willingness of their operatives to die, with the chances for the attack to succeed increasing by their ability to maneuver ‘intelligently’

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It is for this reason that the effectiveness of suicide bombing attacks should not be overestimated, and which explains why not all major terrorist operations involve suicide tactics.

For example, in the March 2004 bombing of trains in Madrid, which killed 191 persons, the attackers did not intentionally blow themselves up at the time – they did so only later when they were about to be captured. In other major terrorist incidents, Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad attempted to escape

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from the scene in his early May 2010 bombing operation, Nidal Hasan apparently did not try to kill himself as a martyr at his shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas in November 2009, and the Boston Marathon bombers attempted to escape from the scene of their bombing operation in mid-April 2013. This is not, however, intended to downplay the significance of suicide bombing tactics, with Al Qaeda’s use of aircraft to conduct their martyrdom operations against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 stark reminders of the catastrophic devastation that such martyrdom tactics can produce.

Future Trends Regarding future trends, it is instructive that the widely expected suicide bombing attacks

by Islamist terrorists did not occur during the Sochi Olympics, due to the effectiveness of the Russian security services’ ‘ring of steel’ erected to protect not only the games’ sites but to prevent these groups from attacking soft targets in nearby geographical locations.

Moreover, as previously discussed, the primary components of warfare against Israel by terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah now focus on launching rockets – rather than the deployment of suicide operatives – against Israeli targets. In fact, in November 2013, and again in January 2014, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad attempted to place explosives on board Israeli buses, with the operatives escaping from those buses prior to the detonation of the bombs, rather than dispatching suicide bombers. This does not imply that the Palestinian groups had given up on suicide warfare, with several plots involving such a tactic uncovered by the Israeli security services, but that their primary warfare remained the launching of rockets from their safe haven in the Gaza Strip against neighboring Israeli towns and cities (and with the Israelis uncovering a large shipment of such rockets on board a ship destined for these groups in early March 2014).

In conclusion, the tactic of suicide bombings is likely to continue to be employed by terrorist groups worldwide, although even in highintensity conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the terrorist insurgents realize that such tactics have to be accompanied by guerrilla warfare that is effective in battling government forces to increase the territory under rebel control.

About the Author Joshua Sinai is a Washington, DC-based 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.

Vol. 20, No.2

Narco Terror:

A Thriving Industry Of Pakistan

By Dr. Sanchita Bhattacharya

A man from the Pakistan Customs department stands with stick, near a pile of narcotics burning on the outskirts of Karachi January 26, 2014. The Pakistan Customs department held an exercise where liquor and contraband were burned and destroyed to mark International Customs Day, customs official Qamar Thalho said. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

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A

mong the countries of world, Pakistan is sixth most populous. Under the 2011 United Nations (UN) Human Development Index (HDI), Pakistan is ranked 145 out of 187 countries, indicating pitiable state development1 sectors like Life expectancy, Adult literacy, GDP per capita income etc. Among various malice impacting Pakistan, Narco-Terrorism2 has tightened its grip in and across the country. Due to rampant use and abuse of narcotics, the country has also become a Narco-state3 over a period of time.

According to Drug Use in Pakistan 2013 Technical Summary Report, published by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) along with Ministry of Narcotics Control, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, an estimated 5.8 per cent, or 6.45 million, of the population in Pakistan aged between 15 and 64 were using drugs in the last 12 months (2012). The types of drug include cannabis, opiates, heroin, opium, cocaine along with medicinal tranquilizers and pain killers.4 The provincial pattern of drug use in Pakistan suggests that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is at the top of chart with 11 per cent of the population in use of illicit substances. The provinces of Sindh and Punjab reveal levels of use of 6.5 and 4.8 per cent respectively. Based on the limited data available for Balochistan, the number of drug users is calculated at around 5.1 per cent or 280,000 users, although this figure is likely to be an underestimate across the province, this prevalence rate is sizeable regardless. In addition, Punjab alone has 530,000 heroin and opium users, which equates to 0.9 per cent of the provincial population. Worryingly enough, Pakistan has less than 80 dedicated drug rehab clinics.5

of money with the help of narcotics.

About 70 per cent of Talibans’ income comes from narcotics. Although Mullah Omar declared opiate production and trafficking to be haram (against Islam) in 2000, the Taliban still profits from its cultivation and is associated with the drug trade. In main opium cultivation provinces, Taliban insurgents collect a ten percent religious tax (ushr) from opium farmers. In actual sense, Islamic theology forbids the consumption of drugs. Qur’an Surah 2 Verse 90 reveals that, “intoxicants. . . are an abomination – of Satan’s handiwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper.” However...some jihadists argue they are only bound to prohibit vice (including drugs) when they are in full control of the land and that when they are not, such demands do not apply.9 In addition, on one issue the Taliban were conspicuously ambiguous: “The consumption of opiates is forbidden, as is the manufacture of heroin, but the production and trading in opium is not forbidden.”10 Moreover, “Narco-Jihad” is also flourishing in the area. Because the opium trade remains a major source of financing for the jihad led by the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area and also for the “holy” cause

There are fears that Pakistan’s addiction is set to deepen, with neighboring Afghanistan’s opium production hitting a record of 5,500 tons in 2013 even before the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014.6 However, the situation becomes worse due to increasing capacity of the insurgents to destabilize the Pakistan government. The border between the two countries has always been a tribal area, over which Pakistan’s central government has had limited control. In particular, Waziristan, the NWFP (KP), and the Swat Valley have become There are fears that Pakistan’s increasingly destabilized and fertile territory for drug smuggling.7 addiction is set to deepen, The region, therefore, has been the ‘bone of contention’ between the two countries because the tribal affinity is more revered than with neighboring Afghanistan’s the International Border.

Evidently, Narco-terrorism in this region is explicitly related with terror-funding. It is well known that Al Qaeda relied on couriers to move money in the 1990s and before the 9/11 attack. According to the 9/11 Commission Monograph, Al Qaeda used money changers to transfer USD 1 million from the UAE to Pakistan and then used couriers to transfer the funds as cash into Afghanistan.8 Since its coming to power in Afghanistan and during the present democratic phase, the Taliban has manipulated a huge amount

opium production hitting a record of 5,500 tons in 2013 even before the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014.6

of defeating the Western “crusading” forces and returning Afghanistan to an Islamic government, the struggle itself has been characterized as narco-jihad.11 It is an irony that ‘pious’ people propagating ‘Rule of God’ in this area are taking refuge in prohibited drugs to procure money and further terror.

Pakistan along with Iran and Afghanistan constitute the Golden Crescent, one of world’s biggest drug-producing regions. Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, heroin’s main ingredient and accounts for 90 per cent of the global supply and roughly 40 per cent of it is smuggled through Pakistan. 12 Afghanistan reached the global number one in opium production in the world by 1991 overtaking Myanmar. The focus of international illegal drugs business [thus] shifted from Golden Triangle (Myanmar, Laos and Thailand) to the Golden Crescent.13 According to UNODC Report of 2013, global trafficking routes and seizure data in Pakistan indicate that trafficking routes within Pakistan run from Afghanistan, through the western provinces of KP and Balochistan, to Iran in the west and Pakistan’s coastline in the south, including the sea ports of Karachi and Port Qasim. Moreover, of the 11 Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan, only four (Khost, Paktika, Nuristan and Paktiya) were declared

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poppy-free or estimated to have cultivated less than 100 hectares of poppy in 2012. In November 2013, Rahman Malik, Pakistan’s former Interior Minister also confirmed that Pakistan is major transit route for Afghan opiates with nearly 160 metric ton of heroin, which makes up 44 per cent

7,200 kg of opium per annum, making Pakistan the top country of interception in the world along with Iran.

Cannabis seizures increased from 134,622 kg in 2008 to 186,876 kg in 2011.

with almost half of its production channeled through Pakistan on its way to Europe or Asia, hidden in containers shipped from Karachi, a sprawling port on the Arabian Sea.14

Earlier in 2011, the UNODC Report The Global Afghan Opium Trade, also men-

Drug smugglers call it the golden route: from Afghanistan into Pakistan and then into eastern Iran, it’s the trail that takes Afghanistan’s abundant opium, and its derivative, heroin, to Western markets. The general route for smuggling Afghan-produced opiates from Karachi, Pakistan goes overland from Pakistan’s Balochistan province across the border into Iran, then passes through the northwestern region, which is inhabited by Kurds (AlQaeda financier Yasin al-Suri is Kurdish), and finally into laboratories in Turkey, where the opium is processed. The shipments from Pakistan may be broken down into smaller shipments once in Iran. Iran is both a transit country and a destination for opium products.15 The Drug Use in Pakistan 2013 Technical Summary Report also added that the most significant seizure of cocaine took place in Karachi in 2010 when 226 kg were seized from a container originating from Africa.

