Another Private “Counter Terror” Organisation

Here’s an item of interest from October:

The 5th Annual Homeland Security Professionals Conference & Expo in Las Vegas, hosted by The Counter Terrorist Magazine, was a complete success. “At a time when there is increasing evidence of home-grown terrorism and viable bombs being sent from Yemen, we were extremely proud that it felt like ‘it was the counter terrorism equivalent of Harvard,’ according to one participant,” said Sol Bradman, CEO of Security Solutions International, the publishers of The Counter Terrorist Magazine.

…Security Solutions International (SSI) has helped more than 800 Federal, State and local agencies to prevent prepare and respond to the asymmetrical threat of organized crime, gangs, drug cartels, terrorist organizations, disease and natural disasters since 2004.

Security Solutions International also provides the professional First Responder community with the leading media in the field as the publishers of The Counter Terrorist Magazine, The Counter Terrorist Newsletter, webinars and interactive learning, as well as the Annual Homeland Security Professionals Conference – the central event in the First Responder calendar. The company has been contracted to provide content for the newly established, first in the nation, Homeland Security Network which debuted in October 2010.

The Counter Terrorist Magazine is distributed to members of the ICTOA; according to a 2008 press release:

The ICTOA (International Counter Terror Officers Association) has made the Counter Terrorist magazine a welcomed addition to their quarterly newsletter for all of its members. The magazine like the newsletter will be issued to all existing and incoming members. “We are very proud of this achievement,” says Solomon Bradman, CEO of Security Solutions International (SSI) the publishers of the Counter Terrorist Magazine. “The Counter Terrorist magazine is the official journal of the Homeland Security Professional and is privileged to be the official magazine of the ICTOA,” whose members are on the front lines of the war on terror both here and internationally.”

I blogged on the ICTOA last month; the organisation co-sponsored an unofficial “memorial” event near Fort Hood organised by self-proclaimed “ex-terrorist” Walid Shoebat and featuring, among others, William Boykin and Robert Spencer (who kept his involvement low-key). Shoebat and Boykin are both known for their views about Islam’s Satanic role in an apocalyptic conflict with Christianity leading up to the End Times (Shoebat teaches that the Bible predicts a “Muslim anti-Christ”). I noted the ICTOA’s links to the weird “Griffith Colson Intelligence Service”, which is itself a “division” of the Securitas Global Group (SGG).

SSI, meanwhile, has received some critical comment in the past. The Seattle Times reported in 2008:

Some local Muslim community members are upset about a training course for local law enforcement, saying it could promote stereotypes and ethnic and religious profiling.

The program, called “The Threat of Islamic Jihadists to the World” and conducted by a Miami-based company, began Thursday and continues today at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission campus in Burien.

…Arsalan Bukhari, president of the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said the program appears to be linking an entire religion to terrorism.

…But Solomon Bradman, CEO of Security Solutions International, which is conducting the program, said, “I can’t take the responsibility of my course linking their religion to terrorism. I think their religion got linked to terrorism a long time ago.”

The purpose of the course, Bradman said, is to teach officers how to protect people from terrorism. His company has provided training to hundreds of agencies, including the FBI, the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

The two-day program covers some of the history of Islam to provide an “understanding of the terror mind-set and reasons for global jihad,” Bradman said. It’s not intended to be an all-inclusive course on Islam.

The SSI website promotes the Clarion Fund’s Obsession DVD, using an endorsement for the documentary from Glenn Beck. Alongside Bradman as CEO, the President is a certain Henry Morgenstern, who, according to his blurb, has

pioneered the Homeland Security training in Israel, a program that has taken more than 400 Homeland Security Professionals to Israel…

An internationally recognized consultant on issues related to counter-terrorism training for law enforcement officials and First Response teams, he has briefed NorthCom and many law enforcement agencies on terror threats. His book, (edited with Ophir Falk) Suicide Terror; understanding and confronting the threat has become a textbook on dealing with Suicide bombers.

Details of the book, which is a serious work published by Wiley, can be seen here. His co-editor, Falk, is with the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. Falk takes a relatively hawkish view on the West Bank, asserting that the Bible is evidence that “Jews have a right to live in Judea and Samaria” but acknowledging that it is also home to the Palestinians.

The SSI’s Homeland Security Network, meanwhile, has a website here. According to its blurb:

This network addresses the needs of more than 3 million Homeland Security First Responders by providing an information backbone that is completely secure (law enforcement sensitive) that offers an efficient, private-industry alternative to the disparate and fragmented sources now available at the Federal, State and Local level. ALL CONTENT WILL BE COMPLETELY FREE. Private industry with products and services designed to make the difficult mission of the First Responder easier and more efficient will support the Network.

According to a list of press releases, the network has made links with a number of organisations: Homeland Security Television (“HSTV currently supports two major Department of Homeland Security training and education efforts through its relationship with Total Security Services International Inc.”); Alert Publishing Inc. (“From communications to defensive tactics and on up to the use of lethal force, ALERT Publishing uses expertise and experience to properly train police officers”); Armed Response Training (“The Armed Response Video Training Series by David Kenik and Ralph Mroz is by far THE most comprehensive and complete resource available!”); Richard A. Ganey II (“Ganey is well-known throughout the Homeland Security sector at the Federal, State and local levels.  As a person who has worked at the level of elite units both here in the US and in Israel, Ganey brings expertise”; he also heads Blue Diamond Consulting and Training); Line of Duty Learning (“vast Streaming Video Library and E-Learning Courseware”); S2 Online Inc. (“S2 has developed highlyspecialized, multimedia training programs that it offers via the Internet to students who are in the military, the private security industry, and law enforcement”); and Emergency Film Group.

(Some links H/T Right Web)

17 Responses

  1. Another great post!

  2. Interesting that you fail to mention that it was the Islamic extremists that declared this a holy war. When are you planning on writing about CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence and foothold in the West? SSI and other firms like them are doing an amazing job in training and education. Your method of picking up Internet gossip and incorporating into your articles without every asking for a comment from those you highlight says volumes.

    • He won’t write about this because its a smoke screen. CAIR is an umbrella organization that exists to ensure that the kind of Islamophobia your post represents does not explode into the kind of paranoia Wallid Shoebat and Robert Spencer represent, which is one step away from promoting violence against our Muslim neighbors.

      This is what this “training” is leading to – the justification of violence against Muslims simply because they are Muslim. There is no room for this kind of prejudice in the “land of the free, the home of the brave.”

    • Funny how when these outfits do it it’s “open source intelligence”, but when I do it it’s “internet gossip”. All I do is look at the material and statements that these groups put out in the public domain and note the kind of events they’re backing – what “comment” exactly are they likely to tell me that would add new light? If anyone has any corrective point to make, the comments are open.

  3. It’s amazing how oblivious Islamophobes are to reality. The libelous assertion that CAIR is connected to some terrorist organization has been proven false for quite some time.

    http://spencerwatch.com/2010/10/22/spencer-proven-wrong-again-about-muslim-organizations/

    • It is interesting that Hooper, CAIR and other Muslim atopogisls consistently suggest that Islam does not advocate the murder of innocent people. However, Islamists have recently gone on record as saying that the Koran does indeed permit and advocate killing in defense of Islam , defines innocent people as a set excluding western infidels.It would be nice to hear Hooper’s response to a more direct question: does Islam permit the killing of Jews and Christians?Of course Mohammed also equated deceipt with the waging of war, so no one should expect an honest answer.And naturally, the BBC simply is not in the business of asking direct questions and looking for unequivocal answers of Islamists, so the fiction of hoping for a stabilizing response from that great majority of moderate Muslims goes on.

  4. Actually, the judge wrote that the feds had provided enough evidence to keep the ALLEGATIONS in the trial record. He then wrote “That’s because the government introduced extensive evidence tying CAIR to Hamas. “The public,” he wrote, that the general public “may make its own judgment from evidence presented at trial.”

    But the judge ruled that it was wrong for the names of the SUSPECT groups to be released.

    So there has been NO finding of guilt, which makes the ALLEGATIONS unproven. So continued ASSERTIONS that the name unindicted groupos have been found guilty of some illegal acts is FALSE.

    This is a classic smear using GUILT BY ASSOCIATION. It is a WITCH HUNT.

  5. The links between CAIR, HAMAS and the Holy Land Foundation all speak for themselves. Witchhunt? OMG. That’s funny. There are plenty of Muslims who hold CAIR as a suspect organization and won’t participate or give them a cent. Yoy really need to read the FBI reports.

    Jeff Dunetz summed it up best:

    “Sixteen months ago, the word GUILTY was read in a Dallas court room a total of 108 times, as a jury convicted the Holy Land foundation, and each of the associated defendants of raising money to fund Hamas terrorism. Implicated along with those convicted was supposed Civil Rights organization CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations which lobbies the government from its headquarters in Washington DC. CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. Its leaders are frequent guests Network News Programs, where they are usually called upon to white wash some terrorist act.

