The President established the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in August 2004, to serve as the primary organization in the federal government for integrating and analyzing all intelligence pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism and to conduct strategic operational planning. In December 2004, Congress placed the NCTC in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
On May 2, 2006, the Director of the NCTC, Vice Admiral Scott Redd, (see attached photo) submitted to Congress the unclassified National Strategy to Combat Terrorist Travel. A press release announced the publication of the Strategy, which was required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The document, which took almost a year to draft, is the first unclassified strategy published by NCTC. The strategy document is developed on the principle that constraining terrorist travel is essential in the Long War on Terrorism (LWOT). It contains an overview of several government initiatives currently in progress to address the issues surrounding the global movement of terrorists and the challenges we face in restricting their mobility. The strategy proposes specific actions aimed at strengthening US efforts at home and abroad to limit terrorist travel. They include preventing terrorist from crossing borders, building the capacity of partner nations, monitoring and disrupting networks that support terrorist travel and enhancing information sharing regarding terrorist travel among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Army Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, the counterterrorism center’s deputy director for strategic operational planning, called the strategy “a long-term endeavor” and said improving the overseas ability to block terrorists’ movements is key. Schloesser continued on to say, “No matter how good, no matter how much work, no matter how much money the U.S. puts into all of the different things that we have done and want to do to prevent terrorist travel in the United States, if we don’t have really capable foreign partners … then we are not going to be successful.”
The strategy released last week has less detail than a classified version sent to Congress in February. The classified document included an intelligence assessment specifically naming the countries the US is most concerned with in the LWOT. The article points out that ?if the U.S. did everything it could within its borders to prevent the illegal movement of people, authorities would only be tackling about 5 percent of the problem because so much of it stems from overseas and can’t in the process of protecting itself, create a long-term problem by alienating the international community, which needs access to the US for business, student exchanges and tourism.?
Since the NCTC is placed in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and also serves as the primary organization for strategic operational planning for counterterrorism, there is a reasonable expectation that the strategy is tied to other ongoing intelligence integration and analysis efforts.