Drug smugglers call it the golden route: from Afghanistan into Pakistan and then into eastern Iran, it’s the trail that takes Afghanistan’s abundant opium, and its derivative, heroin, to Western markets.

of total Afghan heroin which transits through its territorial jurisdictions. “It is estimated that in 2010, total drug users in Pakistan reached about 8.1 million abusing opium, heroin including injecting users and hashish etc,” Malik said on November 12, 2013.

According to a report published in Dawn (December, 2012), during the last 10 years, approximately 150 tons of morphine and heroin entered Pakistan per year, of which quantity 20 per cent was seized. Between 1996 and 2011, the authorities captured an average of

tioned other routes of narco trafficking. The most commonly used routes from Afghanistan include “Southern Route”, the “Balkan Route” and the “Northern Route.”

These patterns are characterized by transport to areas with high demand from Iran, Pakistan, and Central Asia.

The most common trade routes include transport to Southeast Asia through Pakistan and Iran and to Russia and Europe through Central Asia.

Afghanistan produces 90 per cent of the world’s heroin,

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Pakistan represents the ‘command and control’ hub of the Afghan heroin networks, a key element in the trafficking of opiates from production to markets in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Crafting a workable response to Afghan heroin requires significant counter-narcotics and governance capacity building

within Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan. Due to ‘strategic’ reasons, Pakistan for long considered Afghanistan to be its ‘backyard’. This regressive policy has caused harm to the country itself, because Pakistan has become the easy victim of Afghan narcotics.

In 2013, August the issue of cross-border narcotic trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan was also discussed in UN Security Council.

During the meeting, Russia stressed on the importance of addressing the issue of the recognition of the Durand Line and the authority of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). “Neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan accepts responsibility for the terrorist activity that takes place in the region”, said Russia “It is impossible to implement drug trade restrictions if there is no proper governing authority within FATA. These problems must be resolved immediately.”

Definitely Afghan factor is very dominant in context of narcotics and related terror activities, but one should also look into the role played by Pakistani state establishment to generate substantial amount of funds through drugs.

According to US Congressional Record of 1994, “About 70 tons of heroin is produced annually in Pakistan, a third of which is smuggled abroad, mostly to the West. About 20 percent of all heroin consumed in the United States comes from Pakistan and its northern neighbor, Af-

non-traditional areas including Orakzai, Kurram, North and South Waziristan and Balochistan. Cannabis is also produced in large quantities in the sub-region. Most of the cannabis trafficked in the region also originates from Afghanistan and is processed in the inaccessible areas of Pakistan’s FATA region.

But in the process he failed to anticipate its repercussions on Pakistan. Heroin addiction spread like an epidemic during his martial administration. During this time, drug traffickers operated freely and within a short span of time organized themselves as syndicates on the same lines as the Latin American drug barons.18

ghanistan, the second largest opium producer in the world after Burma. The United Nations says that as much as 80 percent of the heroin in Europe comes from the region.”16 The illegal Pakistani heroin industry in 1998 had a turnover corresponding to half the country’s legal economy.17

Moreover, according to UNODC, Pakistan itself has over 1,000 hectares of poppy cultivation, concentrated in the restive FATA on the border with Afghanistan.

The regional variations further suggests that most of poppy cultivation takes place in the FATA, KP, Khyber Agency, Dir, Bannu, and in

The element of Narco-terror in Pakistan was somehow fructified by General Ziaul-Haq during his military tenure. Cultivation of poppy and cannabis was encouraged during his regime to finance terrorist activities in India. General Zia’s support for cultivation of narcotic drugs gave a new dimension to international drug trafficking and terrorism in India. But in the process he failed to anticipate its repercussions on Pakistan.

Heroin addiction spread like an epidemic during his martial administration. During this time, drug traffickers operated freely and within a short span of time organized themselves as syndicates on the same lines as the Latin American drug barons. 18 The political figures of Pakistan like Lieutenant General Fazle Haque 19, Haji Iqbal Beg, Sohail But, Shaukat Ali Bhatti, Malik Waris Khan Afridi etc. gained notoriety and political importance through funds generated by narcotics. And eventually, drug mafias established contacts at both political and administrative levels.

In addition, the official website of Pakistan Ministry of Interior and Narcotics Control states, ‘The Government

of Pakistan acknowledges the growing threat of narco-terrorism.

President Zardari seeks to break the financing of terrorism via narcosmuggling. President Zardari stated, “Regional cooperation is all the more necessary as evidence emerges of the drug trade supporting militancy and terrorism that has threatened regional and global peace” ‘.20 At present, there are 18 Members of Standing Committee on Narcotics Control in National Assembly and 11 Members of Standing Committee on Narcotics Control in Senate of Pakistan Parliament. In June, 2011 the then Federal Minister of Narcotics, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan in message on Anti-Narcotics Day stated that a Five Tear Drug Abuse Control Master plan which provides a clear strategic roadmap, has been formulated. The new National Anti Narcotics Control Policy 2010 was also designed to meet new challenges and International Obligations. The Cabinet approved this Policy in July 2010 and now the policy is being implemented.

An Inter Agency Task Force on Narcotics Control also came into existence. So as to maximize effectiveness of the LEAs [Law Enforcement Agency] has been set up.21 The Anti-Narcotics Policy of Pakistan (2010) defines the priorities and methods in implementing drug control, including supply reduction, drug demand reduction and international cooperation.

The Policy is translated into practical measures in the

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Government’s Drug Control Master Plan 2010-2014 (DCMP), which aims ‘to reduce the health, social and economic costs associated with drug trafficking and substance use in Pakistan’. The plan envisages expenditure of US $125 million including substantial allocation for Drug Demand Reduction activities.

On November 12, 2013 commenting on Government effort in the field, Rahman Malik stated, “In 2010 we contributed 10 per cent to global heroin and morphine seizure, four per cent to global opium seizure and 19 per cent to global cannabis seizure.” Similarly, Malik said Pakistan has been a major contributor to Acetic Anhydride (AA) seizures under UNODC operation and made two worlds largest seizure of Acetic Anhydride. The minister said with regards to poppy cultivation since 2001, Pakistan has once again achieved the status of Poppy Free Country for the year in 2011 owing to untiring efforts of the government.”22 The Ministry of Narcotics Control has adopted a practicable strategy and initiated the “Anti-Drug Ambassadors” program to raise awareness against the growing trend of drug addiction among the youth throughout the country. The program has engaged students from various universities to act as ambassadors and spread the message of “No Drugs”.23 At international level, Pakistan has signed MoUs with 25 countries including Af-

ghanistan, Iran Nigeria etc.24 In addition, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran have initiated the Triangular Initiative for effective coordination against narcotics. Pakistan, Russia, Afghanistan and Tajikistan have also signed agreements to exchange strategic information to eradicate poppy production in Afghanistan and assist each other in halting the transit of drugs through their territories.25 The duplicity in Pakistan’s approach to counter narcoterror is thus much evident.

On one hand, it is ‘officially’ trying to eradicate the menace and on the other hand, the strong clique of drug mafias and dealers are in liaison with Pakistani establishment to sustain and prosper the ‘drug industry’ not only in both sides of the Durand Line, but also at the regional and international level.

About the Author Dr. Sanchita Bhattacharya is a Research Associate at the “Institute for Conflict Management”, New Delhi, India. She has a Ph.D. in “Madarsa Education in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh: A Comparative Study” from School of International Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She writes frequently on the subject of Political Islam, and her articles have been published in East Asia Forum, Outlook India, New Age Islam etc. She can be reached at sanchita.bhat83@gmail.com

Endnotes / References Development can be understood as an activity, a condition, an event, or a process.

In natural science, it unfolds according to principles that humans do not control, but in social science, development is entirely the product of human decisions.

2. In the year 1983, the term narcoterrorism was coined by Peru’s the then President Fernando Belaunda Terry, as the union of the vice of narcotics with the

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violence of terrorism.

3. Narco-states is a concept, used by A. W. McCoy in order to describe countries (or regions), where the operators of the drug trade through their economic, political and paramilitary strength influence the exercise of power by the central government.

4. Drug Use in Pakistan 2013 Technical Summary Report(2013), http://www.unodc.org/documents/pakistan/2013.03.01ab_ Summary_Report_Drug_Use_in_Pakistan_SvdV_v1.pdf 5. http://rt.com/news/pakistan-afghanistan-drugs-heroin-186/ 6. http://gulfnews.com/news/world/ pakistan/drug-trade-destroying-lives-inpakistan-1.1269926 7. http://www.nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/Preview/SR20_preview.pdf.

8. Freeman, Michael and Ruehsen, Moyara (2013), “Terrorism Financing Methods: An Overview”, Perspective on Terrorism, 7(4): 5-26.

9. https://www.gov.uk/...data/.../ Oct_2013_Traffickers_and_Terrorists.pdf‎ 10. Griffin, Michael, “Reaping the Whirlwind”, 2001, pg. 153.

