This self-study course addresses this evolving counterterrorism (CT) challenge for America. Since 9/11 the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) and the U.S. military have been largely successful in restricting international terrorists’ ability to launch attacks within the U.S. Regarding local communities and police departments, this has been a “top down” approach led by Federal agencies, notably the FBI.
However, the new generation of potential domestic terrorists are U.S. citizens who are already resident in the U.S. This largely negates the effectiveness of most of the USIC and the U.S. military. But this evolving threat does require the full engagement of local U.S. Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) because they enjoy daily interaction with the civilian communities within their jurisdictions. Their “bottom up” information and intelligence gathering from within those communities will be essential to deter and detect future terrorists in America “Left of Boom”. It will be their efforts that will save innocent lives and protect critical infrastructure.
In the absence of a national domestic CT doctrine in the U.S., this course proposes local strategies and tactics to address how LEAs can better respond to the developing domestic terrorist threat through their improved collection of CT intelligence.
