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Malcolm Nance

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Malcolm Nance
Born
Malcolm Wrightson Nance

(1961-09-20) September 20, 1961 (age 63)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materExcelsior College (B.A. Arabic)
Known forNational security, Counterterrorism intelligence, Islamic extremism, SERE, torture
Websitewww.thetacticsofterror.org

Malcolm Wrightson Nance (born September 20, 1961) is a retired United States Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer in naval cryptology and author, scholar, and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture.

Nance is an expert on intelligence and terrorism,[1] and frequently discusses the history, personalities, and organization of jihadi radicalization and al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL); Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. Fluent in Arabic, he is active in the field of national security policy particularly, in anti- and counter-terrorism intelligence, terrorist strategy and tactics, torture and counter-ideology in combating Islamic extremism. In 2016, he published the book, Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe.[2]

In 2014, he became the executive director of the Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideologies (TAPSTRI), a Hudson, New York-based think tank.

Education

Nance was born in Philadelphia, and attended the city's West Catholic Boys High School. He studied Spanish, French, and Latin languages, and took advantage of free classes in Russian and Chinese offered at South Philadelphia High School on Saturdays.[1] He graduated from New York's Excelsior College with a degree in Arabic.[3]

Military career

As former U.S. Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer in Naval Cryptology, he was involved in numerous counter-terrorism, intelligence, and combat operations. He received military decorations and speaks Arabic. He became an instructor in wartime and peacetime SERE, training Navy and Marine Corps pilots and aircrew how to survive as a prisoner of war.[4][5] He conceptualized and spearheaded the Advanced Terrorism, Abduction and Hostage Survival school (ATAHS), a special survival program designed to train Special Mission Units, Navy SEALS and members of the U.S. Intelligence Community in resisting torture, exploitation and escaping terrorist captivity by al-Qaeda.[citation needed] At ATAHS, he led an al-Qaeda simulation group to expose trainees at high risk of capture to the Al Qaeda organization and its abduction and attack tactics.[citation needed]

Post-military career

In early 2001, Nance founded Special Readiness Services International (SRSI), an intelligence support company. On the morning of 9/11, driving to Arlington he witnessed the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. He acted as a first responder at the helipad crash site where he helped organize the rescue and recovery of victims. Nance served as an intelligence and security contractor in Iraq, Afghanistan, the UAE and North Africa.[6][7]

Academia and security industry

Between 2005–2007 Nance was a visiting lecturer on counterterrorism in Sydney, Australia at Macquarie University's Centre on Policing, Intelligence and Counter-terrorism (PICT) and at Victoria University of Wellington in Wellington, New Zealand.[8] Nance has been a guest lecturer on al-Qaeda and counter-ideology at the Defense Intelligence University and international law enforcement colleges.[citation needed] Nance is a keynote speaker in the security industry on mitigating terrorist strategies and tactics including for the American Society of Industrial Security (ASIS), the Austral-Asian industrial security industry and the International Air Transport Authority (IATA).[citation needed]

Small Wars Journal and torture controversy

In 2007, Nance wrote an article criticizing waterboarding for the counterinsurgency blog Small Wars Journal titled "Waterboarding is Torture... period."[9] Republished in the Pentagon Early Bird, it set off a firestorm as the first credible description of the torture technique as used in SERE. The article strongly swayed the Pentagon against the use of the waterboard because its misuse would damage America's reputation worldwide. Nance claimed that using the torture techniques of America's former enemies dishonors the memory of U.S. service members who died in captivity through torture, and that torture does not produce credible intelligence.[4][5] Nance was called to testify before the U.S. Congress about the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques".[4][5] He told the House Judiciary Committee that:

Waterboarding is torture, period... I believe that we must reject the use of the waterboard for prisoners and captives and cleanse this stain from our national honor... water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel(ing) your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs.

Guest analyst

Nance is often a guest policy analyst on television frequently for BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Al Jazeera America and radio on BBC World Service, London Broadcasting, and WAMC in New York and Western Massachusetts.[citation needed]

Nance was a frequent guest analyst on terrorist strategy on Fox News with Tony Snow, who would later become the Press Secretary of President George W. Bush.[10] He was featured on numerous international political talk shows including PBS's NewsHour, BBC's Hardtalk and World Have Your Say, Australian Broadcasting's Dateline, German TV's ZDF Frontier 21, TV 5, France 24 and others.[citation needed]

Prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Nance urged readers to be skeptical of the Podesta emails leaked by WikiLeaks, writing that the documents were "riddled with obvious forgeries" and were black propaganda "not even professionally done" and arguing that even if all the emails were authentic, WikiLeaks' excerpts of the emails were posted to Twitter in a way that distorted their meaning.[11][12]

Controversies

On April 18, 2017 Malcolm Nance encouraged ISIS to carry out a suicide bombing of a President Trump's property. His tweet read "This is my nominee for the first ISIS suicide bombing of a Trump property". [13]. Once the tweet became popular and controversial it was deleted.

Select bibliography

Books and edited works

  • The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election. Skyhorse Publishing. 2016.
  • Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe. Skyhorse Publishing. 2016. ISBN 978-1-510-71184-6..
  • The Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activity. CRC Press. 2013. ISBN 978-1-466-55457-3. (1st Edition 2004, 2nd Edition 2008, 3rd Edition 2013).
  • An End to al-Qaeda: Destroying Bin Laden's Jihad and Restoring America's Honor. St. Martin's. 2010. ISBN 978-0-312-59249-3.
  • The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003–2014, Second Edition. CRC Press. 2014. ISBN 978-1-498-70689-6. (1st Edition 2007,2nd Edition 2014)

Selected journal articles

Movies and documentaries

References

  1. ^ a b Jones, Layla A. (March 10, 2017). "Philly native is media expert on intelligence". The Philadelphia Tribune. Retrieved May 28, 2017.
  2. ^ "Malcolm Nance on Defeating ISIS". Washington Journal. C-SPAN. March 13, 2016. Retrieved May 28, 2017.
  3. ^ "Malcolm Nance to present fall 2016 Manatt-Phelps Lecture in Political Science". Iowa State University. August 23, 2016. Retrieved May 28, 2017.
  4. ^ a b c Kellman, Laurie (November 8, 2007). "Ex- Navy interrogator: Ban waterboarding". Navy Times. Associated Press. Retrieved 2015-12-12.[dead link]
  5. ^ a b c "House Panel Gets Earful On Waterboarding". CBS News. November 8, 2007. Retrieved December 22, 2016.
  6. ^ Freeman, Colin (April 19, 2004). "12 U.S. troops die in Iraq; Spain leaving". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-11-08.
  7. ^ Freeman, Colin (April 4, 2004). "Iraqi police 'were too scared' to help Americans in Fallujah". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on August 21, 2004. Retrieved 2007-11-08. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ "Sydney ferries a 'soft terrorist target'". The Age. August 30, 2006. Retrieved 2007-11-10.
  9. ^ "Waterboarding is torture... Period". Small Wars Journal. October 31, 2007. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
  10. ^ Joe Sharkey (April 30, 2000). "Tourists Stumble Into the Line of Fire". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-08.
  11. ^ Nance, Malcolm [@MalcolmNance] (October 7, 2016). "Official Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  12. ^ Tim Starks & Eric Geller, Russians, lies and WikiLeaks, Politico, (October 12, 2016).
  13. ^ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/19/malcolm-nance-msnbc-terrorism-analyst-nominates-tr/
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