11. http://www.nbr.org/publications/ specialreport/pdf/Preview/SR20_preview.pdf 12. http://rt.com/news/pakistan-afghanistan-drugs-heroin-186/ 13. Niklas, Swanstrom (Feb. 2007), “The Narcotics Trade: A Threat to Security? National and Transnational Implications”,Global Crime, 8(1): 5.

14. http://gulfnews.com/news/world/ pakistan/drug-trade-destroying-lives-inpakistan-1.1269926 15. http://www.billwarnerpi. com/2011/12/interpols-mission-impossible-catch.html 16. https://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1994_cr/h941003-terror-pak.htm 17. Hertelius, Jonas (2008), “Narcoterrorism”, mercury.ethz.ch/serviceengine/.../2008-02-20_Narcoterrorism.pdf 18. http://www.idsa-india.org/an-jan6-01html.html 19. Known as Noriega of Pakistan.

Manual Noriega was dictator of Panama from 1983-1989.

20. http://www.narcon.gov.pk/index. php?lang=en&opc=5&sel=5 21. http://www.narcon.gov.pk/index.php ?lang=en&opc=2&sel=5&id=14&pNu m=1&blogYear=2011&blogMonth=06 22. http://tribune.com.pk/story/465463/ taliban-generate-70-of-their-incomeoff-drug-taxes-malik/ 23. http://www.narcon.gov.pk/ index.php?lang=en&opc=2&sel=5 &id=16&blogYear=2013&blogM onth=08 24. http://www.narcon.gov.pk/index .p?lang=en&opc=4&sel=4&pNum=5 25. http://www.narcon.gov.pk/ index.php?lang=en&opc=2&s el=5&id=13&pNum=1&blog Year=2011&blogMonth=06

Directory:

Organizations Offering Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism Curriculum.

Editor’s Note: This is but a small sample of all of the Homeland Security Opportunities Available to Those Wanting to Learn More About Terrorism and HS. For a full complete listing, please go to our Homeland Security Education Marketplace at the IACSP Website: http://iacsp.com/edu.php

Palestinians watch a Hamas rally marking the anniversary of the death of its leaders killed by Israel, in Gaza City March 23, 2014.

REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

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Vol. 20, No.2

American Military University 111 West Congress St., Charles Town, WV, 25414 http://www.amu.apus.edu/public-safety

Fairleigh Dickinson University 1000 River Rd., H-DH2-13, Teaneck, NJ, 07666 http://fdu.edu/mas

Bellevue University 1000 Galvin Road South, Bellevue, NE, 68005 http://www.bellevue.edu

George Mason University Dept. of Public and International Affairs, MS 3F4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA, 22030 http://pia.gmu.edu/grad/biod

California University of Pennsylvania 250 University Ave., California, PA , 15419 http://www.cup.edu/graduate/crj Capella University 225 South 6th Street, 9th Floor, Minneapolis, MN 55402 http://www.capella.edu Canadian Defence Academy PO Box 17000, Kingston, ON, K7K 7B4, CAN http://www.cda.forces.gc.ca Center for Homeland Security, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs UCCS Center for Homeland Security , Colorado Springs, CO www.chs.uccs.edu Center for National Security Law University of Virginia School of Law 580 Massie Rd., Charlottesville, VA , 22903-1789 http://www.virginia.edu/cnsl/ Center for Terrorism Law, St. Mary’s University School of Law One Camino Santa Maria, San Antonio, TX, 78228 http://www.stmarytx.edu Central Georgia Technical College 3300 Macon Tech Drive, Macon, GA, 31206, US http://www.centralgatech.edu CHDS http://www.chds.us/ Everest University http://www.everest.edu Command & General Staff College 100 Stimson Ave., Ft. Leavenworth, KS, 66027-2301 E-mail: richard.berkebile@us.army.mil Charles Sturt University http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/arts/agsps/about-the-school Delaware Technical and Community College 100 Campus Drive, Dover, DE , 19904 www.dtcc.edu East Carolina University A-124A Brewster Bldg., Greenville, NC, 28758-4353 http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cas/securitystudies/index.cfm Emergency Administration and Planning University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #310617, Denton, TX, 76203-5017 http://www.unt.edu/eadp

George Washington University 121 I Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20052 http://www.gwu.edu/ Goodwin College 745 Burnside Ave., East Hartford, CT, 06108 http://www.goodwin.edu Greenville Technical College Critical Incident Management Institute (CIMI) 216 S. Pleasantburg Dr., Greenville, SC, 29607 http://www.gtbmc.com Henley-Putnam University 25 Metro Drive, Suite 500, San Jose, CA 95110 http://www.henley-putnam.edu Iowa Central Community College 330 Ave M, Fort Dodge, IA, 50501 http://www.iccc.cc.ia.us Jones International University 9697 East Mineral Avenue, Centennial, Colorado 80112 http://www.jonesinternational.edu Kaplan University 888 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10106 http://www. Kaplan.edu Keiser University 1900 West Commercial Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33309 http://www.keiseruniversity.edu/ Long Island University 121 Speonk-Riverhead Road – LIU Bldg, Riverhead, NY 11901-3499 http://www.liu.edu/homeland Midway College 512 E. Stephens Street, Midway, KY, 40347 http://www.midwaycolleges.com Montgomery County Community College 340 Dekalb Pike, Blue Bell, PA, 19422 www.mc3.edu Naval Postgraduate School-Center for Homeland Defense and Security 1 University Circle, Monterey, CA, 93943 http://www.chds.us New Jersey City University njcu.edu/security.grad_dept@njcu.edu 1-877-NJCU-GRAD New Jersey City University

Northcentral University-Center for Law Enforcement and Security 10000 E. University Drive, Prescott Valley, AZ, 86314 http://www.ncu.edu Norwich University 158 Harmon Drive, Northfield, VT 05663 Northfield, VT 05663 http://www.norwich.edu Notre Dame College 4545 College Rd.,South Euclid, OH, 44121-4293 www.notredamecollege.edu/professional_development Penn State 222B Outreach Bldg. Penn State, University Park, PA, 16802 http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu Purdue University Purdue Homeland Security Institute (PHSI) Gerald D. and Edna E. Mann Hall Room 166, 203 S. Intramural Drive, West Lafayette, IN, 47907-1971 http://www.purdue.edu/DiscoveryPark/phsi/ Rochester Institute of Technology 31 Lomb Memorial Drive, Building 1, Suite 2210, Rochester, NY, 14623 http://www.rit.edu/cms S2 Safety & Intelligence Institute 1261 South Missouri Ave., Clearwater, Florida 33756 http://www.s2institute.com/

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The Center for Continuing Studies, (UCONN) One Bishop Circle, Unit 4056, Storrs, CT 06269-4056 http://continuingstudies.uconn.edu/mps/programs/hsl.html Thomas Edison State College 101 West State Street, Trenton, NJ, 08608 http://military.tesc.edu Tiffin University 155 Miami Street, Tiffin, OH, 44883 http://www.tiffin.edu Towson University 8000 York Road, Towson, MD, 21252-0001 www.new.towson.edu/hsm Tulane University, School of Continuing Studies 125 Gibson Hall, New Orleans, LA, 70118-5698 http://www.scs.tulane.edu/degrees_programs/homeland.htm University of Denver 2201 South Gaylord, Denver, CO, 80208 www.du.edu/gsis/areas/homelandsecurity.html University of Hawaii-West Oahu 96-129 Ala Ike, Pearl City, HI, 96782 http://www.uhwo.hawaii.edu University of Idaho 1776 Science Center Dr., Idaho Falls, ID, 83402 http://www.uidaho.edu

Saint Leo 33701 State Road 52, PO Box 6665, Saint Leo FL 33574-6665 http://www.saintleo.edu

University of Maryland College Park, MD, 20742 www.start.umd.edu/education/ www.publicpolicy.umd.edu/Int...

SIG Homeland Security 184 Columbia Turnpike, Suite 4 #103, Florham Park, NJ 07932 http://www.sighls.org

University of Maryland University College 3501 University Blvd. East, Adelphi, MD, 20783 http://www.umuc.edu/homelandsecurity

Southwestern College 2040 South Rock Rd., Wichita, KS, 67207 www.southwesterncollege.org

University of New Haven 300 Boston Post Road, West Haven, CT, 06516 http://www.newhaven.edu/5924/

Stanford University-Center for International Security and Cooperation Encina Hall, Stanford, CA, 94305-6165 http://cisac.Stanford.edu

University of Southern California 3710 McClintock Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-2910 http://www.usc.edu/create

St. Clair County Community College 323 Erie St., Port Huron, MI, 48061-5015 www.sc4.edu/homelandsecurity

Virginia Commonwealth University Room 301B Scherer Hall, Richmond, VA, 23284-2028, US http://www.pubapps.vcu.edu/gov/academics/default.asp?ID=134

St. Petersburg College 3200 34th Street South, St. Petersburg, FL, 33733 http://www.spcollege.edu/ac/

Walden University Phone: 1-866-492-5336 http://www.waldenu.edu

Syracuse University College of Law, Syracuse, NY, 13244 http://insct.syr.edu/

West Kentucky Community and Technical College 4810 Alben Barkley Drive, Paducah, KY, 42001 http://www.westkentucky.kctcs.edu/

Texas A&M University 200 Discovery Drive, College Station, TX, 77845-1185 http://homelandsecurity.tamu.edu

Wilmington University 320 N. DuPont Highway, New Castle, DE, 19720 http://www.wilmu.edu

Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

Vol. 20, No.2

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Church Protectors

What is amazing is how many people have heard of active shooter problems, yet have taken no real organized approach to deal with them based on case studies, training, and experience. (Church Protectors scenario is in cooperation with St. George Greek Orthodox Church, New Port Richey, Florida).

