Countering Violent Extremism: Inside International Approaches

Speaker Bios

Ali Soufan is the Chief Executive Officer of the Soufan Group LLC. Mr. Soufan is a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent who investigated and supervised highly sensitive and complex international terrorism cases, including the East Africa Bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, and the events surrounding 9/11. Mr. Soufan is regarded as a leading national security and counter-terrorism expert, and continues to play a significant advisory role on today’s most sensitive issues. Mr. Soufan had a distinguished career in the FBI. He often operated out of hostile environments and carried out sensitive extra-territorial missions and high-level negotiations. Mr. Soufan also served on the Joint Terrorist Task Force, FBI New York Office, where he coordinated both domestic and international counter-terrorism operations. Former Mayor of New York, Rudolph W. Giuliani hired him to serve as the Chief Operations Officer of the International Division of Giuliani Security & Safety LLC, a division of Giuliani Partners LLC.

Mr. Soufan has received numerous awards and commendations for his counter-terrorism work. These include the Director of the FBI’s Award for Excellence in Investigation, the Respect for Law Enforcement Award for “relentless pursuit of truth and bringing terrorist subjects before the bar of justice,” and a commendation from the U.S. Department of Defense that labeled him “an important weapon in the ongoing war on terrorism.” Mr. Soufan serves as the Executive Director of the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies (QIASS) and as a Visiting Senior Fellow in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. He has appeared as an expert panelist and as a guest speaker at international security forums, both in the United States and abroad. He has been profiled, interviewed, and been a contributor to numerous publications worldwide, including the New Yorker, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Straits Times, and Asharq Alawsat. Mr. Soufan’s record has also been detailed in non-fiction books, including The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright.

Mark Fallon is the Senior Vice-President for Business Development of The Soufan Group. He also serves on the Executive Board of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, in the International Managers of Police Academy and College Training (IMPACT) section. Mr. Fallon served for more than 30 years in the federal law enforcement and counterintelligence community, including as a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Special Agent and as the Assistant Director for Training of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). He was involved in many high impact cases, including Operation Terstop and as the Commander of the USS Cole Task Force. Mr. Fallon is internationally recognized for his leadership ability in crisis situations, counterterrorism acumen, and training experience.

Mr. Fallon has been highly decorated for his government service. His awards include the Armed Service Civilian Service Medal, the Army Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the U.S. Secret Service Director’s Honor Award, the Department of Defense Special Award for Counterintelligence, the Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal, the DOD Award for Most Outstanding Anti-Terrorism Action/Innovation, the NCIS Special Operations Commendation, and the Fraternal Order of Police Award of Merit.

Prior to joining TSG, Mr. Fallon’s served as the Assistant Director for Training of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), the largest law enforcement training establishment in the United States. FLETC provides training to state, local, and international police and graduates more than 50,000 students annually. Before that posting, Mr. Fallon spent 27 years as a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Special Agent. Following the attacks of 9/11, Mr. Fallon was detailed to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), and assisted in the Development of the Counterintelligence Support Plan for Operation Enduring Freedom. Mr. Fallon was also detailed to serve as the Special Agent in Charge and Deputy Commander of the Department of Defense Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF), with the responsibility for investigating the al-Qaeda network for possible prosecution.Mr. Fallon’s assignments with NCIS included as the Director of the NCIS Academy, Deputy Assistant for Training, Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, Deputy Commander and Special Agent in Charge of CITF, Chief of Counterintelligence Operations – Europe, Africa, Middle East Division, Assistant Special in Charge of NCIS Europe Field Office. Mr. Fallon led the modernization and centralization of training within NCIS.

Steven Kleinman is a Senior Advisor and Strategist of the National Security Programs for the Soufan Group. He is a career intelligence officer with more than 26 years of operational and leadership experience in assignments worldwide. He is a recognized subject matter expert in the full spectrum of human intelligence operations, intelligence support to special operations, and special survival/resistance to interrogation training. Mr. Kleinman is a highly decorated veteran of three major military campaigns — Operations Just Cause, Desert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom — during which he served as an interrogator, the chief of a joint and combined interrogation team, and as a senior advisor on interrogation operations to a special operations task force. He has been recognized as one of the most prolific interrogators during the first Gulf War.

