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by Todd Bensman (Author)
The untold story of the last unrevealed American counterterrorism project built from the debris of 9/11. Its surprising ongoing purpose: to prevent terrorist infiltration over the US southwest border.
This thirteen-year work of journalism finally settles one of the nation's most controversial and politically powerful ideas about the American southern border: that Islamic jihadists might infiltrate it and commit terrorist acts. Perhaps no other idea about the border has sown more conflict, claims, counterclaims, rebuttals, and false narratives on all sides. This book provides a first comprehensive neutral baseline of truth about the threat, goring oxen on both sides of the partisan divide. It documents an ambitious and intrigue-laden covert American war on terror effort that stretches from the Mexican border to the tip of South America. Its existence to protect the homeland from terrorist infiltration was often regarded as entirely imagined--until migrating jihadists recently started killing and wounding hundreds in Europe. Americans concerned by unchecked global migration, porous borders, and national security also may feel surprised to learn that thousands of long-haul migrants from the Islamic world similarly breach the US-Mexican border each year--among them hardened jihadists--despite media insistence that none of this traffic exists. It does. The secret American campaign has prevented land border infiltration attack on US soil, safeguarding an unknowing nation--so far--from Europe's bloody ongoing experience. But this geographically sprawling effort is suffering from denialism and neglect at America's peril...just as Europe was before its calamity. How much longer can these programs keep America safe without the public recognition that they exist and the needed care and attention that acknowledgment would bring? This book is much more than revelation and complaint; it provides solutions to better protect the homeland from this chronically misunderstood border threat.Author Biography
Todd Bensman currently serves as the Texas-based Senior National Security Fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies(CIS), a Washington, D.C. policy institute for which he writes, speaks, and grants media interviews about the nexus between immigration and national security. He has testified before Congress as an expert witness and regularly appears on radio and television outlets. Separately, he writes about homeland security fora variety of online publications, and teaches terrorism and intelligence analysis as a university adjunct lecturer. For nine years, through August 2018, Bensman led counterterrorism intelligence for the Texas Department of Public Safety's Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division in its multi-agency fusion center. Before his homeland security service, Bensman was a journalist for twenty-three years, covering national security after 9/11 as a staff writer for major newspapers and reporting in twenty-five countries. His reporting on migration from Islamic countries and cross-border gun smuggling to cartels earned two National Press Club awards (2008 and 2009), an Inter-American Press Association award, and two Texas Institute of Letters awards. His reporting on corruption spurred numerous federal investigations, indictments, and convictions.
Bensman holds an M.A. in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School, Center for Homeland Defense and Security (2015, Outstanding Thesis designee). He also holds an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism (2009). He holds an undergraduate degree in Journalism from Northern Arizona University. In 2017, he completed a 350-hour State of Texas Command College leadership program sponsored by the Texas Department of Public Safety.
