WThe Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing is an office of the United States government within the United States Treasury Department.
WThe Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) office responsible for the procurement and development of medical countermeasures, principally against bioterrorism, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats, as well as pandemic influenza and emerging diseases. BARDA reports to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and manages Project BioShield.
WIn military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. It can refer to the facilities that are controlled by the CIA and used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain alleged unlawful enemy combatants.
WBoundless Informant is a big data analysis and data visualization tool used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). It gives NSA managers summaries of the NSA's worldwide data collection activities by counting metadata. The existence of this tool was disclosed by documents leaked by Edward Snowden, who worked at the NSA for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Those disclosed documents were in a direct contradiction to the NSA's assurance to United States Congress that it does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans.
WThe Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism (CT) is a bureau of the United States Department of State. It coordinates all U.S. Government efforts to improve counter-terrorism cooperation with foreign governments and participates in the development, coordination, and implementation of American counterterrorism policy.
WThe Centennial Olympic Park bombing was a domestic terrorist pipe bombing attack on Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 27, 1996, during the Summer Olympics. The blast directly killed one person and injured 111 others; another person later died of a heart attack. It was the first of four bombings committed by Eric Rudolph. Security guard Richard Jewell discovered the bomb before detonation and began clearing spectators out of the park.
WAfter the Central Intelligence Agency lost its role as the coordinator of the entire Intelligence Community (IC), special coordinating structures were created by each president to fit his administrative style and the perceived level of threat from terrorists during his term.
WThe Columbine effect is the legacy and impact of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. The shooting has inspired numerous copycat crimes, with many killers taking their inspiration from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, describing the two perpetrators as being martyrs. The shooting has also had a significant impact on popular culture.
WThe Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants". The CSRTs were established July 7, 2004 by order of U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz after U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rasul v. Bush and were coordinated through the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants.
WCombined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) is a joint task force of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM). It originated under Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA) as part of the United States response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
WCombined Task Force 150 (CTF-150) is a multinational coalition naval task force working under the 33-nation coalition of Combined Maritime Forces and is based in Bahrain established to monitor, board, inspect, and stop suspect shipping to pursue the "Global War on Terrorism" and in the Horn of Africa region (HOA) includes operations in the North Arabia Sea to support operations in the Indian Ocean. These activities are referred to as Maritime Security Operations (MSO).
WThe Coordinator for Counterterrorism heads the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism, which coordinates U.S. government efforts to fight terrorism. As the head of the counterterrorism bureau, the Coordinator for Counterterrorism has the rank of both Ambassador-at-Large and Assistant Secretary.
WThe Counter Extremism Project (CEP) is a nonprofit non-governmental organization that combats extremist groups "by pressuring financial support networks, countering the narrative of extremists and their online recruitment, and advocating for strong laws, policies and regulations."
WThe Disposition Matrix, informally known as a kill list, is a database of information for tracking, capturing, "rendering", or killing suspected enemies of the United States. Developed by the Obama administration beginning in 2010, it goes beyond existing kill lists and is intended to become a permanent fixture of U.S. policy. The process determining criteria for killing is not public and was heavily shaped by National Counterterrorism Director and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John O. Brennan.
WDropmire is a surveillance program by the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) aimed at surveillance of foreign embassies and diplomatic staff, including those of NATO allies. The program's existence was revealed in June 2013 by whistleblower Edward Snowden in The Guardian newspaper. The report reveals that at least 38 foreign embassies were under surveillance, some of them as far back as 2007.
WExtraordinary rendition, also called irregular rendition or forced rendition, is the government-sponsored abduction and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another with the purpose of circumventing the former country's laws on interrogation, detention and torture. Recent renditions have been carried out by the United States government.
WFairview is a secret program under which the National Security Agency cooperates with the American telecommunications company AT&T in order to collect phone, internet and e-mail data mainly of foreign countries' citizens at major cable landing stations and switching stations inside the United States. The FAIRVIEW program started in 1985, one year after the Bell breakup.
WThe FBI Seeking Terror Information list is the third major "wanted" list to have been created by the United States Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Investigation to be used as a primary tool for publicly identifying and tracking down suspected terrorists operating against United States nationals at home and abroad. The first preceding list for this purpose was the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, that list was supplanted by the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list, for the purpose of listing fugitives who are specifically wanted for acts of terrorism.
