No Single Path Towards Radicalization

By Charlie Allen

Charlie Allen retired from the Central Intelligence Agency after a distinguished decades-long career as a CIA officer, including as the National Intelligence Officer for Warning, the National Intelligence Officer for Counterterrorism, and Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Collection.

The Cipher Brief’s Bennett Seftel sat down with Charlie Allen, former Under Secretary for Security and Analysis at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to discuss the continued threat that individuals who become radicalized pose to U.S. security. According to Allen, several factors drive people toward jihadist ideology including a sense of alienation in society and the allure of the jihadist narrative itself.

The Cipher Brief: You were the first U.S. official to publicly identify leading al Qaeda cleric and propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki as a threat to U.S. national security. What about him particularly caught your eye?

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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