Military cadets and Pentagon policy makers alike are drawing on the experiences of a unique West Point academy research center to seek a better understanding of the enemy post-Sept. 11.
The Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), set up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, aims to prepare cadets at the nation’s premier military academy to confront the shifting geo-political realities of the 21st century.
Inspired by the precept of the ancient Chinese warlord, Sun Tzu (孫子), “to know your enemy,” the center has become a leading hub of research into the al-Qaeda network, which carried out the 2001 attacks, and radical Islam in general.
Its reports have been studied around the world by governments, policy-makers and senior diplomats as well as local and federal police forces.
Studying the jihadist movement, or Islamic militants called to “holy war,” already figured highly on academic courses here before the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, in New York, and the Pentagon.
But it was following the collapse of the Twin Towers, that businessman and West Point graduate Vincent Viola decided to finance a center dedicated purely to researching al-Qaeda and Islamic militants.
Viola was then the chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange which had offices in the center and lost several people in the attacks.
“But it was one of the first organizations to be up and running after the attacks, and Vinnie credited his time in the academy and in the army for his ability to deal with the crisis,” said the CTC’s research director Brian Fishman.
“So he wanted to do something for the academy to prepare cadets to deal with this new threat: Why did these people knock down the buildings? Understand the current threat. So he gave some money to start the center,” he said.
The aim from the start was to help cadets during their four-year training “to understand at a strategic level the threat they are going to have to deal with in a tactical level,” Fishman said. “They need to understand what and who they are going to deal with.”
Twelve of the center’s 14 researchers are under civilian contracts, and another 25 staff are also employed there. They include Arabic speakers as well as experts in central Asian languages entrusted with scouring jihadist Internet sites.
Over 20 two-hour sessions the cadets study from the manual Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment and attend lectures by international experts.
Although it is housed at West Point, the center acts as a think tank and is 80 percent-financed by private donations. Its total budget has not been divulged, but it remains separate from the military academy.
If the Pentagon or the State Department need answers to a specific question, they then must pay for an ad hoc study.
Executive director Reid Sawyer, one of the founding members, says such a financial structure ensures the center retains its independence from the government and the military.
“We have independence to write what we want. And if somebody disagrees with what we write, there’s little that they can do,” he said.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
RSS