Antiterrorism Planning for Corporations alert

If we have a free path we go forward.

If we meet an obstacle we go around it.

If the object cannot be overcome, we retreat.

When the enemy is unprepared, we surprise him.

If he is alert we leave him alone.

- Andreas Baader, Terrorist leader and psychopath (1943-1977)

There were ten incidents of possible surveillance on Khobar Towers before the attack

- Downing Report on Khobar Towers Bombing. Nineteen US citizens were killed and 500 people wounded in the truck bombing of this US military housing facility in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, in June 1996

Relatively sophisticated terrorist groups do not attack people or places without a basic level or planning or reconnaissance. Therefore, arguably the greatest return on investment is in the identification and disruption of pre-attack planning operations. It is crucially important to intercept the terrorists' own intelligence-gathering processes.

- Hoffman and Cragin, Four Lessons from Five Countries, RAND Review Summer 2002

The main point is to select targets where success is 100% assured.

Dr. George Habash, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Information gathering is a continuous operation...

Irish Republican Army's 'Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army, 1956'

Click here for analysis of a bomb plot to bomb New York's Herald Square subway station, near the site of the 2004 Republican National Convention. Pre-attack reconnaissance information requirements included number and location of garbage cans, the frequency of garbage removal, CCTV coverage, police guard activity, and ingress/egress routes.

Click here for the December 2003 issue of Janusian Thinking, which discusses the tactics, techniques and procedures of terrorist reconnaissance against businesses, and how to detect them.