Terrorism Research Center

The Terrorism Research Center (TRC) was founded in 1996 by Matthew Devost, Brian Houghton, and Neal Pollard to establish an organization with a specific focus on terrorism and emerging international security issues like information warfare. It was purchased by Blackwater's Erik Prince in 2007. Over the course of 14 years, the TRC conducted research, analysis, and training on variety of counterterrorism and homeland security issues.

Products included:

Terrorism.com website – The TRC web site (which operated at www.terrorism.com since 1996 and then also mirrored at www.homelandsecurity.com starting in 2000) was the top search engine result for “terrorism” and other security keywords for over a decade. The site regularly received as many as 5,000,000 hits per month and had tens of thousands of active registered users. The site has also been cited in thousands of books, news articles, academic papers, and other works.

Responder Knowledge Base – TRC conceived, prototyped, designed, built and operated the RKB over a period of six years. The RKB provided emergency responders, purchasers, and planners with a trusted, integrated, online source of information on products, standards, certifications, grants, and other equipment-related information. In 2005 the TRC received a U.S. flag that had been flown over the U.S. Capital building (one of more than 100,000 such flags flown annually ) in honor of TRC’s contributions to the first responder community through the development of the RKB system.

Terrorism Early Warning Group Expansion Project – Having worked with the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group since 1997, the TRC and L.A.S.D submitted a grant application to the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism to expand the TEW to six high threat cities in the U.S.  After the September 11 attacks and the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, the TEW program was migrated to DHS and expanded to cover 56 high threat urban areas. The TRC worked with these 56 cities to develop early warning and intelligence centers that became the precursor the national Fusion Center network.

Mirror Image Training – TRC developed the renowned Mirror Image training program in 2001 to allow military, intelligence, security and first responder personnel to better understand the international terrorist threat. Participants were subjected to an intense immersion program where they were trained to think and act like the adversary and adopt their tactics, techniques, and procedures. TRC Mirror Image training became a U.S. Army Foundry course, was featured in major news media, and became the most popular training course the TRC ever developed.

RealNews List– The TRC provided a free daily news clipping service on a variety of global security issues. An archive of several hundred thousand clippings was available via the TRC web site and the mailing became known as the “early bird” of global risk issues.

Project Pediatric Preparedness – This project explained these unique needs and gaps, and provided a foundation for homeland security planning for pediatric victims of terrorism. The final report described the minimum capabilities essential for emergency response to pediatric victims. The report laid out fifteen Functional Areas for pediatric response – general areas describing functions, tasks, and missions of emergency response.

TRC Lecture Series – The TRC lecture series brought together a wide array of experts to discuss emerging threats. These lectures were then released as audio downloads on the site. Popular speakers from the lecture series included Brian Jenkins, Rohan Gunaratna, and Hekmat Karzai.

Terrorism Research Center Today
The Terrorism Research Center ceased operations in 2010 at the discretion of new owners and managers. As of early 2009, none of the original TRC founders were still involved with the center.