Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, Second Edition - Softcover

Nance, Malcolm W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1420071831 ISBN 13: 9781420071832

Publisher: CRC Press, 2008

Synopsis

Effective counterterrorism requires a non-prejudicial understanding of terrorist motives and methods. Security professionals need to identify who terrorists might be, recognize pre-incident indicators of terrorist activity, and competently analyze intelligence information. Unfortunately, most terrorist education comes in short, sketchy briefings, and reliable sources for the foundational knowledge and tools necessary to prevent or mitigate an attack are rare and incomplete at best.

The Latest Geopolitical Factors
The second edition of Nance’s bestselling Terrorist Recognition Handbook is fully updated with the latest information on geopolitical factors affecting global terrorism and regional insurgencies. An additional section includes analyses of transformations within Al Qaeda, coverage of the modern insurgency, and newly active global and regional terrorist groups. Thoroughly revised, the section on terrorist tactics reveals entirely new trends and attack methods that have been previously unseen.

Learn from the Expert
Written by a 20 year veteran of the US intelligence community, this book is an invaluable training tool on how to identify an attack; how to mitigate damage from attacks; and how to recognize the stages of developing terrorist plots. It answers critical questions about who represents a threat, what opportunities are available for them to succeed, and what behaviors can be observed as they prepare for an attack?

Quick Information in a Crisis
Designed for rapid assimilation, each chapter can be read in any order. The no-nonsense style and numerous illustrations make it useful for quick identification of conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction.  

Malcolm W. Nance, a 20 year veteran of the US intelligence community, has been deployed on anti-terrorism and intelligence operations in the Balkans, Middle East―including Iraq and Afghanistan―and sub-Saharan Africa.

The book has an accompanying website with more information.

The author has been interviewed frequently on various news programs and testified in Congress on the subject of terrorism.

He also maintains a blog entitled Small Wars Journal.

About this title

Review

First published in 2003, this practitioner-based handbook provides a comprehensive and detailed treatment of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Divided into six parts, the chapters cover topics such as understanding terrorism in all its manifestations, and the components of counter-terrorism. The appendices include a bibliography, a listing of terrorist groups, and a checklist of explosive components and their ingredients. The author is a consultant on counterterrorism and a retired military intelligence officer.
―Book review by Dr. Joshua Sinai appearing in Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2014

From the Back Cover

Whether they are acting as a one-person cell, or with a sophisticated global finance and logistics network, terrorists can be members of nearly any race, sex, religion, or political persuasion. But every terrorist operation always has certain characteristics, and the only effective way to identify and prevent terrorists is to observe their behavior and analyze it with an intelligence-based approach. For the first time, a former U.S. military anti-terrorism intelligence officer reveals thousands of Terrorist Attack Pre-incident Indicators (TAPIs) in The Terrorist Recognition Handbook, and shows:
· How terrorist operatives are classified and organized by skill level
· How intelligence, operations, planning, logistics cells operate
· The key steps every terrorist group always follow
· How to recognize the stages of a terrorist plot
· The entire range of attack tactics, techniques, and methodologies of known terrorist groups
· How and why groups use conventional, radiological, nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons at the street level
· How to conduct terrorism intelligence analysis in the field
With dozens of incident case studies and hundreds of illustrations, The Terrorist Recognition Handbook is the first and only commercially available handbook that debunks the aura of mystery surrounding terrorist activities as it uncovers the terrorists' means, methods, organization, and motivations. It will be an invaluable resource and training guide for police officers, SWAT teams, federal officials, security companies, local water boards, chemical plants, oil refineries, power generating facilities, electrical and telephone utilities, airport facilities, public transportation officials, education officials, journalists, and ordinary citizens.

About this edition

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1420071831
• ISBN 13: 9781420071832
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 474