    One key piece of evidence in the case was the Wiretap evidence heard in the case put CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, at a Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders secretly recorded by the FBI. Participants hatched a plot to deceive Americans and disguise payments to Hamas as it launched a campaign of terror attacks. CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad joined Hamas big shots at the summit.

    Despite this and other pieces of evidence implicating CAIR, the Hamas splinter group has constantly objected to the unindicted co-conspirator label. Today the IPT is reporting that the FBI issued a letter to congress reaffirming CAIR’s terrorist ties.

    There’s another letter circulating on Capitol Hill affirming federal law enforcement’s belief that the Council on American-Islamic Relation (CAIR) is the product of a Hamas-support network in the United States.

    Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich sent the letter (embedded below) last month to four members of Congress who asked for details last fall on how CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror-finance trial against the Holy Land Foundation and its former officials.

    He included trial transcripts and exhibits “which demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders, and the Palestine Committee. Evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestine Committee and HAMAS, which was designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.”

    Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and trial exhibits show the Brotherhood created the Palestine Committee. CAIR officials adamantly deny any involvement with either Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood. The Weich letter, however, shows that the Department of Justice has not wavered in its conclusion that the internal records it possesses prove a connection.

    It echoes a letter last spring from an FBI congressional liaison explaining whythat letter, Richard C. Powers, an assistant director in the FBI’s office of Congressional Affairs, said evidence “demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders (including its current President Emeritus and its Executive Director) and the Palestine Committee.” Bureau policy bars communication with CAIR outside of a criminal investigation. In

    Other exhibits showed that the Palestine Committee was a fundraising and propaganda arm in the United States for Hamas, which has been a designated terrorist organization since 1995. “[U]ntil we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS,” Powers wrote, “the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”

    Weich’s letter to U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick and her colleagues points to two excerpts of trial testimony from FBI Special Agent Lara Burns. Both deal with conversations leading up to CAIR’s original formation.

    In one, she reads from transcripts from a secret 1993 gathering of Hamas supporters in Philadelphia where the group talks of creating a new organization with a fairly innocuous sounding name. She read comments from Holy Land Foundation President Shukri Abu Baker explain the new entity should present a benign face compared to existing Islamist groups:
    “And let’s not hoist a large Islamic flag, and let’s not be barbaric-talking. We will remain a front so that if the thing happens, we will benefit from the new happenings instead of having all of our organizations classified and exposed.”

    In the other, Burns describes an exhibit which shows CAIR listed on a Palestine Committee agenda within weeks of its 1994 creation. In response to a question from federal prosecutor Barry Jonas, Burns said it was the first time CAIR’s name appeared in internal Palestine Committee records seized by the FBI:

    A. It did not exist prior to the Philadelphia meeting.

    Q. So it came into being after Philadelphia?

    A. That is correct.

    After a 2007 trial ended with a deadlocked jury, a 2008 retrial resulted in guilty verdicts on 108 counts. CAIR petitioned the Dallas court presiding over the Holy Land trial to be removed from the co-conspirator list. Their complaint emphasized the unusual nature of making public the names of the unindicted co-conspirators and claimed the move unfairly tarnished CAIR’s reputation. That request was denied last summer.

    Weich’s letter concludes by noting U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick requested “an investigation into the possible illegalities of CAIR,” saying it was passed along to “appropriate FBI entities.”

    There is some good news for CAIR they might be losing that “unindicted” co-conspirator designation pretty soon, reports that a federal grand jury investigation is looking at the organization’s ties to Hamas. The group may see itself become a full-fledged, incited co-conspirator. Yassir would be so proud.”

  6. Hmmmm…

    ““[U]ntil we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS,” Powers wrote, “the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”

    So guilty until proven innocent?

  7. Maybe it’s just me, but somehow I don’t feel safer knowing about the existence of “private” antt-terrorism groups.

  8. […] the Griffith Colson Intelligence Service, which has links with the ICTOA (see here and here); Security Solutions International (which provides the ICTOA’s official magazine); and an organisation called IC-HUMINT, the […]

  9. […] have blogged on various private intelligence organisations previously (see here, here, here, here, and here). Political Research Associates is also planning to release a report this month on […]

  10. […] on this blog: these are the International Counter-Terrorism Officers Association (ICTOA), Security Solutions International (SSI), and the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre). Various […]

  11. […] group that featured in the PRA report was  Security Solutions International (SSI), which is headed by Henry Morgenstern; Morgenstern is the co-editor of Suicide Terror: […]

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