WFDD's Long War Journal (LWJ) is an American news website, also described as a blog, which reports on the war on terror. The site is operated by Public Multimedia Incorporated (PMI), a non-profit media organization established in 2007. PMI is run by Paul Hanusz and Bill Roggio. Roggio is the managing editor of the journal and Thomas Joscelyn is senior editor. The site is a project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where both Roggio and Joscelyn are senior fellows.
WThe Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury that collects and analyzes information about financial transactions in order to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes.
WThe Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP) was an American-sponsored 18-month, $64-million program aimed at increasing the capabilities of the Georgian armed forces by training and equipping four 600-man battalions with light weapons, vehicles and communications. The program enabled the US to expedite funding for the Georgian military for Operation Enduring Freedom.
WSebastian Lukács Gorka is a British-born Hungarian-American military and intelligence analyst, who served as a Deputy Assistant to the President in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. He served from January 2017 until August 25, 2017. He broadcasts a Salem Radio show. He was a Fox News contributor from 2017 to 2019.
WSome former detainees who were held by the US at Guantanamo Bay detention camp have engaged in terrorism or militant activity since their release.
WThe Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and "Gitmo", which is on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Indefinite detention without trial and torture have led the operations of this camp to be considered a major breach of human rights by Amnesty International and a violation of Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution.
WThe Guantanamo military commissions are military tribunals authorized by presidential order, then by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and currently by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 for prosecuting detainees held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps.
WLon Tomohisa Horiuchi is an American FBI HRT sniper and former United States Army officer, who was involved in the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff and 1993 Waco siege. In 1997, Horiuchi was charged with manslaughter for the death of Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge, but the charges were later dropped.
WInstitute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT) is a research institute sponsored by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and Syracuse University College of Law. INSCT was established in 2003 by Prof. William C. Banks with the goal of support an interdisciplinary approach to questions of national security and counter-terrorism law and policy.
WThe Metropolitan Division, also known as Metro, is an elite division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The Metro Division, which also contains LAPD's Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team, contains nine platoons of specially-trained police officers. It is tasked with numerous crime-fighting duties including solving major crimes, surveillance, providing counter-terrorism details and attending high-risk barricaded situations, such as a hostage situation.
WMAINWAY is a database maintained by the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) containing metadata for hundreds of billions of telephone calls made through the four largest telephone carriers in the United States: AT&T, SBC, BellSouth and Verizon.
WThe United States Military Commissions Act of 2006, also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. The Act's stated purpose was "to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes".
WOn or near January 1, 2000, a series of Islamist terrorist attacks linked to al-Qaeda were planned to occur in the context of millennium celebrations, including bombing plots against four tourist sites in Jordan, against the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and USS The Sullivans, and the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814. In Lebanon, dozens were killed in clashes in the Dinnieh district between radical Islamists with connections to the Jordan plots and the Lebanese Army. The plots in Jordan and against LAX were foiled by law enforcement agencies, while the attempted bombing of The Sullivans only failed because the boat filled with explosives sank before detonating. The revelation of the plot linked to the LAX "Millennium Bomber" Ahmed Ressam led to unprecedented investigations into possible other terrorist cells in the United States, dubbed Operation "Borderbom", and security measures around millennium celebrations. Other al-Qaeda-linked millennium attack plots may have been planned or foiled around the same time.
WThe National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is a United States government organization responsible for national and international counterterrorism efforts. It is based in Liberty Crossing, a modern complex near Tysons Corner in McLean, Virginia. NCTC advises the United States on terrorism.
WThe New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP) leads and coordinates New Jersey's counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and emergency preparedness efforts while building resiliency throughout the State. NJOHSP fulfills this mission by committing to a professional ethos that is the sum of four core values: service, teamwork, excellence, and diversity. The New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell is under its purview.
WNSA warrantless surveillance refers to the surveillance of persons within the United States, including United States citizens, during the collection of notionally foreign intelligence by the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The NSA was authorized to monitor, without obtaining a FISA warrant, the phone calls, Internet activity, text messages and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lay within the U.S.
