Malcolm Wrightson Nance

Malcolm Wrightson Nance (born 1961 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an African-American career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. He is an internationally recognized expert in the history, personalities and organization of al Qaeda and its affiliates including the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant ISIL; jihadi radicalization, Islamic extremism in Middle East, Southwest Asian and African terror groups, as well as counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare. Malcolm Nance practices in the fields of national security policy particularly in anti- and counter-terrorism intelligence, terrorist strategy and tactics, torture and counter-ideology in combatting radical Islamic extremism. Nance is considered a fierce champion of ethics, human rights and human factors integration in intelligence practice and national security policy. In 2014 he became the executive director of the counter-ideology think tank the Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideologies (TAPSTRI) in Hudson, New York.

Early Years

Nance's family has more than 110 years of combined US Navy and the US Army service including combat veterans who served in the American Civil War, Indian Wars, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan. Malcolm Nance is a graduate of West Catholic Boys High School in Philadelphia, Pa.

Military career

A former U.S. Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer in Naval Intelligence he was involved in numerous high profile counter-terrorism, intelligence and combat operations. Nance is a decorated combat veteran of military operations in Beirut, Lebanon; Bosnia, Syria, Libya, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. Nance specialized in foreign languages, tactical interrogation and Human Intelligence. Assigned to Coronado, Ca He became an instructor in wartime and peacetime SERE where he trained Navy and Marine Corps pilots, Navy SEALS and other high risk of capture soldiers, sailors and marines to survive captivity as prisoner of war.^[1][2] Four years before 9/11 he conceptualized and spearheaded the Advanced Terrorism, Abduction and Hostage Survival school (ATAHS), a special survival program designed to train Special Mission Units, Navy SEALS and select members of the US Intelligence community in resisting torture, exploitation and escaping terrorist captivity by al-Qaeda. At ATAHS he led an al-Qaeda simulation group to expose high risk of capture trainees to the Al Qaeda organization and its abduction and attack tactics.

Post-Military Career

Nance is considered a recognized expert on the Iraq insurgency, Jihadist tactics and Al Qaeda’s global organization. In early 2001 Nance founded Special Readiness Services International (SRSI) an intelligence support company. On the morning of 9/11 he was at a café on Capitol Hill. Driving to Arlington he eye witnessed the crash of American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon. He acted as a first responder at the helipad crash site where he helped organize the rescue and recovery of victims. Nance served as an intelligence and security contractor in Iraq, Afghanistan, the UAE and North Africa.^[3][4]

Academia and Security Industry

Between 2005-2007 Nance was a visiting lecturer on counterterrorism in Sydney, Australia at Macquarie University's Centre on Policing, Intelligence and Counter-terrorism (PICT) and at Victoria University of Wellington in Christchurch, New Zealand.^[5] Nance has been a guest lecturer on al-Qaeda and counter-ideology at the Defense Intelligence University and international law enforcement colleges. Nance is a keynote speaker in the security industry on mitigating terrorist strategies and tactics including for the American Society of Industrial Security (ASIS), the Austral-Asian industrial security industry and the International Air Transport Authority (IATA).

Small Wars Journal and Torture Controversy

In 2007 Nance wrote an article for the counterinsurgency blog Small Wars Journal entitled "Waterboarding is Torture... period." Republished in the Pentagon Early Bird, it set off a firestorm as the first credible description of the torture technique as used in SERE. The article strongly swayed the Pentagon against the use of the Waterboard and how it's misuse would damage the American honor worldwide. Nance claimed using the torture techniques of America's former enemies dishonors the memory of US servicemembers that died in captivity through torture and that it does not produce credible intelligence.^[1][2] Nance was called to testify before the U.S. Congress about the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques".^[1][2] He told the House Judiciary Committee that:

Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens was convinced in a lengthy interview with Nance that Waterboarding was torture before he tried the practice and wrote about it.^[6]

Journalism and media appearances

Mr. Nance is often a guest policy analyst on television frequently for BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Al Jazeera America and radio on BBC World Service, London Broadcasting and [WAMC] in New York and Western Massachusetts.

Nance was a frequent guest analyst on terrorist strategy on Fox News with Tony Snow, who would later become the Press Secretary of President Bush.^[7] He was featured on numerous international political talk shows including PBS’s Newshour, BBC’s Hardtalk and World Have Your Say, Australian Broadcasting’s Dateline, German TV’s ZDF Frontier 21, TV 5, France 24 and others. He has written numerous opinion editorials on combatting terrorism and torture in the New York Times, New York Daily news, International Herald Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Washington Post, San Diego Union Tribune, the Times of London, the Guardian UK, the Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph.

Select Bibliography

Books and Edited Works

• The Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activity. CRC Press. 2013. ISBN 978-1-466-55457-3.  (1st Edition 2004, 2nd Edition 2008, 3rd Edition 2013).

• The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014, Second Edition. CRC Press. 2014. ISBN 978-1-498-70689-6.  (1st Edition 2007,2nd Edition 2014)

• An End to al-Qaeda: Destroying Bin Laden's Jihad and Restoring America's Honor. St Martin’s. 2010. ISBN 978-0-312-59249-3. 

Selected Journalism and News Articles

• "Malcolm Nance Archives"

Selected Journal Articles

Movies and Documentaries

Nance was featured in acclaimed documentaries including one that was Academy Award nominated for Best Documentary

• Dirty Wars
• Torturing Democracy
• Torture in America

References

External links

• "Expert Sheds Light on Waterboarding"