Terror Threat Training

Yesterday the Department of Homeland Security sent out their weekly Homeland Security Newsletter (subscribe). As part of their normal announcements they included the listing for a class conducted in Winston-Salem, NC. The course, Criminal Elements and Terrorist Threat Analysis and Threat Assessments, was listed as being restricted to members of a public-safety agency. Knowing that this type of course would be valuable for security managers at high-risk facilities (who wouldn’t be members of a public-safety agency) I emailed the point of contact listed on the course description document, August Vernon. He did confirm that the course had been opened to ‘CIP partners’ (Critical Infrastructure Protection), but that the listed course was already full and had a waiting list. He did tell me that he had another course coming up soon (March 8th (Monday) 0830-1230) dealing with the terrorist operational planning cycle. According to the flyer that August sent me:

“This 4-hour course identifies how terrorists use a structured methodology to plan their operations. Pre-operational surveillance of the targets location and behavior patterns are critical to the success of the adversary missions. In this module, students learn how terrorist groups plan their operations and methods to conduct surveillance, the indicators they project, and the countermeasures that public safety agencies can use to disrupt terrorist planning.”

Again this sounds like a valuable course for anyone wanting to understand how terrorist organizations work, a pre-requisite to planning a proper counter-terrorism strategy for a city or a high-risk chemical facility. This course is nearly full, so if you wish to attend contact August as soon as possible. Since this is only a four hour course it will probably only be of interest to someone within driving distance of Winston-Salem, NC. Anyone knowing of similar regional courses, please let me know. I certainly would be willing to publicize these to the chemical security community.