Terrorist Recognition Handbook

Ben Rothke writes "There are two types of writers about terrorism, experts such as Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson who write from a distance and others that write graphic tales of first-hand from the trenches war stories. Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, is unique in that author Malcolm Nance is a 20-year veteran of the U.S. intelligence community and writes from a first hand-perspective, but with the organization and methodology of writers such as Pipes and Emerson. Those combined traits make the book extraordinarily valuable and perhaps the definitive text on terrorist recognition." Read below for the rest of Ben's review Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, Second Edition author Malcolm Nance pages 480 publisher CRC rating 10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-1420071832 summary Perhaps the definitive text on terrorist recognition.

Comments

No book necessary

[dave562]

I always thought that terrorists were anyone designated by the United States State Department, or Department of Fatherland Security as being opposed to US foreign policy.

Re:The Sad Part

[Talderas]

I don't think this book is designed to say "Look for these physical features to identify potential terrorists." That's basically the book for dummies that you need for TSA.

Instead it appears that his book is more oriented towards explaining the workings of a terrorist organization. How they think, how they act, how they recruit, and what factors increase the chances of a terrorist act.

Identifying terrorist doesn't solve the problem

[vertinox]

I'm sure if the TSA reads this it will be better for most people in general but it does not solve the core problem of terrorist. You catch or kill one and there is ten more to replace him.

Its like the problem with Vietnam for the US and Afghanistan for the Soviet. Sometimes you cannot win by force. Either it has to come to understand, negotiation, or at least putting them at arms length such as building a massive security wall like Israel.

Having military bases in these people's lands, other throwing legitimate governments for over 50 years, and backing unpopular dictators is what causes them to attack us. Not because we believe in freedom or a different religion. We stop messing with things over there and when we do that the common man who currently supports the terrorists and their Jihad will be more apathetic and the popular support base the terrorists enjoy now will go away.

Re:Identifying terrorist doesn't solve the problem

[forgotten_my_nick]

> core problem of terrorist. You catch or kill one and
> there is ten more to replace him.

While you are correct somewhat here your premise as how to combat it is flawed.

When dealing with terrorism you need to determine why those ten would want to replace him. For example if you were fire a missile into a market during its busy hours to kill one terrorist and maim/kill many bystanders. Actions like that is what grows more terrorists.

Even if you don't do this then the actions tend to be related to civil rights abuses. Terrorism is normally the weapon of the desperate against an opposing force. If they are on our side then we call them "freedom fighters".

Ignoring the middle east the best example of this is Northern Ireland. Prior to the civil rights abuses in Northern Ireland the IRA didn't really have any real following. Sure you still get the gangsters and loons joining, but those who would normally define as rational/sane would of been in the minority if at all. It took actions from the British like Internment and Bloody Sunday to really get the ranks of the IRA up. That lead to 30 years of violence.

Once civil rights abuses were addressed in Northern Ireland the violence and support went away. It is not gone. You will always have some level of people who will disagree with actions. But the point is to stop the recruits. That you can't fight with weapons.

thousands of lives could have been saved

[flaming error]

Had the Bush administration consulted Nance, a trillion dollars and thousands of lives could have been saved in the Iraq debacle. That's a nice thought, but at the time Bush invaded Iraq, there was no evidence of any suicide-bomber/radical muslim sort of terrorist threat from Iraq. Everybody knew that.

But now that Iraq is a terrorist training ground, it sounds like it'd be a good book for the Bush Administration to read. If only this were the kind of Administration that reads.

Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh.

[alexgieg]

The only thing that guy's an expert on is hating Arabs and Muslims. He's a radical, bigoted putz. Fuck him. No, he isn't. In all his articles he makes the distinction between Muslims proper and what he calls "Islamofascism", i.e., people who are de facto fascists (in the technical meaning of the word, not the liberal "swear word" version) and who use Islam as nothing more than an ideological wrapping for their (nonreligious) political goals.

There are nuts out there that pretend both things to be the same, but Pipes surely isn't among them.

The truth about prevention...

[copponex]

...is that the TSA is 100% ineffective, because no government, regardless of how brutal they are to suspected terrorists, or how many secret police they employ, or how many phones they tap, can prevent one person from committing a terrorist act.

