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

That's easy

[peipas]

You don't need any book to identify terrorists.

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."

The Sad Part

[kellyb9]

This appears to be a rather intelligent look at the issue, but the sad part is I have to wonder how many TSA employees are actually going to read it, especially at airports.

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.

Re:The Sad Part

[d3ac0n]

Or how many TSA Employees can READ at all.

It never fails to amaze me that, when faced with the monumental failure of our bureaucracies to prevent 9/11, we respond by creating yet another bureaucracy. And, to top it off, we allow the dang thing to be unionized, thus ensuring it's utter failure and moribundity for all time.

Sometimes I wonder if we deserve what our forefathers left to us.

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.

Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that guy's an expert on is hating Arabs and Muslims. He's a radical, bigoted putz. Fuck him.

Posting anonymously to avoid having to deal with all the Slashcons who will pile on to tell me that all the Mooslimes are TEH TERRORIZTS!

Speaking of terroists...

[TripMaster Monkey]

I'd like to take the opportunity to plug Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Little Brother.

A must-read for anyone concerned about the direction our nation is heading.

Here's an excerpt that's very relevant to the topic in question:

If you ever decide to do something as stupid as build an automatic terrorism detector, here's a math lesson you need to learn first. It's called "the paradox of the false positive," and it's a doozy.

Say you have a new disease, called Super-AIDS. Only one in a million people gets Super-AIDS. You develop a test for Super-AIDS that's 99 percent accurate. I mean, 99 percent of the time, it gives the correct result -- true if the subject is infected, and false if the subject is healthy. You give the test to a million people.

One in a million people have Super-AIDS. One in a hundred people that you test will generate a "false positive" -- the test will say he has Super-AIDS even though he doesn't. That's what "99 percent accurate" means: one percent wrong.

What's one percent of one million?

1,000,000/100 = 10,000

One in a million people has Super-AIDS. If you test a million random people, you'll probably only find one case of real Super-AIDS. But your test won't identify one person as having Super-AIDS. It will identify 10,000 people as having it.

Your 99 percent accurate test will perform with 99.99 percent inaccuracy.

That's the paradox of the false positive. When you try to find something really rare, your test's accuracy has to match the rarity of the thing you're looking for. If you're trying to point at a single pixel on your screen, a sharp pencil is a good pointer: the pencil-tip is a lot smaller (more accurate) than the pixels. But a pencil-tip is no good at pointing at a single atom in your screen. For that, you need a pointer -- a test -- that's one atom wide or less at the tip.

This is the paradox of the false positive, and here's how it applies to terrorism:

Terrorists are really rare. In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent.

That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some software that can sift through all the bank-records, or toll-pass records, or public transit records, or phone-call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time.

In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people.

Guess what? Terrorism tests aren't anywhere close to 99 percent accurate. More like 60 percent accurate. Even 40 percent accurate, sometimes.

What this all meant was that the Department of Homeland Security had set itself up to fail badly. They were trying to spot incredibly rare events -- a person is a terrorist -- with inaccurate systems.

Is it any wonder we were able to make such a mess?

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: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.

if you buy that book ...

[Lazy Jones]

... it's very likely that you are a terrorist who wants to know how not to be recognized. ;-)

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:The truth about prevention...

[kellyb9]

I don't really understand your logic. You freely admit that they can reduce the likelihood of a terrorist attack, yet you call them 100% ineffective and refer to their funding as a waste. Thats like saying, "Well, we can't stop people from murdering other people, so why not just do away with the police departments." I, for one, actually believe a government can significantly reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks. Outside the usual suggestions of restricting our personal freedoms and liberities, there are ways of detecting strange behaviour, nevervousness, etc. That includes educating those who are responsible for monitoring.

It's a poor 'guide'

[MrMacman2u]

Attempting to judge someone by physical appearance or a quick observation of behavior is completely ineffective.

This book is the biggest load of cruft I've had the displeasure of pursuing in a long, long time.

Nearly a complete, waste of time and money and is more than likely bound to spark more than a few more uber-paranoid people locking themselves up in their trailer with a shotgun pointing out the window.

The only perks about this farce was the netural informational aspects such as how individual terrorists as well as terrorist groups and cells form, operate and work as well as the mind-set, cultural and historical information presented.

As a "guide" it's practically useless, as a source of information about the how and why terrorists operate and think, it IS fairly interesting.

Too bad that information is often available (in bits and pieces) via other sources on the net.

