TERRORISMA View from the CT Foxhole: William Braniff, Director, Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
The decade after 9/11 was largely about integrating our special operations community with our intelligence community. “The decade after the decade after 9/11, we started to really integrate our federal law enforcement efforts so that we could find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and prosecute here in the United States,” says William Braniff.
William Braniff is the director of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) at the United States Department of Homeland Security. Within this capacity, he leads the Department’s efforts to strengthen the country’s ability to prevent targeted violence and terrorism. Braniff previously served as the START director and a professor of the practice at the University of Maryland, the director of practitioner education at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, and an instructor in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point. Braniff is a graduate of the United States Military Academy. Following his Company Command in the U.S. Army, he attended the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies where he received a master’s degree in international relations. Braniff then served as a foreign affairs specialist for the National Nuclear Security Agency.
Braniff previously served as a member of the editorial board of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism-The Hague, the RESOLVE Network Research Advisory Board, the Prosecution Project Advisory Board, the Hedayah Center International Advisory Board, and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism Independent Advisory Committee, as well as serving as a non-voting advisor to the Board of CHC Global. He was also a founding board member of We the Veterans and Military Families, an organization dedicated to strengthening American democracy.
CTC: You have been working in the terrorism studies and counterterrorism fields for more than 15 years, including time at the Combating Terrorism Center as Director of Practitioner Education, as Director of the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), and in your current role as Director of DHS’ Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3). How would you characterize the arc and evolution of the terrorism studies field and the United States’ approach to CT over the past decade and a half?
Braniff: I think you could argue that the decade after 9/11 was largely about integrating our special operations community with our intelligence community. We were trying to figure out how to find, fix, finish the enemy and then exploit and analyze data captured on the battlefield to increase our ability to action the next series of targets in a way that was as debilitating as possible to our adversaries.