By Todd Burke, Jim Weiss, and Mickey Davis

T

ina Turner, when doing her renditions of Proud Mary, often began with: “...nice and easy and then finish rough.”

Our “easy” prelude to the later “rough” begins with a few bulleted items (below) from FEMA in a June 2013 report entitled “Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Houses of Worship.” FEMA thinks that active shooters in a place of worship are a valid concern.

•

•

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Many people think of a house of worship as a safe area where violence and emergencies cannot affect them (but it takes awhile to mention the term “active shooter” within their document).

Adversarial and human-caused threats are arson, active shooters, criminal or gang violence, violence related to domestic disputes,

•

bombs, and cyber attacks.

Working with emergency management officials and community partners, houses of worship can develop a plan to better prepare their staff and congregants in prevention, reaction, and response to an active shooter incident.

Each house of worship should determine, as part of its planning process, policies on the control and presence of weapons, as permitted by law.

•

One comprehensive study found that in more than half of mass shootings incidents where a solo officer arrived on the scene (57 percent), the shooting was still underway when the officer arrived. In 75 percent of those instances, that solo officer had to confront the perpetrator of the threat. In those cases, the officer was shot onethird of the time. (Pete J. Blair and M. Hunter Martaindale, 2010).

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Nice and easy. What is amazing is how many people have heard of active shooter problems, yet have taken no real organized approach to deal with them based on case studies, training, and experience.

Many churches depend upon the loose comfort that off-duty police officers attend worship there, and some have “organized” ministries, which means nothing more than counting how many guns many be available by the officers during a worship service or church event.

No preplan or trained response.

This goes as well for medical emergencies or evacuations.

In other cases, places of worship have uniformed police officers directing traffic outside.

Church, temple, or mosque leaders certainly hope the officers would come in and handle any trouble, but hoping the traffic cops will handle all security issues has the Big D–denial, disaster, destruction--written all over it. It may also be a sign of the times that people feel somebody else will take care of them. This isn’t uncommon; far too many people today still do not grasp the necessity of an embedded response capability.

Another rational is that Joe, the off-duty cop member of the congregation, will handle any active shooter. But that’s just a presumption. Joe is most likely there with his wife and family, and might not being carrying a concealed handgun while off duty or in a place of worship.

Then suddenly, shots are fired!

It will take him precious moments to focus on what’s going down. He might see one bad guy, but are there more?

Another problem is how many pews away from the active shooter is Joe sitting. If he does happen to have a concealed carry handgun, he will be extremely stressed, just like the rest of the congregation. This situation is very different from his being dispatched to an armed robbery in progress on the job. In that case, he would be given crime-in-progress information before responding. Instead, this is a condition red, cold-turkey situation. (Condition red is a life-threatening, survival stress event one must adjust to in a flash.) When a condition red event happens, various psycho-physiological effects take place. Under such stress, can Joe really focus on his weapon’s front sight?

If Joe responds with gunfire, he may hit innocent people.

Will the bad guy’s attention turn to Joe? Will Joe’s family and the people around them become bullet magnets? Will his police department support him in the aftermath and any lawsuits? The chief or sheriff doesn’t have to. There is much to consider.

What should the plan be? It may begin with just a simple fire drill during regular worship. It might be simply realizing the depending upon emergency first responders is not enough.

There are so many variables; things can go very wrong, even with a plan. How will congregation members help the elderly, infirmed, those with walkers, canes, and in wheelchairs when members of the place of worship have to evaluate or move quickly? Obstacles such as pews, tables, and chairs need to be negotiated by a mass of people moving at the same time while trying to control fear. Where is the nearest exit plus two alternatives? How is the children’s area supported? What about the nursery or other event separate from the main worship group?

Active Shooter Attacks upon Places of Worship is an International Problem December 2012: Attacks on two Nigerian churches killed at least twelve.

October 2013: Egypt’s Coptic Christians persecuted, 40 churches attacked.

July 1993 South Africa: Charl Van Wyck, author of the book

Fighting Back: The Right and Duty of Self Defense, was a missionary present during one of the worst shootings at a church in South Africa. The terrorists were armed with automatic weapons and grenades, yet he repelled an attack by with only his five-shot revolver. When he hit one of the attackers…they ran away!

Active Shooter Attacks upon Places of Worship in the United Sates is Our Problem August 5, 2012: Six people were killed and four others wounded in a shooting that took place at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The lone gunman was identified as Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran and white supremacist. (CNN) February 14, 2010: Richmond, California - At New Gethsemene Church of God in Christ, three gunmen open fire during a service. Two members were wounded as the three gunmen fled the scene. (ABC Local News) March 8, 2009: Maryville, Illinois - At the First Baptist

Church, Pastor Fred Winters is killed by point-blank gunshot during a service. Several members were injured while attempting to subdue the attacker.

(CBS News) July 27, 2008: Knoxville, Tennessee - At the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist, two people were killed and six wounded during a children’s musical. (CBS News) December 9, 2007: Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado – Four people were killed and at least three were wounded at two different sites by the same gunman. The gunman was shot and ultimately killed himself.

(DenverPost.com) August 12, 2007: Neosho, Missouri - At the First Congregational Church, three people were killed and five others are wounded during a Sunday service. The gunman held 25-50 people hostage until hostage negotiators spoke with him, enabling police to apprehend him. (CNN) May 21, 2006: Baton Rouge, Louisiana - At the Ministry of Jesus Christ Church, four were killed and one seriously

Neosho, Missouri - At the First Congregational Church, three people were killed and five others are wounded during a Sunday service. The gunman held 25-50 people hostage until hostage negotiators spoke with him, enabling police to apprehend him.

(CNN)

wounded during a Sunday service. Another was abducted and murdered elsewhere. (CBS News) February 26, 2006: Detroit, Michigan –--Two were killed during a Sunday service at the Zion Hope Missionary Baptist Church. The shooter later killed himself. (USA Today)

bedded response. Note that the word is countermeasure and not preventive measure.

An example of an embedded preventive measure was at the New Life Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado (2007) where a bad guy killed and wounded others at different locations.

His spree ended when he was shot and killed by Jeanne As-

the last five years. This information came from Strategos International (strategosintl. com/), a company that teaches church security and intruder response solutions. Part of the Strategos International message is: Although we don’t like to think violent acts occur within the church walls, it is something for which we are obligated to prepare. There are several good

ted by those wanting to be remembered…regardless of the costs.

3. These violent acts have included robbery, assault, rape, religiously-motivated hate crimes, domestic relationships gone bad, etc.

4. The majority of violent acts are carried out by people who have a current or former connection to the

Although we don’t like to think violent acts occur within the church walls, it is something for which we are obligated to prepare. There are several good reasons that we must Pray, Prepare, and Prevent in order that we Prevail A recommendation is that embedded church protectors make use of a professional leader who is well versed in deadly force and firearms training (Peace Officers Standards and Training levels). (Church Protectors scenario is in cooperation with St. George Greek Orthodox Church, New Port Richey, Florida).

Photos by P.J. Ryan

March 14, 2005: Brookfield, Wisconsin – During a Sunday service at the Living Church of God, seven people plus the shooter were killed and four others wounded. (CBS News)

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Protecting the Congregations

sam, a former policewoman who volunteered as part of the church security preplan – armed, trained, and embedded.

Carrying a concealed weapon (CCW) laws in many states provide that the governing body of a church may direct who may and may not carry a firearm on their property

On a daily basis, we continue to hear about armed attacks and murders in our schools, malls, churches, airports, and other public venues. While there have been reports of shootings in Jewish temples and mosques, these are very few compared to incidents in Christian churches in the U.S. For this article, the reference is mainly to churches.

The most effective and efficient countermeasure to these attacks is an armed, trained, and em-

As we continue to learn that our so called “first responders” are rarely first on the scene, it may be more of a deterrence to have more armed and trained citizens continue to act swiftly and intelligently to cut the short an active shooter’s homicide-in-progress.

