Training

Training Formats

Investigative/Intelligence Workshop: A four-day course for law enforcement investigators, intelligence officers, and analytical personnel, including topics inherent in the investigation and prosecution of terrorism and criminal extremism.

Specialized Training Event: A workshop designed to provide an effective, flexible response to state, local, and tribal law enforcement training needs. Training events average one-half day to two days in duration, and program content is tailored to the stated needs of the audiences to accommodate the varied needs of specialized units. Specialized training includes, but is not limited to:

• Advanced Investigative/Intelligence Workshop: A one- to two-day workshop that provides instruction concentrated on a specific topic, such as Islamic and Arab cultural awareness, interviewing terrorists, or terrorism finance.


• Anti-Terrorism Workshop for Campus Law Enforcement: A one- to two-day workshop designed to provide terrorism awareness training to campus law enforcement personnel. Course topics are tailored to the specific concerns of college and university campuses and include terrorism indicators, domestic and international terrorist/extremist groups, violent radicalization, and officer safety issues.


• Executive Briefing: A one-day briefing designed to provide chiefs, sheriffs, and other executive-level law enforcement officials with current information regarding the global terrorist threat. Information sharing and terrorist indicators are emphasized in this course. This briefing is conducted in conjunction with the local FBI office.


• Train-the-Trainer Workshop: A course designed for qualified law enforcement trainers, intended to assist agencies in developing in-house anti-terrorism training capabilities by providing quality instruction and a take-home instructor guide to be used for further training.


• Tribal Lands Anti-Terrorism Briefing: A customized briefing for tribal law enforcement officers that addresses anti-terrorism training needs and issues specific to Indian Country. Briefings are tailored to meet the needs of specific tribal areas and cover topics such as intelligence, indicators and warning signs, and legal issues.

Training Topics

Background Idealogies and Motivations

• Domestic Terrorism—This course explains the belief system of right-wing extremists and why they view the government as their enemy. It examines investigative, response, and officer safety strategies for agency use in identifying and managing domestic extremist cases.


• Special-Interest/Anarchist Groups—This course explores the development of animal rights and ecological terrorism and the impact of the criminal anarchist movement. It also provides detailed information on the realities of ecoterrorism from a law enforcement perspective.


• Terrorism and the Middle East—This presentation fosters a basic understanding of the conflicts involving the people of Middle-Eastern countries and provides a short history of religion in the Middle East. It describes competing ideologies of Middle-Eastern militants. The instructor discusses the impact of Middle-Eastern conflict on U.S. law enforcement.


• Terrorism Overview—This course introduces the subject of terrorism and defines the term. It explores the current terrorist threat in the United States and highlights unique aspects of “terrorist” criminals as opposed to the offenders that law enforcement normally encounters. The reasons why terrorists present a greater and broader threat today than in the past are also described.

Cultural Awareness

• Arabic Culture and Islam for Law Enforcement—This course covers the five pillars of Islam, Islamic holidays, Islamic religious customs, and significant Islamic names. It explains how to use knowledge of Middle-Eastern culture and customs in interviewing and interrogating. Muslim/Arabic name analysis (understanding the structure of names, including nicknames and titles) is emphasized. Recognizing and understanding Middle-Eastern clothing is covered. Students also learn some Arabic vocabulary to utilize during interviews and interrogations and for officer safety.

Intelligence/Information Sharing

• Drugs and Terrorism—This presentation describes the various relationships between trafficking in illicit drugs and militant political and religious movements. It focuses on a sampling of countries and regions where both political insurgency and drug trafficking interact.


• An Overview of Law Enforcement Intelligence—This course is an overview of the contemporary law enforcement intelligence process as per the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan. The session includes an explanation of terms and concepts, provides examples of resources, and discusses the development of the intelligence capacity in an agency. It also provides an explanation of intelligence file guidelines and liability issues and access to intelligence products.


• Terrorism/Extremism in the Prison System—This presentation explores how law enforcement agencies can incorporate the intelligence potential from correctional departments into criminal cases, including those that involve terrorism. Topics include the intelligence potential of correctional departments, laws governing agency information sharing, potential sources of inmate intelligence, and possible sources of intelligence within the inmate population that correlate to criminal activities in the community.

Interviewing and Understanding Terrorists

• Intermediate Interviewing Techniques—This course includes rapport building, testing for rapport, a variety of interviewing tools to assist interviewers in uncovering the truth, and techniques to break the interview impasse. Verbal and nonverbal methods to detect deception are discussed, with emphasis on Psychological Narrative Analysis, which is the study of word choices, grammar structures, and the attending behavioral characteristics of the people who make those choices. The analysis helps to determine social status, personal relationships, and veracity.


• Preparing and Conducting the Interview and Interrogation—This course provides fundamental topics and discussions essential in preparing for high-impact subject interviews in which a confession is crucial. The instructor also presents the theory of interrogation and defines several methods of conducting interrogations that have led to positive outcomes. The course is geared toward all law enforcement practitioners whose duties include interviewing and interrogating.


• The Psychopathology of Hate Groups—This course presents the basic human behaviors, a knowledge of which is needed to successfully conduct a wide variety of interviews, including the Middle-Eastern target. It also provides verbal and nonverbal tools for investigators to use to overcome resistance during an interview and to detect deception. Also discussed are ways to overcome the interview impasse.

Investigative Resources and Case Studies

• Case Study: Chechnya—Beslan School—This case study provides background on the issues the Russian government has dealt with in Chechnya over the past 15 years. It contains an analysis of the Beslan School attacks on September 1–3, 2004, including lessons learned and their applicability to U.S. law enforcement.