Mr. Kleinman served as the director of the Air Force Combat Interrogation Course and as an advisor to the National Defense Intelligence College’s program on human intelligence and counterintelligence studies. As a senior advisor to the first contemporary study on interrogation sponsored by the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the Intelligence Science Board, Mr. Kleinman has been a major force in rethinking the American approach to strategic interrogation. He continues to serve as a senior consultant on interrogation-related studies being conducted at leading universities and research centers across America. He has testified on interrogation and detainee policy before the Senate and House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. His articles and research papers have been published in the Harvard University Press, Willan Publishing (UK), the New York City Law Review, the Defense Intelligence Journal, the American Intelligence Journal, and the National Defense Intelligence College Press. He was a contributing editor to the Encyclopedia of Intelligence and Counterintelligence published in 2004. He has also been cited in publications ranging from Newsweek, the New Yorker, and the New York Times, to Der Stern, CNN, and the BBC.

Barry McManus joined Abraxas Corporation, an overseas business intelligence and consultancy company, as Vice President of Deception Detection Services in September 2003, after completion of a distinguished career with Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency. Building upon an extensive career in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department centering on criminal and drug-related investigations, Mr. McManus transitioned to the Central Intelligence Agency where he developed deep expertise in deception detection and analysis through advanced academic study and sensitive professional training. In varied worldwide responsibilities in U.S. interagency efforts to combat terrorism and protect sensitive intelligence programs and assets from counterintelligence approaches, Mr. McManus became recognized as a top-tier professional in the use of non-coercive interrogation, elicitation and interviewing techniques against hardened criminals, terrorists, and hostile intelligence agents.

He received the Career Intelligence Medal in recognition of accomplishments in support of U.S. intelligence and national security policy. In additional to Mr. McManus’s role in support of U.S. agency programs to combat terrorism, he specialized in teaching and training assignments of both junior and senior polygraph investigators and counterintelligence personnel, both within the U.S. Government as well as in collegiate teaching assignments. Through innovative management strategies he developed and implemented new programmic approaches to identifying and benchmarking the subtle, but distinct verbal and non-verbal behaviors that are essential to detection and prosecution of white collar and commercial fraud.

Thomas Neer is a Senior Associate of The Soufan Group. His 32-year law enforcement and intelligence career began with Federal Bureau of Prisons and continued with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and then Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), during which he acquired extensive experience in complex criminal and international terrorism investigations. He served as the principal behavioral advisor on many high profile cases, including on the FBI’s Saddam Hussein Interrogation Team in 2004.

Mr. Neer spent nearly half of his career in the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico where he specialized in the analysis of violent crimes and offenders, conducted threat assessments of suspected terrorists, and formulated non-coercive interview strategies. He has provided training to both domestic and international audiences on a variety of law enforcement and intelligence topics. Mr. Neer’s operational assignments include extended deployments to Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Mr. Neer has been the recipient numerous awards and commendations. Prior to leaving the FBI in 2009, Mr. Neer served on a working group of the Attorney General’s Task Force on Interrogation whose recommendations to President Obama included the creation of the inter-agency High Value Interrogation Group (HIG). Since his retirement, Mr. Neer has served as a consultant on a variety of law enforcement and intelligence issues.

Moderator

Karen Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law.  She is the author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days (Oxford University Press, 2009), which was selected as one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post and Slate.com. She is co-editor with Joshua L. Dratel of The Enemy Combatant Papers: American Justice, the Courts, and the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (Cambridge University Press, 2005), editor of the books The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Al Qaeda Now (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and editor of the NYU Review of Law and Security.  Her work is featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The National Interest, Mother Jones, TomDispatch.com, and on major news channels.  She is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations.