July 22, 2015

Former Intelligence Director Recounts Days of Combatting Terrorism

Cofer Black served as ambassador-at-large and as the director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center (CTC) in the days before and after 9/11, and spent much of his career working in field operations in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. As Wednesday afternoon’s featured keynote speaker, he recounted some of his experiences while identifying sources of terrorism and their evolving nature.

Black described his participation as a field officer in tracking and helping to apprehend noted terrorist Carlos the Jackal in Khartoum, Sudan. He observed that the U.S. government was slow to fully engage the military because counterterrorism was seen as more of a law enforcement issue. At the time Black became CTC director, Hezbollah was considered the biggest terrorist threat to the United States.

“I came into this game late in my career,” said Black, adding, “I had been doing counterterrorism as a key element in all of my tours overseas, but increasingly as I went along I found myself doing more and more of it.”

The son of a former Pan Am B-747 captain, Black recalled al-Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole in October 2000 and all of the intelligence indicating that a much larger strike was imminent. “Osama bin Laden publically declared war against the United States. Of great concern to us was that, in his crusade, he considered civilians to be enemy combatants, and they were to be targeted just like military personally,” Black noted.

The former CTC director shared his personal experiences working with U.S. President George W. Bush and CIA Director George Tenet to respond to the events of 9/11 and explained how he oversaw the immediate worldwide retaliation against al-Qaeda.

Now the vice president of Raytheon Blackbird Technologies, Black explained the emerging terrorism paradigm. He discussed ISIS and other terrorist groups, their use of “lone wolf” tactics, and the need for pilot vigilance because the airline industry remains at risk. Today’s terrorist community is effectively using the news media to communicate its positions and recruit members around the globe. Black described the Internet as the “new command center for terrorists” and talked about the new challenges that confront the U.S. intelligence community, conceding, “It’s the world we have now. We have to be clever.”

Wednesday Lunch Keynote Speaker Ambassador Cofer Black

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