State Terrorism is a far greater threat

[MrSteveSD]

Although 911 had a high death toll, groups like Al Qaeda couldn't possibly hope to match states when it comes to killing civilians. The Indonesian government used widespread terrorism against it's own people and those of East Timor with a death toll of several hundred thousand. Of course, today we are interested in not only the perpetrators of the terror, but those that support them. In the case of Indonesia under Suharto, the supporters were countries like the US and UK who supplied arms knowing full well what they were being used for.

Then of course there is the famous case of US support for terrorism in Nicaragua, for which the country was condemned by the World Court. The death toll was around 50,000. One of the things the US was condemned for in that case was the mining of Nicaraguan harbours, putting civilian shipping in danger. If Al Qaeda did the same thing, it would be immediately recognised as a terrorist act.

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:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh.

[Tr0tskysGh0st]

I saw Daniel Pipes speak once at my university and he spent a lot of his speech going on and on about how we need to reach out to moderate Muslims, yet when it was opened up for questions after his speech, he was incredibly verbally hostile to every Muslim who asked him a question. I know many of the Muslims who asked him questions and they were largely all very moderate, apolitical and with a very modern interpretation of Islam. At the end he was just downright hostile towards the entire audience, even turning off many of the conservatives in the room.

What Daniel Pipes really is a hack writer and pundit for the establishment. His role is to lay an ideological foundation for US foreign policy that is already being carried out. His father was one of the main hawks against Stalinist Eastern Block style Communism during the 60's. He makes a living creating "boogeyman" stereotypes of the people who resist the imposition of neo-liberal economic policies and foreign meddling.

The fact that he runs a group that systematically harasses left leaning university professors in the United States only adds to the fact that he is a rightwing political opportunist who profits off of demonizing cultures and creating racist stereotypes. His group Campus Watch specializes in taking anonymous unsubstantiated claims of conservative students who are upset over their grade. He's not a legitimate academic and has no place in the culture of discussion that academia should be. If all he did was just advance a position, no matter how much I disagreed with it, that would be fine; but intimidating and harassing one's political opponents is not free speech.

Daniel Pipes?

[tfoss]

experts such as Daniel Pipes Just so we're clear, this is the daniel pipes who started the Middle East Forum ("one of a number of hardline neoconservative think tanks devoted to promoting a broad war on terror focused on the Middle East.") and its offspring, Campus Watch (a group intended to monitor middle east studies on college campuses, in a rather mccarthy-like manner). The one who has been a consistent warmonger (from vietnam onward). The one who wrote in The National Review:

"Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most."

Who the New York Times referred to as the leader of an "organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life"

Just so we know who we are labeling with the sterile description of "expert."

-Ted

Re:Daniel Pipes? An expert? Feh.

[grimJester]

I would agree with parent. I read his blog now and then a few years back. Overwhelmingly negative stories on muslims mixed with the occasional writing on what he means by "moderate islam". He's also the founder of an organization called Campus Watch that seems more than a little sinister.

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: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.

Daniel Pipe is an expert on propaganda

[sien]

Daniel Pipes founded Campus Watch an organisation dedicated to making sure that Americans only get a rabidly pro-Israel view in a McCarthyesque way, i.e. lists of those who disagree with his own fascist views.

He favours profiling and internment of Muslims in the United States.

The Daniel Pipes entry at sourcewatch is quite a read.

No clothes.

[gobbo]

Indeed, the whole Imperialism argument is nothing more than intellectual dishonesty and mental masturbation by those that have their hate on for America. Get the facts straight bub. No Imperialism here. I was about to respond to this with point by point citations and examples, not for your benefit (because I suspect your viewpoint is fixed) but for general edification. e.g. investing a few billions to extract trillions is a stunning profit in both wealth and power; see: economic-hit-man whistleblowers, IMF whistleblowers, brazen admissions by Brzezinski and neo-cons, the history of Latin America, the Fellowship Foundation, the CFR, Chalmers Johnson, etc. Closing a few bases out of a thousand (if you include the estimates of covert ones) is merely a tiny percentage, offset by other "repositioning of the footprint."

But I think that you've just proven my essential point: the american 'hegemony' is founded on some astoundingly well-crafted pervasive propaganda at home, with the theme of being a global benefactor.

Ask around: "why do we perpetually have half a million troops overseas in over 100 countries?" The reasoning of the american public in justifying such a massive permanent deployment in so many bases is very thin, if not jingoistic and naive, or outright frightening to citizens of other countries. Americans just don't believe in the scale of clandestine maneuvering through their history, and they have an essential sense of manifest destiny.

21C hegemony (shorthand for empire) does not resemble victorian Brittania, in the way that late post-industrial capitalism doesn't resemble feudalism.