Living here in the Boston area, the past week has been an almost sleepless blur. Here are some news stories for which I was interviewed:

• CBS Evening News
• Cincinnati Enquirer
• Terra.com (in Spanish)
• Arise TV
• NY Daily News
• CNBC
• Boston Herald
• Metro US
• Christian Science Monitor
• Liberation (in French)
• Inside Higher Ed
• CNBC (#2)
• CNBC (#3)

A bunch of other tv and radio interviews (CNBC, BBC, Fox, CTV Toronto, SunTV, etc) as well as some other international ones in Russian and Japanese – probably these can be found online as well. Over the past week, I’ve been struck by the thought that the only time I get these calls is when something bad happens. This can be a depressing business, not for everyone. Those of us who study terrorism must maintain a healthy sense of optimism in human nature, despite the lessons of history…

A new “Overview of U.S. National Intelligence” has been released by the ODNI, and is available online at: http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/USNI 2013 Overview_web.pdf

A few years ago, our journal Perspectives on Terrorism published a very popular resource article by Benjamin Freedman, “Terrorism Research Centres: 100 Institutes, Programs and Organisations in the Field of Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, Radicalisation and Asymmetric Warfare Studies“. 

Now that the Center for Security Research and Technologies at UMass Lowell is up and running (see http://www.uml.edu/CSRT), we’re going to need to update that list . . .

In case you missed it, here’s a link to the new US Strategy for Homeland Defense and Defense Support of Civil Authorities

http://www.defense.gov/news/Homelanddefensestrategy.pdf

The Directorate of National Intelligence has just released the 2013 Worldwide Threat Assessment, which places cyber security as a higher threat than terrorism. Interesting . . . [ Click here to download the full report ]

With that in mind, perhaps the 2013 European Cyber Security Conference (May 16, in Brussels) will draw a lot of attention. Details are online at: www.eucybersecurity.com

The 2d edition of Homeland Security and Terrorism has now been published by McGraw-Hill.

Information is available online at the following link: http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0078026296

My article, “A Framework for Analyzing the Future Threat of WMD Terrorism,” has been published in the Winter 2012 issue of the Journal of Strategic Security, and is now available online at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol5/iss4/9/

The academic journal Global Change, Peace and Security has recently published an article of mine on kidnapping by terrorist groups, using data 1970-2010. You can download a free copy of the article at the following link:  http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/btfYeiyeHpf37ICu4rS6/full

A special issue of Counterterrorism Exchange on “Social Media in Jihad and Counterterrorism” is now available. Click here to download a free copy.

Here is a copy of my recent JSOU report on Boko Haram, the terrorist group in northern Nigeria.

For more publications from Joint Special Operations University Press, please click here

Great new CTC report, available online at:
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/letters-from-abbottabad-bin-ladin-sidelined

This report is a study of 17 de-classified documents captured during the Abbottabad raid and released to the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). They consist of electronic letters or draft letters, totaling 175 pages in the original Arabic and 197 pages in the English translation. The earliest is dated September 2006 and the latest April 2011.  These internal al-Qa`ida communications were authored by several  leaders, most prominently Usama bin Ladin.  In contrast to his public statements that focused on the injustice of those he believed to be the “enemies” of Muslims, namely corrupt “apostate” Muslim rulers and their Western “overseers,” the focus of Bin Ladin’s private letters is Muslims’ suffering at the hands of his jihadi “brothers”. He is at pain advising them to abort domestic attacks that cause Muslim civilian casualties and focus on the United States, “our desired goal.” Bin Ladin’s frustration with regional jihadi groups and his seeming inability to exercise control over their actions and public statements is the most compelling story to be told on the basis of the 17 de-classified documents. “Letters from Abbottabad” is an initial exploration and contextualization of 17 documents that will be the grist for future academic debate and discussion.

Click here to see my latest work in a special issue of Terrorism and Political Violence, addressing the topic of intersections between criminals and terrorists.

Click here to read my recent article in Perspectives on Terrorism (Vol. 6, No. 1):  “Perception Challenges Faced by Al-Qaeda on the Battlefield of Influence Warfare”

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION AND TERRORISM
Edited by
James J.F. Forest and Russell D. Howard

Second Edition
(New York: McGraw-Hill, March 16, 2012)
821 Pages. ISBN-13: 9780078026225

Choose a link to order a copy:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
McGraw-Hill

ToC-WMD2

Preface

More information is available on the website http://www.wmdterror.net

For anyone interested in the “homegrown terrorism” threat in the U.S., here’s an interesting new report and data source:

http://homegrown.newamerica.net/overview

Cheers

James