The only thing the TSA does is reduce the likelihood such an attack will occur on a plane. It's a huge waste of money that's simply a security blanket for the uninformed.

Re:The truth about prevention...

[blueg3]

Arguments about the efficacy of the TSA aside, you seem to be confusing the inability to be 100% effective with being 100% ineffective. Reducing the likelihood of X happening is a nonzero effectiveness.

People in security know full well that no method will guarantee 100% attack prevention. Reducing the likelihood and frequency of attacks is the goal.

Re:That's easy

[Bishop Rook]

I don't think grandparent was calling the RIAA terrorists, but rather was mocking a recent claim from the content-mongers that "piracy helps the terrorists."

I question Daniel Pipes being credited as expert..

[RoTNCoRE]

This is the same Pipes who advocated oversight of left leaning academics in case they poison their fragile students after 9/11? People to advocate such things are the truest enemies of the state. I saw him speak at my school, and he had to be hustled out of the room by his hosts after failing to respond to valid criticism of his borderline racist/fascist agenda.

Re:Speaking of terrorists...

[TripMaster Monkey]

I suspect the above poster, and the person he's quoting are not doctors.

Um...I have never claimed to be...and to the best of my knowledge, neither has Cory Doctorow.

Neither am I, for that matter...

So...what was your point, then?

but my wife went through several classes on statistics...

You're kidding, right?

their approach to statistics is not so simple as "accuracy" only. They have several different terms, all more or less seeming similar to the layman. I don't recall the words, but they more or less correlated to concepts such as:

False positive rate.
False negative rate.
Overall rate of accurate test.

Your objection does not invalidate the argument in my OP, it only strengthens it. The other concepts you listed do not mitigate the problem of false positives - on the contrary, they only exacerbate it.

The argument in the OP assumed (for argument's sake) that while the false positive rate was 1%, the false negative rate was 0%. If you want to make the false negative rate a non-zero number, go ahead, but you'll quickly find that it makes the overall results even worse, not better.

Using the correct, field-specific term may eliminate some of your objection.

Actually, the terms are quite correct, and your argument only succeeds in raising additional objections.

Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh.

[alexgieg]

It's been some time since I read Pipes and I didn't remember some details, so I must make some corrections to my above post.

Actually, although Pipes recognizes pretty clearly the distinction between, on one side, the moderate religious Muslims, and on the other the radical authoritarian pseudo-religious political nuts we all despise, he doesn't like the term "Islamofascism", as what they pursue isn't a fascist regime proper.

Basically, fascism was/is always nationalistic, and bound to the concept of a totalitarian central government ruling society. What these guys pursue, on the contrary, is a kind of stateless internationalistic decentralized totalitarianism. Thus, not quite the same thing. Both authoritarian, both totalitarian, but in very different ways.

He has some suggestions for naming this thing, basically variations around the word "Islamist", "Militant Islam", "Militant Islamism" etc., but I don't think any of those sound right. "Islamofascism" might not be accurate, but I guess we'll have to stick to it for se simple lack of a better alternative.

Re:Speaking of terroists...

[TripMaster Monkey]

So it does not work perfectly, I believe your math.

Actually, it's Cory's math, not mine.

What should we do? Stick our heads in the sand and ignore the threat? Rationalize that you are more likely to die in a car accident, so take no action?

I'm not advocating a course of action here...I'm merely pointing out that a "terrorist test" is doomed to failure.

If the DHS is set up to fail, they appear to have not had any failures in the last few years. May not be perfect, but maybe it is working?

Excellent point. On a related noted, I have a rock that repels tigers...perhaps you would be interested in purchasing it.

Seriously, can you point out any successes? After all, if I put on a bulletproof vest, and spend the next few hours without someone shooting at me, that cannot be taken as proof that the vest can successfully stop bullets.

Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh.

[DrZogg]

He absolutely is a hack, and his primary agenda is disenfranchisement and marginalization of American Muslims. He thinks every mosque in the US is infiltrated with radicals and "Islamists" who want to overthrow our government. Doubtful Pipes has ever set foot in a mosque, though he's been invited.

His idea of a moderate Muslim is someone who calls himself Muslim but doesn't practice Islam, e.g., people like Irshad Manji -- the heroine of the anti-Muslim bigots in our country. (sorry if you like her -- she has nothing to do with mainstream Islam in the US or anywhere else).

