Making the Investment

By Mitch Silber

In January 2020, Mitchell D. Silber was named the executive director of the Community Security Initiative, a new position created as part of UJA and JCRC-NY’s $4 million plan to help secure local Jewish institutions in the New York region.  He previously served as Director of Intelligence Analysis at the New York City Police Department where he was the principal advisor to the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence on counterterrorism policy and analysis.  He has represented the NYPD at the White House, National Security Council, CIA, FBI, and National Counter Terrorism Center and testified before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

The Cipher Brief: First Paris, then San Bernardino, now Brussels. How widespread are ISIS networks in Europe and North America and can we expect these kinds of attacks on a regular basis?

Mitch Silber: We need to make a distinction when we talk about ISIS networks. There are ISIS wannabe networks, which generally are in the United States.  They are primarily comprised of those aspiring jihadists who actually haven’t traveled to Syria and Iraq and at best are in communications with ISIS followers via twitter and are really more fan boys of ISIS, but they nevertheless can be deadly. And then there are those who have actually traveled to the war zones and have been trained and indoctrinated. Europe clearly has many more, broader and deeper networks for the latter.  Belgium, France, Germany, and the UK probably have the biggest and strongest networks.

“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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