From watching 650 different news feeds via Google since 2007, we can track and document a 600% increase in violent events taking place in churches across the United States in just

reasons that we must Pray, Prepare, and Prevent in order that we Prevail.

Many types of incidents (both big and small) could happen-and have happened--within churches all over the country.

Church leaders have an obligation to church members, parishioners, and every visitor who steps inside our doors to provide a safe environment for worship.

These are Strategos International’s facts: 1. Acts of violence are on the increase in churches and other public places due to increased media attention.

2. Copycat acts by those who want to “outdo” a previous act are typically commit-

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congregation.

5. There are frequently warning signs or pre-act indicators that should to be taken seriously and communicated to those responsible for protecting our churches.

6. Most churches are unprepared to recognize, prevent, or respond to acts of violence and the tragic results of these acts.

7. Church staff, volunteers, members, and visitors have the right to feel safe and protected while in attendance and service.

We also need to understand the difference between safety and security; they are not the same.

Safety is the absence of danger, or being significantly distant from that danger. Security is the ability to manage or miti-

gate danger. Because we are rarely “safe” from danger, we should examine and address the security process.

While people might admit that there are active shooter and other violent crime events occurring, inwardly they may cling to fear-based beliefs and think “it won’t happen here,” or “someone else will take care of me.” Statistically, the chance of an active shooter event taking place in a particular place of worship is relatively small, but is it realistic to not address the problem by preparing in a meaningful way? The consequences of not preparing could be catastrophic beyond those injured or killed in the initial incident; the aftermath could completely destroy a church.

Developing an embedded, armed church protectors program It is recommended that the church leadership consult with the church’s insurance company, loss prevention and threat mitigation. Two insurance companies that understand and support the security ministry of churches include Guideone and Church Mutual.

Other recommendations include 1) a written description of the qualifications for armed church protectors, when they should apply, and expectations for them; 2) the formation of an interview board of mature people with an agenda of safety; 3) an interview of each applicant as well as a criminal background check of each one; 4) a written a mission statement, and written behavioral expectations; 5) the use of a professional leader well versed in deadly force and

firearms training (Peace Officers Standards and Training levels); 6) training in looking normal when carrying a concealed firearm, spotting people acting out in low-levels of aggressive behavior, and training in defensive tactics and weapons retention; and 7) emergency medical training. Once a church protectors program is established, regular training needs to be conducted.

Trained and deployed correctly, an embedded, armed church protectors program means most of the church’s congregation will likely not be aware they even exist!

About the Authors Todd Burke is a 30 year police, fire, and EMS veteran with a calling that focuses upon firearms training, team tactics, tactical medical response, and general emergency preparedness. Todd is the team leader for a safety and security ministry of a large Christian church in Mid Missouri and he is the manager for firearms training programs with Strategos International.

Lieut. Jim Weiss (Retired) is a former Army light infantryman, school-trained Army combat engineer, a former school-trained (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, Tactical Response, The Florida Trooper, Knives Illustrated, Counter Terrorism, Tactical Edge, and Tactical World.

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

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JournalCounterTerrorism_0114.indd 1

1/9/14 10:51 AM

Security Driver:

Sensory Inputs For The Professional Driver

By Anthony Ricci

I

n my opinion, one of the most important things one could learn and understand is themselves. How exactly do we work? How does our body gather the information inputs needed to successfully operate at speed? Where do our thoughts and sense of feel come from that help us to negotiate a turn or reverse out at speed?

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The three senses typically used by drivers are visual, kinesthetic, and auditory. The faster you dare to travel the more in tune with your senses you will need to be. To become more sensitive and make correct control inputs the information must flow freely and quickly to and from the brain.

Let’s first look at the visual senses since the brain gets most of its decision making capabilities from the eyes’ input. The Motorcycle Safety Foundation says “the eyes don’t tell our brain what we see yet our brain tells our eyes what to look for”. This makes good sense as it explains why two people can look at the same sight picture and get two different perceptions. Think in terms of learning how to corner at speed. Your instructor says “Look through the turn,” but what does he mean? The instructor is directing you to look to the end of the turn and keep the car on the correct line possibly seeing your next turn coming up, and you try to do that. Meanwhile although he is looking at the same sight picture he/she is interpreting the information totally differently possibly, feeling the terrain and pavement changes, recognizing his/her next braking and turn in point, looking at the degree of the next turn to decide how much braking to use or whether or not there is a turn coming up, selecting gaps in traffic, planning escape routes, and much more. Even when two different people look at the same sight picture it is easy for them to interpret two totally different perceptions about what is going on or what to do with the information.

We can train ourselves to utilize correct decision-making visual clues but only after our brain knows what to look for, where to look, and when to look. This has to be a very quick process when entering turns at speed or exiting a potential kill zone. Only a percentage of what we perceive is a direct result of our eyesight, the rest is our brain forming the picture and providing the next decision. Our brain is very good at filling in the gaps. This is where training and perfect practice comes in.

In training we experience a variety of scenarios that allows our brain to begin to react correctly on instinct and in the right amount of time, allowing more successful reactions.

Let’s add another sense to the mix called kinesthetic information. I like to refer to one’s rear end as a great “kinesthetic sensor” or simply “rear end computer”. No really, your rear end is positioned relatively close to the same level as the center of gravity in the car and you tend to feel when the car is about to go, stop, turn, over/under steer or just slide out of control. It will definitely make us better/safer drivers if we have a better feel of weight transfer and what the car doing at all times.

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It is only now that I realize my father was trying to compliment me in my “learning how to drive days”.

He used to repeatedly tell me how my head was up my rear end… He must have been referring to my keen sense of feel. I don’t think he realized how close the brain and rear end are or how sensitive you need to be at feeling vibrations from the pavement, bumps and uneven road sections, degree of lateral force acting on the vehicle and the traction capabilities of your tires? Thus the reason some drivers spin out of control and others can hold a drift all the way through a turn.

Drivers at a higher performance level have a much more sensitive kinesthetic input and smoother reactions to these inputs. For the most part this is a three part system; equilibrium (balance), feeling a force acting on our body, proprioceptive system, and of course visual input. The receptors send input to the brain where the information is processed and your body’s needs are sent back for corrective action to be taken. In other words how much force do I feel as the car starts to slide and when and how much input will it take to bring the vehicle back to straight while being smooth with the controls?

Auditory is also part of the sensory input process but the brain does not rate the input as important or as dependable as vision and feel. A person who has low or no hearing could still drive a car and or play sports. It would be strange not to hear the ball bounce or the stick hit the puck but it can be done.

Versus a person with no sight, they would not be able to play hockey and certainly hurt themselves and others on the road. However hearing sounds would definitely help in aiding balance and the overall decision making process.

In our Security Drivers training Program and Advanced High Performance School we actually force our students to repeatedly perform certain driving exercises blindfolded from the driver’s seat. When we tell them what they are about to perform they think we are crazy but when they are done they start to understand, feel, at a new level. It puts a new meaning to becoming one with your vehicle, or as I like to say “the vehicle is only an extension of the driver”. As you navigate your car after reading this article try to start to feel what the car is doing.

Lighten your grip on the wheel feel the vibration of the road and your tires. Don’t just stop the car at a stop sign. Think about what the car is doing and how much force is transferring as you stop, go and/or turn.

About the Author Anthony Ricci is the President of Advanced Driving & Security Inc. www.1adsi.com/

Remember the Victims of 9/11 Support the Flag of Honor and Flag of Heroes The inspiration behind the Flag of Honor and the Flag of Heroes was to immortalize the individual victims that were killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Flag of Honor contains the names of all those that perished in the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, United flights 175 and 93, and American flights 11 and 77.* The Flag of Heroes contains the names of the emergency services personnel - the heroes who gave their lives so that others could live. Together these flags give the families, friends, all of America and the world, symbols that will forever memorialize, individually, the men, women and children who were lost that dreadful day.

The IACSP has been granted permission to sell the posters and flags on our site. Please visit us online and help us support and remember.

An IACSP Q & A with Former FBI Special Agent John Whiteside, Author of “Fool’s Mate: A True Story of Espionage at the National Security Agency.”

Before Snowden:

The Reichstag building, seat of the German lower house of parliament Bundestag, is pictured though a flag depicting fugitive former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, during a demonstration in Berlin November 18, 2013. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

A Look Back at an Earlier NSA Spy, Robert Stephen Lipka

J

ohn W. Whiteside, III joined the FBI in 1971 as a Special Agent and spent most of his career working foreign counterintelligence investigations.

In 1996 he was responsible for the successful investigation and arrest of Robert Lipka, a former U.S. soldier who was assigned to NSA. The Lipka case is the oldest espionage case ever prosecuted in U.S. Courts and John Whiteside received the National Intelligence Certificate of Distinction from the Director of Central Intelligence.

John Whiteside retired from the FBI in 2001 and now conducts contractor investigations for the U.S. Government and does counterintelligence consulting.