Pipes is fine as long as the conversation is one-way with him spewing propaganda and fear-mongering -- challenge anything he says and he resorts to hostility (see other posts in this thread).

Terrorists stand in line?

[copponex]

The TSA stands around, making sure the people in line aren't terrorists. Now, I'm no criminal mastermind, but given the security around most US airports, all it does it make the regular citizens feel warm and fuzzy about all the gadgets they have to walk through to get on their plane. A terrorist would make a few friends at the airport, lift a few IDs, and before you know it, he can walk around the tarmac for weeks on end without being bothered, and walk right past a security line with the flash of his counterfeit badge and a smile.

Really effective security would be to bring every last troop home, and place them in every port and border crossing into the US. Even more effective than their inspections would be the fact that they aren't in foreign countries blowing stuff up. It's very difficult to recruit people to kill the infidel when he's across the ocean behind hundreds of thousands of highly trained Marines, minding his own business.

Unfortunately this would require leaders in government (Republicans and Democrats) to do an about-face on how they deal with terrorism, and as anyone knows, getting a politician to admit a mistake is harder than getting one to tell the truth in the first place. But we're the ones to blame - when the greatest threat to our way of life, according to Sean Hannity, is that "we may be driving around in Yugos," you wonder if the society is worth saving in the first place.

Anyone who thinks that Daniel Pipes is

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Anyone who thinks that Daniel Pipes is an "expert" on "terrorism" - or anything else, has had a neocon blowjob affect their brain function.

He invented and promulgates the cognitive dissonance that is summarised by the phrase: "Islamofascism."

He's a real Israeli, dual-loyalist and "newspeak" maker of the first (lowest) rank. Pipes was teh founder of The Middle East Forum - purportedly a 'think-tank', really a propaganda and media policing agent for radical Israeli military/political objectives.

Among MEF's programs is Campus Watch, which tracks university professors who are perceived to be anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian, or pro-Islamist. Seen by many as an affront to academic freedom and an attempt to silence criticism of U.S. policies toward Israel and the Arab world, the program encourages students at colleges and universities to report any teachers who exhibit such behaviors in the classroom. One critic of Campus Watch, Joel Benin, a former professor of Middle East studies at Stanford University, said of the program: "Campus Watch ... compiles dossiers on professors and universities that do not meet its standard of uncritical support for the policies of George Bush and Ariel Sharon. ... The efforts to stifle public debate about U.S. Middle East policy and criticism of Israel are being promoted by a network of neoconservative true believers with strong links to the Israeli far right. They are enthusiastic supporters of the Bush administration's hands off approach to Ariel Sharon's suppression of the Palestinian uprising. And they are aggressive proponents of a preemptive U.S. strike against Iraq."
--Joel Benin, "The Israelization of American Middle East Policy Discourse," Department of History, Stanford University

Who's next on teh /. front page? Ann Coulter?

Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh.

[DesScorp]

"His father was one of the main hawks against Stalinist Eastern Block style Communism during the 60's."

And this was a bad thing because... ?

Re:Speaking of terroists...

[TripMaster Monkey]

[dhs.gov]

You're joking, right? The only references on that page I saw pertaining to foiled terrorist attacks were the case of the "binary explosives" plot and the case of the Fort Dix Six. Regarding the former, it has already been debunked so many times that I'm surprised the DHS hasn't removed the reference from sheer shame. In the case of the latter, six guys who plotted to take on a military base with a couple of firearms, and were caught because they took their jihad training video to Circuit City to burn to DVD? Seriously? We're supposed to buy this?

Every single "terrorist threat" since 9/11 (which is itself suspect) has been either a ridiculous exaggeration, an entrapment scheme, or an outright hoax.

If you live in a war zone, I would keep my bulletproof vest on. Just because you did not get shot at today does not mean you are safe for tomorrow.

1) I don't live in a war zone. Neither do you.
2) You missed my point most spectacularly. Until a real bullet hits that vest, there is no proof that it can deflect bullets.

Re:There are no terrorists

[mr_mischief]

Fighting against uniformed forces using asymmetrical tactics because you're a smaller force facing a larger force is one thing. Attacking civilians with no warning to get on CNN and have your demands heard is another. There is a proper use for the term "terrorist", but it's being used more broadly than it should be.