WThe Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by American terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing happened at 9:02 am and killed at least 168 people, including many children, injured more than 680 others, and destroyed more than one third of the building, which had to be demolished. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars, causing an estimated $652 million worth of damage. Local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies engaged in extensive rescue efforts in the wake of the bombing. They and the city received substantial donations from across the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated 11 of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers who assisted in rescue and recovery operations. Until the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United States. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
WThe One Percent Doctrine (ISBN 0-7432-7109-2) is a nonfiction book by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ron Suskind about America's hunt for terrorists since September 11th, 2001. On July 24, 2006, it reached number 3 on the New York Times Best Seller list.
WOperation Enduring Freedom (OEF) was the official name used by the U.S. government for the Global War on Terrorism. On 7 October 2001, in response to the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush announced that airstrikes targeting Al Qaeda and the Taliban had begun in Afghanistan. Operation Enduring Freedom primarily refers to the War in Afghanistan, but it is also affiliated with counterterrorism operations in other countries, such as OEF-Philippines and OEF-Trans Sahara.
WOperation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA) is the United States military operation to combat militant Islamism and piracy in the Horn of Africa. It is one component of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), which includes eight African states stretching from the far northeast of the continent to the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea in the west. The other OEF mission in Africa is known as Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara (OEF-TS), which, until the creation of the new United States Africa Command, was run from the United States European Command.
WOperation Enduring Freedom – Philippines (OEF-P) or Operation Freedom Eagle was part of Operation Enduring Freedom and the global War on Terror. The Operation targeted the various Jihadist terror groups operating in the country. By 2009, about 600 U.S. military personnel were advising and assisting the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the Southern Philippines. In addition, by 2014, the CIA had sent its elite paramilitary officers from their Special Activities Division to hunt down and kill or capture key terrorist leaders. This group had the most success in combating and capturing Al-Qaeda leaders and the leaders of associated groups like Abu Sayyaf.
WOperation Juniper Shield formerly known as Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara (OEF-TS) is the military operation conducted by the United States and partner nations in the Sahara/Sahel region of Africa, consisting of counterterrorism efforts and policing of arms and drug trafficking across central Africa. It is part of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The other OEF mission in Africa is Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA).
WOperation Infinite Reach was the codename for American cruise missile strikes on al-Qaeda bases in Khost, Afghanistan, and the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, on August 20, 1998. The attacks, launched by the U.S. Navy, were ordered by President Bill Clinton in retaliation for al-Qaeda's August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and injured over 4,000 others. Operation Infinite Reach was the first time the United States acknowledged a preemptive strike against a violent non-state actor.
WOperation Inherent Resolve (OIR) is the U.S. military's operational name for the military intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, including both the campaign in Iraq and the campaign in Syria, with a closely-related campaign in Libya. Since 18 September 2018, the U.S. Army's III Armored Corps has been responsible for Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF—OIR). The campaign is primarily waged by American air forces in support of local allies, most prominently the Iraqi security forces and Syrian Democratic Forces. Combat ground troops, mostly special forces and artillery, have also been deployed, especially in Iraq. 75-80% of the airstrikes have been conducted by the military of the United States, with the other 20-25% by the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan.
WLuis Clemente Posada Carriles was a Cuban exile militant and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent. He was considered a terrorist by the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Government of Cuba, among others.
WThe President's Surveillance Program (PSP) is a collection of secret intelligence activities authorized by the President of the United States George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in 2001 as part of the War on Terrorism. Information collected under this program was protected within a Sensitive Compartmented Information security compartment codenamed STELLARWIND.
WProject Genoa II was a software project that originated with the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Information Awareness Office and the successor to the Genoa program. Originally part of DARPA's wider Total Information Awareness project, it was later renamed Topsail and handed over to the Advanced Research and Development Activity for further development.
WRagtime or RAGTIME is the code name of four secret surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States. These programs date back to at least 2002 and were revealed in March 2013 in the book Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, by Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady.
WThe Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act is a bill of the United States Congress passed into law on December 12, 2003.
WTargeted killing is defined as a form of assassination which is carried out by governments against their perceived enemies. Analysts believe that it is a modern euphemism for the assassination of an individual by a state organization or institution outside a judicial procedure or a battlefield.