• Case Study: Lockerbie—This case study of the December 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 is delivered by the FBI official in charge of the American task force for the duration of the investigation. The presentation analyzes the investigation and discusses the lessons learned during the process that are of benefit to law enforcement officials worldwide in investigating major cases, including terrorism cases.


• Case Study: Operation Bojinka—This case study examines a terror cell that operated in the United States, in the Philippines, and throughout Southeast Asia. Although “Operation Bojinka” was disrupted in the Philippines in 1995, some members of the cell provided the funding and inspiration for the September 11, 2001, attacks. The presentation concludes with an analysis of the plot uncovered in the United Kingdom in 2006.


• Preventing Terrorism Through Impostor Detection and Fraudulent ID Training—This course provides a familiarization with identity theft as it relates to criminal and terrorist acts, with an understanding of how criminals and terrorists use fraudulent identification. It presents a description and demonstration of security features used on driver’s licenses, U.S. passports and Permanent Resident Cards, and other federal documents. It provides information regarding the detection of impostors by utilizing facial recognition techniques.


• Source Development—This course reviews various aspects of source development, focusing primarily on the recruitment cycle; i.e., spotting, assessing, developing, recruiting, handling, and termination. Discussion will include informant motivation, how to maximize the return on informant investment, documentation, review, and oversight. The use of human sources is considered perhaps the most-effective law enforcement investigative technique. It is also one of the most difficult. The course is taught by a veteran CIA case officer and U.S. Department of the Treasury special agent who has recruited dozens of sources in a variety of different countries and cultures.

Terrorism Financing

• Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing—This overview discusses money laundering and its inverse partner, terrorist finance. It discusses common methodologies and provides law enforcement professionals with ideas, tools, and resources on how to “follow the money.”


• Terrorism Financing—This presentation examines law enforcement methodology for obtaining information from the banking industry, conducting a financial criminal investigation, and preparing a source and application of funds to use for forfeiture warrants and search warrants. This presentation also includes an overview of Iraq’s financial infrastructure and what law enforcement can learn from Iraq’s tactics to conceal bank accounts intended for illegal activities.

Terrorism Indicators and Officer Safety

• Explosives, Methods, and Attacks—This presentation offers a unique look at peripheral information associated with explosives materials and chemicals and their relationship to terrorist activity. It stresses why the seemingly least important bit of information should be forwarded to JTTFs or fusion centers. The types of explosives and their ease of manufacturing and delivery are also discussed. The course presents simple but critically important strategies to implement in order to detect and identify future violators, which may prevent a terrorist act involving explosives. The presentation is NOT the usual bomb squad “look but don’t touch” class as there are many actual items to see and touch. Precursor stages (indicators) in assembling an explosive weapon are detailed with actual case histories and slides of bad guys’ “OOPS.” Videos and slides illustrate terrorist activity and some of the fusing/firing mechanism components that may be found during routine police work. There is a short focus on recognizing suicide bombers and/or being able to identify their modus operandi (MO) to avert a horrific act of violence. Videos and slides depicting actual terrorist activity eliminated or identified by our military will be discussed as will the “learned behavior” mind-set of Middle-Eastern terrorists. Captured al Qaeda-type training film clips (edited) will show phases of basic terrorist training and the terrorists’ disregard for human life, including practicing to kill law enforcement personnel, targeting of occupied buildings, and their intention to kill all of the people encountered. The final Officer Safety phase explains that recognizing an attack in progress and taking immediate effective action can avert mass killing.


• Officer Safety and Terrorism—This presentation addresses tactical considerations for both uniformed and plainclothes officers in order to decrease vulnerability and increase officer safety. The instructor will discuss several case studies and present scenarios of officers encountering suspected terrorist activities while responding to or investigating traditional crimes. High-risk encounters and ambush techniques will also be discussed.


• Radicalization—The instructor presents an overview of the process by which an individual embraces a radical ideology or theology. Emphasis is placed on the social factors that contribute to this process, warning signs that radicalization is occurring, and methods of intervention to halt the process to prevent individuals from harming themselves or others.


• Recognizing Terrorist Indicators and Warning Signs—This overview provides a comprehensive look at warnings and indicators, with an emphasis on integrating terrorism intelligence into traditional criminal investigations. It explores how to identify early warning signs often exhibited by criminal extremist groups and individuals. Information sharing is a key component of the presentation.

University and College Campus Training

• Domestic Terrorism for Campuses—This presentation defines domestic terrorism, explains the threat posed by domestic terrorists, and covers recent domestic terrorist arrests with an emphasis on the threat presented to educational campuses by domestic terrorists.


• International Violence on Campus—This overview provides a basic understanding of various cultures, religion, and politics as they relate to international terrorism. Emphasis is placed on issues and confrontations in other parts of the world that international students often bring onto a college campus.


• Political Extremism/Terrorism on Campuses—This is a short overview of political extremism and its relationship to the campus community, including a brief review of the history of campus extremism. Emphasis is placed on the different ways in which a campus may be affected by political extremism—whether through student recruitment or the targeting of research facilities.


• Radicalization on College Campuses—This presentation focuses on the process by which individuals become involved in radical movements. Included in the discussion are how and why radicalization occurs, the progressive stages of radicalization, and indicators associated with radicalization of students. Also discussed are campus public safety techniques for identification and prevention of radicalization on campus.

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SLATT.org

For more information on the SLATT Program, please visit www.slatt.org. From this Web site, law enforcement personnel can register for restricted access to additional resources, including online training, a directory of anti-terrorism contacts, and information regarding past terrorist and criminal extremist incidents.