His book “Fool’s Mate,” which can be purchased on Amazon.com, details the Lipka investigation and prosecution. John Whiteside was interviewed Paul Davis, a contributing editor to the journal.

IACSP: When one thinks of spy stories, one usually thinks of London, Moscow and other foreign capitals, and certainly not Philadelphia or neighboring Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Yet, as you recount in your book, “Fool’s Mate,” a serious

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and interesting spy drama did play out in Philadelphia and Lancaster with the investigation, arrest and conviction of Robert Stephen Lipka. So my first question is why did you write the book and what does your title, “Fool’s Mate” mean?

that was the weak part of my game and he suggested I use this particular move.

The move he suggested was Fool’s Mate, which is the quickest checkmate in chess.

So he was subtly telling me to go screw myself, I guess.

Whiteside: The title “Fool’s Mate” is a chess term for the worst move one can make in chess. It came out in my interview with Lipka. As I knew he was a chess player, during a break I mentioned that I had played in my first chess tournament.

I told him I needed a good opening, as

IACSP: He thought he was clever, didn’t he?

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Whiteside: He thought he was clever, and he would have been had I not known about the move. I didn’t question him. I just shook my head and figured it was vintage Robert Lipka.

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Whiteside: We often wondered why he wouldn’t cooperate with us to reduce his sentence.

IACSP: Why did you write the book at this time?

Whiteside: Well, I learned that Lipka got out of jail early in 2006 and it irritated me. I also learned that Vasili Mitrokhin, a Soviet defector and one of our major sources in the case, had passed away and I learned that Patricia, Lipka’s ex-wife and another witness in the case, had also passed away, and so it really irritated me that this guy was out. I thought about writing a book because it is a good story and I wanted to pay homage to all of the agents and support personnel in the FBI who worked on the case, as well as the people from NSA. We had a great group of people, the prosecutors and all. My initial thought was to write something to praise everyone and also make it like a primer for future agents who are going to work “false flag” or counterintelligence cases. I tried to put in all of the pitfalls and the successes that we had.

IACSP: I thought it was a very good book.

It read like a spy thriller. It was especially interesting to me because I’m from Philadelphia and I recall the Lipka case. Who was Robert Lipka? What was your impression of him?

Whiteside: He was born in Niagara Falls, New York and he was one of four children. His dad worked as a merchant marine on Lake Erie, I believe. His parents separated when he was young and he went with his father, while all of the other siblings stayed with mom. Right there, there is something kind of unusual, in my opinion. He was raised by his father and they moved from town-to-town and they lived in motel rooms with his father. They didn’t have any money and he had kind of a miserable time growing up. He didn’t graduate from high school and he joined the Army when he was only 18. He joined the Army, supposedly, so he would not have to go to Vietnam.

He was told that if he did well on the testing he could get into the intelligence service and he would not have to carry a rifle, and that’s what he did. He played some sports in high school and he was voted “most dramatic.” I think he was also in a class play.

IACSP: I was going to ask if being voted “most dramatic” was an insult.

In a letter to the prosecutor after he was in prison, he wrote that maybe some people died as a result of the information he passed. But he went on to say we should think of his sons without their father. That was an example of his greed and self-serving nature. The man was a sociopath.

Whiteside: Well, it is kind of interesting how things follow you through life. We looked at his yearbook and there was a picture of him that states he was voted “most dramatic”, and that’s really how he was all though our investigation. We were told by his brother that the reason he went with his dad was that when he came home from school he would tell all these wild stories. He would take this little piece of truth and twist this enormous fiction around it. They were just tired of it.

IACSP: That sounds like another spy, Jonathan Pollard.

Whiteside: Lipka did the same thing with us that he did with his family. Half of the stuff he told us was just nonsense. At his first court appearance after he was arrested and his name was called, he limped up to the desk. Now, we just arrested him two hours earlier and there was no limp at all. Where did the limp come from? Next time we see him, he’s on crutches, another time he is in a wheelchair.

What’s with this guy? Maybe he thinks he will get sympathy.

IACSP: Sounds like a drama queen. In photos I saw with his glasses on he looks like the actor Wayne Knight, who played the character Newman on TV’s “Seinfeld.”

Whiteside: Yes, I thought if I ever get a movie out of this he should be the actor.

IACSP: He sounds like he has Newman’s creepy personality as well.

IACSP: Nearly all of the captured spies do cooperate, right?

Whiteside: They all do. We offered to reduce his jail time and his lawyer pleaded with him to cooperate, but he just would not do it. It made no sense. Perhaps whatever he passed to the Soviets caused so many deaths or was so horrible that he thought he would never get a break if he admitted to it. Or, on the other hand, knowing his personality, he would rather take the hit than confess and let us win. That was his goofy way.

IACSP: He gave away NSA secrets during the Vietnam War, so like the Navy spy John Walker, it is conceivable that he did in fact cause deaths through his espionage.

Whiteside: It is conceivable and in a letter to the prosecutor after he was in prison, he wrote that maybe some people died as a result of the information he passed. But he went on to say we should think of his sons without their father. That was an example of his greed and self-serving nature. The man was a sociopath.

IACSP: Because he didn’t cooperate, the government really doesn’t know the damage he caused, am I right?

Whiteside: That is exactly right. We have no idea. The only thing I can tell you is that NSA had to review whatever was going on from 1965 to 1967, as Lipka had access to just about every document by virtue of his position.

IACSP: Do you know if Lipka has read your book?

Whiteside: I know he hasn’t read the book.

We just heard that he died on July 5, 2013.

He was 68. I was hoping he would read the book.

IACSP: Where did he do his time?

Whiteside: He did most of his time in the federal prison in Fairton, New Jersey.

IACSP: I did a tour of Fairton. It’s not too bad, as far as prisons go. As he didn’t cooperate and the government doesn’t know the full extent of his espionage, can you even tell how he stacks up against Aldrich Ames, John Walker and Robert Hanssen as a spy?

Whiteside: It is really hard to do that. All of the other spies cooperated, every one of them.

You can’t compare.

IACSP: I would assume the worst – that Lipka gave away the store.

Whiteside: That’s what I think.

He had a top secret crypto clearance. He had access to the president’s daily and weekly briefs.

He had access to everything. He had access to all incoming and outgoing SIGINT, signals intelligence, from NSA and incoming documents from other agencies.

IACSP: As I see it, for all of these egotistical spies, cooperating is a form of bragging. With Lipka’s huge ego, I’m surprised that he didn’t cooperate and brag about his espionage.

Whiteside: That’s a good point.

Knowing his personality, that would be in his wheelhouse, I would think. So what was he hiding?

IACSP: Can you give us a brief overview of the investigation and the sting operation?

Whiteside:I became involved because when the case came to the FBI I had the responsibility for working counterintelligence investigations in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It turned out this case was presented to us as a guy living in Lancaster County. I got the “ticket” on it. In September of 1965 Lipka walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. and offered to sell NSA top secret material. He was paid $400 the first time he met them.

While he was in the embassy they set up a series of meets and drop sites and every two weeks from September of 1965 until August of 1967 he made clandestine drops. He took classified material, left it at a predestinated location, and then went to a secondary location and picked up a

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packet of money, as well as instructions for the site of his next drop, two weeks hence.

And he did that 50 times and passed over 200 top secret documents. One source said he was paid $27,000 during that two-year period.

IACSP: What would that be in today’s dollars?

Whiteside: Probably more than $100,000. He was making a thousand dollars a month and was being paid $200 by the Army, so he was being paid by the Soviets five times his monthly salary. He stopped after he got out of the service and lost his access, although we found out later from his exwife he took documents with him. The Russians made contact with him in 1968 and a pair of Soviet “Illegals,” like the TV show “The Americans”, made contact with him via a postcard.

He got the postcard in the mail, took it in the house and waved it around in front of his wife, all excited, and said “We’re back in it!” She told him to stay out of it, and he replied that he had to keep his options open. We don’t know exactly what transpired. We know he went to Millersville College and got a degree in teaching in 1972, but never taught to the best of our knowledge. His marriage fell apart and she divorced him in 1974. He subsequently opened a coin shop in Lancaster and ran the business for about five years, using his gambling proceeds to buy the coins.

IACSP: He was a horse player, right?

Whiteside: Yes. He remarried in 1981 and had two boys. But he never seemed to have job.

We couldn’t find any income or work, although his wife worked.

We have information from another Soviet source that he was paid $150,000. Now that flies in the face of the source who told us he was paid $27,000.

He admitted to our undercover agent that he went to New York in 1974 and met with the KGB. I tend to believe that he was paid $150,000 and that he was

stringing the Soviets along, saying he might go back to NSA and needed more money, but I don’t know and I can’t explain the difference in dollar amounts.

with a ring of relatives who were still passing information.

IACSP: It’s a mystery and it will remain a mystery now that he’s dead.

Whiteside: Exactly. We had a lot of questions, so we had an undercover FBI agent pose as a GRU officer and reach out to Lipka, saying he wanted to chat and talk about old times and see if he could still help the Russians.

We met him four or five times in person and Lipka admitted that he did it for greed. We did the False Flag operation first only because we didn’t want him to become aware of our investigation. When we realized we weren’t going to get much more from him, we didn’t care if one of his confeder-

Whiteside: It will remain a mystery unless a former KGB guy comes out and is willing to talk to us about it. I’ve been trying to reach his old handler, but I’m not having much luck.

I’d like to chat with him, like two old professionals.

IACSP: When the Soviet Union fell, the KGB opened their files to a certain extent, but I believe

IACSP: That would explain his income without his working.

In September of 1965 Lipka walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. and offered to sell NSA top secret material. While he was in the embassy they set up a series of meets and drop sites and every two weeks from September of 1965 until August of 1967 he made clandestine drops.

under Putin, a former KGB officer, the files are once again sealed shut. I’ve heard that the GRU - Soviet and now Russian military intelligence – have always been stingy about their files and never allowed access.

ates or his ex-wife warned him that the FBI was on to him. We don’t believe anyone called him.

We interviewed his ex-wife and she confessed to knowing that he was selling secrets to the Russians.

Whiteside:You asked about our sting operation, which we call a “False Flag” operation, we used the pretense of the GRU. The reason we did that was the GRU did not change after the Soviet Union fell.

The KGB’s foreign intelligence became the SVR, but the GRU is still the GRU. We didn’t know if Lipka was still in contact with the Russians, or if he was like John Walker

Whiteside: No, she was given immunity from prosecution. She was physically and emotionally abused by Lipka and she was a poor soul. She told us that he would come home, sit on the sofa, open his packet of money and throw it up the air. She said it was just like James Bond.

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IACSP: Was his ex-wife prosecuted?

IACSP: Yes, if Newman was

review page 83 and 84. It gave us some insight into the documents Lipka might have passed to the KGB.

In event of war and the break of diplomatic relations, the illegals would stay in the country. They don’t steal secrets. They do tasks. As far as killings, that’s nonsense, but we do know that they are trained with explosives and firearms.

playing James Bond. Was it satisfying when he was finally arrested? Where you there?

Whiteside: Yes, I arrested him.

It was very satisfying. He tried to take control and asked me if I talked to Milt Roby. Roby was a man who died that Lipka told our undercover agent that if anybody ever talks to him, he would say everything he did, he did for Milt Roby. I said to him, “Rob, Milt Roby is dead.”

Back to his yearbook - most dramatic. He clutches his heart, looks up in the air and says “Oh, no, there goes my only witness.” He was unbelievable.

He was so obnoxious. I just wanted to punch him. He was an irritating person.

IACSP: Like Newman.

Whiteside: Exactly. There are a lot of similarities between the two. But the excitement and the thrill of the arrest were real quick. It wasn’t my first arrest, but it was my last.

IACSP: So you went out on a big win. You mentioned earlier that the KGB defector Mitrokhin who was scheduled to testify against Lipka but didn’t have to. What was your impression of him?

Whiteside: He was a great guy.

A defector was how we came up with Hanssen and how we came up with Lipka. He was difficult

to work with when we first met him. He seemed kind and gracious, but then he blew up at the end of the first week we were meeting with him. He claimed you “can’t catch a cockroach with a king.”

IACSP: He looked down on Lipka.

Whiteside: But he was a big part of the case. We had to use him. We brought him to Philadelphia to look at the courtroom and he finally agreed to testify, which was a big moment for us.

IACSP: It took courage for what he did. He defected with a good bit of the KGB archives.

Whiteside: I enjoyed his company. Now another defector, a former KGB General named Oleg Kalugin, wrote a book called “The First Directorate” and he describes his work in the KGB against the United States.

It’s a good book. He didn’t mention Lipka by name, but he did identify an NSA soldier.

He spent a page and a half talking about the information the soldier passed to the KGB. He also stated that based on the success of working with that NSA soldier, the KGB was able to use the same system of dead drops they used with John Walker.

He didn’t identify Lipka, but we decided to send that book with our undercover agent to Lipka and tell him to carefully

IACSP: You mentioned “The Americans” earlier and in your book you mention some real Soviet illegals, Peter and Ingeborg Fisher. Can you tell us about them and their connection to Lipka?

Whiteside: They came over in the early 1960s through Canada.

This couple stayed in Boston and were identified by the FBI as Soviet illegals. They moved to Upper Darby, Pennsylvania in 1966 and in 1968 they went to Lancaster, where they made contact with Lipka with a postcard. That was a tie-in. Lipka was charged on one count of conspiracy to commit espionage and you need to have more than one person for a conspiracy, so the co-conspirators were the two Russian illegals, Peter and Ingeborg Fisher, and also the KGB illegal support officer in New York.

We did some surreptitious entries into the house of the illegals and we found a notebook that they had obviously left by mistake and it had a list of 25 sabotage target-type sites, for in the event of war, probably. They were fuel depots, microwave towers and electro-generating stations. There was also one piece of paper that had one word on it; ROECK with some coordinates in Lancaster.

And that’s how we were able to come up with the code name ROOK. That was a huge thing.

IACSP: Rook is a reference to chess, right?

Whiteside: Rook is a chess piece. According to Lipka’s ex-wife, when they went to see a James Bond movie, “From Russia With Love,” the opening scene shows a chess tournament. He leaned over to her and said his code word was ROOK. IACSP: What an ass. Were the Fishers arrested?

Whiteside: They were never arrested. They left the country in 1968. They told the post-

man that they were going back home for a couple of weeks to Germany. They posed as German nationals. They never came back, they just disappeared.

IACSP: How do the Fishers measure up to the couple in “The Americans,” in your view?

Whiteside: I think “The Americans” does a great job of demonstrating the kinds of things illegals are supposed to do. In event of war and the break of diplomatic relations, the illegals would stay in the country. They don’t steal secrets. They do tasks. As far as killings, that’s nonsense, but we do know that they are trained with explosives and firearms. So they have those capabilities in time of war.

IACSP: We’ve been talking about an NSA spy from the 1960s, but what are your thoughts concerning today’s NSA leaker, Edward Snowden?

Whiteside: Based on my background and my contacts at NSA, he is just a terrible person. He deserves to be prosecuted and go to jail for life. I have friends who think what NSA has done is horrible, but I know people at NSA and they couldn’t be more honest and honorable. Do you want to be protected from a future terrorist attack, or not? If that’s the only way to do it, then you have to make a choice. Now if the government is misusing that stuff, I can at least understand Snowden giving up the American part. But all of the other stuff he is giving up has nothing to do with American rights.

IACSP: And while talking about freedom, he gives it up to the totalitarian governments of Russia and China.

Whiteside: He is phony, just like the rest of these guys. The Russians are going to bleed Snowden dry. He has put us in greater danger and the cost to the American public is phenomenal.

IACSP:Thank you for speaking to us.

A Secretary at War:

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates Looks Back At the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

By Paul Davis

T

his past January former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates opened his speaking tour to promote his book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The book is an account of Gates’ four and half years as Defense Secretary during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gates previously appeared at National Constitution Center on Independence Mall in Historic Philadelphia on September 22, 2011, when he was awarded the 2011 Liberty Medal.

Gates returned to the center and spoke about the book and his experiences on January 17, 2014 before a large group of visitors.

The center, which proclaims to be the first and only institution in America established by Congress to disseminate information about the United States Constitution on a non-partisan basis in

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order to increase the awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people, brings the United States Constitution to life by hosting interactive exhibitions and constitutional conversations and inspires active citizenship by celebrating the American constitutional tradition.

Gates, who broke his neck in a fall prior to his appearance in Philadelphia, sat on the stage wearing a neck brace. Sitting across from him was moderator Chris Mondics, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Gates opened the talk by noting that prior to becoming the Secretary of Defense, he had never

Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates (3rd L) inspects the troops, some in Colonial-style uniforms, during his farewell ceremony at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, June 30, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

broken a bone or had surgery, but since assuming the senior position he fell on ice and broke his right shoulder and later injured his right arm changing a snow plow blade on a tractor.

“My security guards quickly came to the conclusion that Al Qaeda was no risk to me at all, compared to myself,” Gates said to audience laughter .

Mondics noted that in Gates’ book he writes about when he first took over as the Defense Secretary in 2006.

“You describe a dire situation in Iraq. American troops are dying at increasing rates, the insurgents are gathering force, there is extreme, explosive sectarian violence, and no apparent plan on the part of the United States government for coping with that,” Mondics said. “The take away from that part of the book is that we hadn’t planned properly for the occupation and that indeed it never occurred to military planners that we might be there as long as we have.”

“Why were we so mistaken on that point?”

Mondics asked.

Gates replied that in his book he offers one of the lessons learned about war, which was that people who advocate going to war and make decisions about to going to war almost always

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are convinced the war will be short.

He noted that World War I was a classic example.

“The problem in Iraq, and is true of both Iraq and Afghanistan, that what began as swift military victories quickly degenerated into long and grinding wars,” Gates said. “In the case of Iraq, there was always belief that it would be a short-term commitment.”

Gates went on to say that the assumption that the war would be short afflicted the Defense Department as badly as the decisionmakers themselves.

“Because everyone assumed that the war would be over quickly, there was a great reluctance inside defense to spend significant sums of money on equipment that might be needed to protect the troops, but might only be useful in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Gates explained. “As I describe it in the book, the Department of Defense is organized to plan for war, not to wage war. So the services dedicate all of their efforts to developing their longrange procurement plans and then defending those plans in the budget process, regardless of what comes along.”

Gates went on to explain his battle with Pentagon chiefs to develop and fund the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle, which Gates said saved so many lives and limbs, as that kind of vehicle was not in any Army or Marine Corps plan.

“After the initial Iraq invasion, there was just a series of stunningly bad decisions and mistakes,” Gates said. “Disbanding the Iraqi army, turning 400,000 men who didn’t know anything else except how to shoot into the civilian economy with no support for their families, was just a formula for disaster. If we had done our best to keep the Iraqi Army coherent, but with different leadership, then you would have not seen the looting that took place in Baghdad and elsewhere, and you might have had civil order that would have prevented the sectarian violence that became so bad by 2006.”

Gates gave credit to President Bush for realizing the strategy in Iraq War was not working and ordered the increase in troops – “the surge’ - to get control of the security situation.

Dr. Robert M. Gates served as U.S. Secretary of Defense from December 2006 to July 2011.

Mondics noted that Gates in his book ‘heaped” quite a bit of praise on President Bush, as well as President Obama, and the muchreported critiques of President Obama had missed the point.

They were, Mondics said, part of a larger fabric and evaluation of both of these men, which was much more nuanced than the public has received thus far.

Dr. Gates was the only Secretary of Defense in U.S. history to be asked to remain in that office by a newly elected President. President Barack Obama was the eighth president Dr. Gates served.

Gates and Mondics went on to discuss Gates’ battles within the Pentagon and with Washington politics, as well as his battles overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates also discussed President Obama’s firing of the Afghanistan military commander, General Stanley McChrystal, over comments his staff made to a Rolling Stone magazine reporter, and the killing of Osama bin Laden

by U.S. Navy SEALs.

Secretary Gates joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional. During that period, he spent nearly nine years at the National Security Council, The White House, serving four presidents of both political parties.

Gates also expressed his deep appreciation and respect for the troops who fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This book is dedicated to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces,” Gates said. “I wrote this book in substantial measure for the troops and their families. One of the things I wanted them to see, under both of these presidents, was what the Washington battle space looked like. I wanted them to have some insight into the real world of what was going on in Washington as big issues associated with these wars were discussed and to give them some sense of the passion and the amount of time spent debating these issues and the decisions they would make. I think this is a realistic portrayal of the wars that were being fought in Washington at the same time there were wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

About the Author Paul Davis, a U.S. Navy veteran and retired Defense Department civilian employee, is a contributing editor to the journal.

Before becoming Secretary of Defense, Dr. Gates was the President of Texas A&M University, the nation’s seventh largest university. Prior to assuming the Texas A&M presidency, on August 1, 2002, he served as Interim Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M from 1999 to 2001.

Dr. Gates served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1991 until 1993. He is the only career officer in CIA’s history to rise from entry-level employee to Director. He served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 1986 until 1989 and as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser at the White House from January 20, 1989, until November 6, 1991, for President George H.W. Bush.

Secretary Gates has been awarded the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, has twice received the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and has three times received CIA’s highest award, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

He is the author of the memoir, “From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insiders Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War,” published in 1996.

Until becoming Secretary of Defense, Dr. Gates served as Chairman of the Independent Trustees of The Fidelity Funds, the nation’s largest mutual fund company, and on the board of directors of NACCO Industries, Inc., Brinker International, Inc. and Parker Drilling Company, Inc. Dr. Gates has also served on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the American Council on Education, the Board of Directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America. He has also been President of the National Eagle Scout Association.

A native of Kansas, Secretary Gates received his bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary, his master’s degree in history from Indiana University, and his doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University.

In 1967 he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and served as an intelligence officer at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

Homeland Security Bookshelf

By Dr. Joshua Sinai Dane S. Egli,

Beyond the Storms: Strengthening Homeland Security and Disaster Management to Achieve Resilience.

Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2014. 248 pages, $74.95 [Hardcover], $34.95 [Paperback].

This is an excellent and comprehensive account of the importance of the role of resilience in protecting critical infrastructure against a spectrum of threats, ranging from terrorism to natural disasters. Readers will especially benefit from the author’s insights on issues such as the nature of threats (including terrorism, cyber-attacks, pandemics and climate calamities), the components of critical infrastructure protection, understanding resilience (including its strategic context and methodologies for data collection and analysis), public-private partnerships in building resilience, formulating a risk assessment framework and metrics for effectiveness in evaluating resilience programs, and strategic and operational recommendations for crafting resiliency frameworks at national and local levels. The concluding chapter is especially useful in providing case studies of the spectrum of threats against critical infrastructure, such as hurricanes, earthquakes and electricity blackouts that are intended to frame these situations within the relevant fields where establishing resilience is crucial, especially in preparedness, disaster management, emergency response, resilience, public-private partnerships, and collective action. “Beyond the Storms� also serves as an important textbook and reference resource on homeland security. The author is a national security advisor at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and a former Coast Guard officer who served on the White House National Security Council staff on homeland security issues.

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Vol. 20, No.2

Amos N. Guiora,

Modern Geopolitics and Security: Strategies for Unwinnable Conflicts.

Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2014. 181 pages, $79.95 [Hardcover].

This is an innovative and important examination of the strategies required by governments to defeat the threats presented by non-state actors, such as terrorist groups. Beginning with a discussion of new developments affecting issues such as sovereignty, intervention, geopolitics, and security in the evolving global environment, the author then examines how states have attempted to address them in significant historical cases such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United States’ intervention in Libya and its “non-intervention” in the current civil war in Syria, the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the Arab Spring, and the use of force when intervening in what are termed “failed states.” The evolving global geostrategic environment, the author points out, also affects domestic politics in Western countries, with “The triangle of immigration, extremism, and economic concerns [throwing] a curve ball into the foreign policy discussion because it requires decision makers to recognize combustible domestic issues.” (p. 148) In view of such changes, the author concludes that “For that reason, we are in an era of the unwinnable conflict; the burden on decision makers is to engage in honest conversation and dialogue to begin the process of defining goals and missions in the context of geopolitics.

Otherwise, the mistakes of today will, indeed, represent Tuchman’s ‘March of Folly’.” (p. 149) Mr. Guiora is a professor of law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, the University of Utah, was a former Judge Advocate for the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command, and has published numerous books on these subjects.

Erroll Southers,

Homegrown Violent Extremism.

Boston, MA: Anderson Publishing, 2013. 142 pages, $29.95 [Paperback].

This is an insightful and authoritative account of the nature and threat of what is termed “homegrown violent extremism” (HVE), the conditions and vulnerabilities that produce it, and the governmental and private sector responses that, according to the author, prove effective at mitigating such threats at the societal, community and individual levels. The book is divided into two parts, with the first part examining topics such as the motivations, ideologies and agendas of those who become homegrown violent extremists (e.g., racial supremacy, extremist religious and political ideologies), the components of the radicalization process (including the role of extremist leaders in the radicalization process), the role and dynamics of group behavior in perpetuating violent extremism, and how such extremists calculate their terrorist attacks. The book’s second part covers approaches and methodologies to counter HVE, ranging from leveraging the work produced by academic disciplines in the humanities, the sciences, and social sciences, and what the author terms “a mosaic of engagement” based on best practices in countering extremism by the governments of the United Kingdom (e.g., “CONTEST” strategy) and the United States. The overall objective in countering HVE, the author points out, is to exert a positive influence on the susceptible and vulnerable environments that produce extremism, thereby reducing the risk of radicalization into terrorist violence in such communities. The author is the Associate Director of Research Transition at the Department of Homeland Security National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), University of Southern California, and a former high ranking officer in United States law enforcement, making him an ideal practitioner-scholar to analyze these issues.

These reviews are a revised and expanded version of the author’s previously published capsule reviews which appeared in the academic journal “Perspectives on Terrorism.” Reprinted by permission.

About the Reviewer Dr. Joshua Sinai is a Washington, DC-based consultant on terrorism and counterterrorism studies. He is the author of “Active Shooter – A Handbook on Prevention,” published by ASIS International in 2013.

Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

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