WTargeted Killing in International Law is a book about the legality of targeted killing, written by Nils Melzer. It was first published by Oxford University Press in May 2008. The book explores the history of targeted killing as a government strategy by multiple countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Switzerland and Germany; for both military and law enforcement purposes. Melzer argues that directly after the September 11 attacks in the United States, perceptions of the tactic became more positive.
WTargeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World is a non-fiction compilation book about targeted killing edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. The book grew out of contributions by the authors to a conference in April 2011 at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Targeted Killings features eighteen essays in five sections arranged by topic. The work argues that after the 11 September attacks by Al-Qaeda in 2001, the United States and other countries began to see the tactic of targeted killing differently. The practice of targeted killing had previously been accepted in situations of self-defence in military settings; after 11 September 2001 it was used to kill non-combatants and those not directly involved in a particular armed force.
WThe Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) is a division of the National Security Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is the duty of the TSC to identify suspected or potential terrorists. Though housed within the FBI, the TSC is a multi-agency organization, including representatives from the United States Department of Justice, the United States Department of State, the United States Department of Homeland Security, the United States Department of Defense, the United States Postal Service, and various private contractors. It is located in Vienna, Virginia, near Virginia State Route 123.
WThe Terrorist Surveillance Program was an electronic surveillance program implemented by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. "The program, which enabled the United States to secretly track billions of phone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens over a period of decades, was a blueprint for the NSA surveillance that would come after it, with similarities too close to be coincidental". It was part of the President's Surveillance Program, which was in turn conducted under the overall umbrella of the War on Terrorism. The NSA, a signals intelligence agency, implemented the program to intercept al Qaeda communications overseas where at least one party is not a U.S. person. In 2005 The New York Times disclosed that technical glitches resulted in some of the intercepts including communications which were "purely domestic" in nature, igniting the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. Later works, such as James Bamford's The Shadow Factory, describe how the nature of the domestic surveillance was much, much more widespread than initially disclosed. In a 2011 New Yorker article, former NSA employee Bill Binney said that his colleagues told him that the NSA had begun storing billing and phone records from "everyone in the country."
WTotal Information Awareness (TIA) was a mass detection program by the United States Information Awareness Office. It operated under this title from February to May 2003 before being renamed Terrorism Information Awareness.
WUmm Al Melh Border Guards Airport is a Saudi government air base located in southwestern Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia.
WThe Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights is a position within the U.S. Department of State that leads the State Department's efforts to prevent and counter threats to civilian security. The Under Secretary oversees the Bureau of Counterterrorism, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, the Office of Global Criminal Justice, and the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
WAn unlawful combatant, illegal combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is a person who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of the laws of war. An unlawful combatant may be detained or prosecuted under the domestic law of the detaining state for such action. The International Committee of the Red Cross points out that the terms are not defined in any international agreements.
WThe Utah Data Center (UDC), also known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, is a data storage facility for the United States Intelligence Community that is designed to store data estimated to be on the order of exabytes or larger. Its purpose is to support the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), though its precise mission is classified. The National Security Agency (NSA) leads operations at the facility as the executive agent for the Director of National Intelligence. It is located at Camp Williams near Bluffdale, Utah, between Utah Lake and Great Salt Lake and was completed in May 2019 at a cost estimated in 2014 to be $1.5 billion.
WThe War on terror, also known as the Global War on Terrorism and U.S. War on Terror, is an international military campaign launched by the United States government after the September 11 attacks. The targets of the campaign are primarily Sunni Islamic fundamentalist armed groups located throughout the Muslim world, with the most prominent groups being Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and the various franchise groups of the former two organizations. The naming of the campaign uses a metaphor of war to refer to a variety of actions that do not constitute a specific war as traditionally defined. U.S. president George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. In the latter speech, George Bush stated, "Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them." The term was originally used with a particular focus on countries associated with al-Qaeda. The term was immediately criticised by such people as Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and more nuanced terms subsequently came to be used by the Bush administration to publicly define the international campaign led by the U.S. While it was never used as a formal designation of U.S. operations in internal government documentation, a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal was issued.
WXKeyscore is a formerly secret computer system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) for searching and analyzing global Internet data, which it collects continually. The NSA has shared XKeyscore with other intelligence agencies, including the Australian Signals Directorate, Canada's Communications Security Establishment, New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, Japan's Defense Intelligence Headquarters, and Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst.