The Combating Terrorism Center Turns 20: Reflections from its Directors.

• Author: Cruickshank, Paul

Brigadier General (Retired) Russell Howard served as the director of the CTC between 2003 and 2005. He also served as the Head of the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. He later served as the director of the Jebsen Center for Counter Terrorism Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and directed the terrorism research program of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He is currently the President of Howard Consulting Services and a distinguished senior fellow at Joint Special Operations University.

Colonel (Retired) Kip McCormick served as the director of the CTC from 2005 till the beginning of 2006. He subsequently served as Defense Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. His prior service in the U.S. Army included working as Chief of Staff, United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission in Seoul. He is currently the Associate Pastor of Cornwall Church and the Chaplain for Whatcom County's Sheriff Office in Bellingham in Washington State.

Colonel (Retired) Joseph H. Felter, PhD served as the director of the CTC from the end of 2005 till 2008. He later served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia between July 2017 and September 2019. He is currently the Director of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University. His prior roles at Stanford included serving as Co-Director of the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and Director of the Hacking for Defense Project.

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Reid L. Sawyer served as executive director of the CTC between 2003 and 2008 and director between 2008 and 2012. Between 2013 and 2015, he served at U.S. Central Command, including as the Chief of the Operational Assessments Group. He previously served as a senior advisor to the FDNY from 2003 to 2015 and as an Advisory Board Member at University of Chicago's Project on Security and Threats. He is currently a Managing Director at Marsh McLennan, where he heads the Emerging Risks Group, and leads U.S. Cyber Risk Consulting.

Colonel (Retired) Liam Collins, PhD served in leadership roles at CTC between 2009 and 2012, first as executive director then director. He is currently the executive director of the Viola Foundation and the Madison Policy Forum. Between 2015 and 2019, he served as Director of the Modern War Institute at West Point. Among his previous roles, between 2016 and 2018 he served as executive officer for the then U.S. Senior Defense Advisor to Ukraine for Defense Reform, General (Retired) John Abizaid.

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Bryan C. Price, PhD served as the director of the CTC between 2012 and 2018. He previously served as an Apache helicopter pilot, with combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and as an Academy Professor at West Point. He was Founding Executive Director of the Buccino Leadership Institute at Seton Hall University from 2018 to 2022. Today, he is the founder of Top Mental Game.

Brian Dodwell served as the director of the CTC between 2018 and January 2021, and has served as executive director since January 2021. Previously, he served as deputy director between 2014 and 2018. Prior to that, he served as Operations Branch Chief at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security National Exercise Division.

Colonel Sean Morrow has served as the CTC's director since January 2021. He has served in a variety of roles in the U.S. military including as Battalion Commander in the United Nations Command in Korea and a Battalion Operations officer and a Brigade Executive Officer for the 10th Mountain Division in southeastern Afghanistan.

CTC: What in your view has been the overall contribution of the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) to the CT enterprise?

Howard: Educating cadets for what they will encounter in their future careers has been the Combating Terrorism Center's most important contribution. Providing newly minted counterterrorism specialists an opportunity to teach, learn, and conduct research while beginning their careers is a close second. Enabling the CT community a publication platform to share research has also been an important CTC contribution.

McCormick: I agree with Russ. One of the things I love most about the contribution of the CTC to the CT enterprise is how it plants seeds about CT in the lives of the cadets. We have no idea how those seeds will be nurtured over the years. However, we can be sure that there will be a group of young women and men who become experts in this field because of what they learned through the CTC. We tend to focus on the big muscle movement projects that move forward the CTC vision and mission. But in reality, it's those day-to-day actions with the cadets that have the long-term impact on the CT enterprise.

Felter: I believe one of the most significant contributions of the Combating Terrorism Center to the CT enterprise is a fundamental appreciation of the importance of understanding the hostile ideology driving violent terrorist attacks against the U.S. and her allies and partners, and that the best way to discredit and delegitimize this ideology is through the words and discourse of individuals (e.g., scholars and thought leaders) whose opinion and ideas resonate with these extremists. In my first Senate testimony as CTC Director, for example, I argued that "You can't capture, kill, or incarcerate an idea" to underscore the importance the CTC placed on effectively addressing the root causes--not only the symptoms--of terrorist attacks.

A second important contribution of the CTC is the role it has and continues to play in identifying and making important information on terrorist threats available to the broader scholarly and policy community given its unique position and trusted relationships.

Sawyer: The Combating Terrorism Center's contribution to the overall CT enterprise was and remains significant in three ways, starting, as has already been pointed out, with the first part of the mission we designed: educating cadets. For a generation, the CTC has educated future leaders on the complexities of the evolving threat environment, challenging their thinking about critical issues relating to CT, homeland security, and more broadly understanding the world around them.

The second dimension, equally tied to the original vision of the Center, speaks to the intrinsic value of the CTC and that is its ability to remain focused on the longer-term issues, its rigorous research, and its willingness to challenge convention. Prior to 9/11, there was a dearth of institutional CT knowledge, let alone an independent institution, that was focused on the deeper currents rather than the surface turbulence. Finally, the CTC occupies a unique position sitting at the intersection of academia, policy, and operations, which enables it to inform and shape thinking for each of these audiences.

Collins: I became the director towards the end of the Center's first decade. By this time, my predecessors had already built the CTC into a powerhouse that was well integrated across the CT enterprise. They had created a Terrorism Studies Program for the cadets at West Point that include a minor, and the CTC was teaching counterterrorism to the FBI and other government agencies around the United States. The CTC Sentinel had been around for three years and was a "must read" for CTC professionals around the world.

In 2009, we established the General Wayne A. Downing Scholarship Program to provide U.S. Army officers with graduate school education. We felt it was important to invest in the intellectual capital of our very best, and often our most deployed, officers. We started with only two the first year, but it has been so successful that we now select up to eight each year. As a testament to the program's success, 100 percent of Downing alumni have been selected for battalion command, and JD Keirsey, the current commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, was a Downing scholar.

Price: I'm not sure there's another entity as unique as the CTC. First, I don't know of another organization that has the CTC's three-pronged mission of teaching cadets and CT practitioners, publishing original research, and briefing CT professionals both at the tip of the spear and at the most senior levels of our government.

Some think-tanks in the CT world would call it a successful year if they hosted a 4-star general, an ambassador, and a SEAL Team commander. That's a regular week at the CTC. That access provides a comprehensive insight into the threat that no other organization has in the CT space.

Additionally, most of the CTC's faculty have top secret clearance, which provides researchers the ability to engage with material, operators, and policymakers on the classified side. Finally, you have the fact that the CTC is financially independent from DoD and privately funded through donations via the Academy's 501(c) (3). It doesn't have the constraints placed on other DoD think-tanks that limit their creativity and their research agenda.

This special combination creates the conditions for an unparalleled understanding of the terrorism threat. In my opinion, that's the CTC's special sauce.

Dodwell: It's difficult to add to the excellent comments from my friends and colleagues above, and I wholeheartedly agree, especially with the emphasis on...