Counterterrorism Blog

Counterterrorism Blog is a website hosting numerous rightwing terrorism experts. It describes itself as ‘The first multi-expert blog dedicated solely to counterterrorism issues, serving as a gateway to the community for policymakers and serious researchers.’^[1]

Origins

Counterterrorism Blog is widely reported to have been established by Andrew Cochran, a former Reagan advisor and Vice President of the Washington based business consulting and public affairs company GAGE. Like Susan Molinari who set up the NEFA Foundation, Andrew Cochran has lobbied for the law firm Motley Rice^[2], which brought several punitive civil cases representing victims of the September 11th attacks. Cochran has also lobbied for the Investigative Project and Steve Emerson.^[3]

According to his own account Cochran founded Counterterrorism Blog as a result of his experience supporting the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services which includes anti-terrorism in its remit. There he says he, "had the opportunity to reach Administration officials, academics, and independent experts who ferret out, sometimes at great personal risk, critical information on individuals, groups, and the linkages among and between them and with state sponsors."^[4] These experts included Steve Emerson, Evan Kohlmann and Matthew Epstein who testied before the Committee on 11 March 2003. After leaving the Committee in late 2003 Cochran says he, "endeavored to build a consulting practice with a homeland security and counterterrorism component which would support the interests of the private sector in the Global War on Terror".^[5] His desire to do so was reinforced after listening to a seminar on terrorism in December 2004 featuring Peter Bergen, and he says he spent that month designing the blog and recruiting experts. The site opened on 5 January 2005.^[6] The website has since then changed sites. According to Domain Tools the current domain was registered on 15 March 2006 by the Counterterrorism Foundation. The Counterterrorism Foundation is the legal entity which funds Counterterrorism Blog and was registered as a non-profit organization on 26 April 2006.^[7] It is registered to the Washington address of GAGE.^[8]

Website info

Counterterrorism Blog is (as of 28 March 2008) registered to the IP Address: 63.247.139.10. According to Domain Tools, as of 28 March 2008, there are 14 domains hosted at that address. These include the separate website of the Counterterrorism Foundation, which was set up in November 2007, as well as several blogs such as the websites of Michael Tanji^[9] and Counterterrorism Blog contributor Daveed Gartenstein-Ross^[10]. It also includes the website http://regimeofterror.com and a domain associated with the Center for Threat Awareness^[11].

Ideology

The Counterterrorism Foundation states quite openly that its purpose is to support research which will help counter-terrorism replace anti-communism as an alternative ideology in the post-Cold War era. The (half developed) website of the Counterterrorism Foundation gives the following mission statement:

The struggle against terrorism, insurgency, and all related forms of political violence has come to define the global security agenda in the 21st Century. Like the bi-polar confrontation that defined the preceding century, the efforts of non-profit research foundations will play a large role in helping to define the nature of the adversary and the strategy and tactics necessary to confront it.
The Counterterrorism Foundation hopes to contribute to the growing production of research, analysis and scholarship relating to terrorism by increasing public awareness of the daily happenings in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and supporting new and/or alternative scholarship and media reporting. The Counterterrorism Foundation will place particular (but not sole) emphasis on the support of "next-generation" terrorism studies scholarship and the role of media – particurarly new and emerging forms of media – in the GWOT. The former focus is grounded in the assumption that as the field of terrorism studies expands in colleges and universities around the world, so to does the number of new scholars and journalists with important, although often underexposed insights. The Counterterrorism Foundation seeks to promote the new voices within the community by providing access to public forums, research grants, and publication opportunities.
The latter of the two foci takes into account the ever increasing role of the media in the national security context. The Counterterrorism Foundation will – through its various associated programs – both examine the so-called "symbiotic relationship" between terrorism, the media, and national security, while also promoting GWOT coverage by new and emerging forms of media, such as bloggers and independent embedded journalists.^[12]

Personnel

Counterterrorism Foundation Executives

Andrew Cochran, Co-Chairman
Bill Roggio, Co-Chairman
Jonathan Ross-Harrington, Executive Director^[13]
Douglas Farah, Director
Thor Ronay, Director and President of the International Assessment and Strategy Center
Jeffrey Breinholt, Director
David Kaplan, Director