Day: October 10, 2024

When terrorist plots are broken up, as they have been at a worrying pace recently, officials representing the FBI, Justice Department and Homeland Security are usually at the forefront of press conferences announcing the investigative feat. But behind the scenes is a key player the public has little knowledge of, much less familiarity. 

He is Brett Holmgren, a quiet and self-effacing career intelligence bureaucrat who leads the National Counter-Terrorism Center, (NCTC), one of several new offices that Congress created in its sweeping overhaul of the intelligence community following its failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. It’s part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), itself established in 2004 to oversee the federal government’s constellation of 17 intelligence agencies.

Located on the sprawling, unmarked and heavily guarded Liberty Crossing Intelligence Campus in the defense-heavy Washington, D.C. suburb of McLean, Virginia, just down the highway from CIA headquarters, the NCTC is the only federal agency that amasses and analyzes all terrorism intelligence from across the entire intelligence community. With a staff of more than 1,000 employees drawn from other intelligence agencies, relevant federal departments and federal contractors, the NCTC also conducts strategic operational counterterrorism planning for the President and maintains the government’s extensive database of known and suspected terrorists worldwide. By law, the NCTC does not deal with domestic terrorism, which falls under the responsibility of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

“In the [intelligence community] pecking order, a CIA or NSA [representative] is a bigger fish than an NCTC [one], but in the world of terrorism, NCTC is looked upon as being the integrator of all intelligence associated with terrorism,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior intelligence official whose 32-year government career includes stints as the senior director of the White House Situation Room, chief of staff to the CIA director and a senior executive at the NSA. 

“There’s nothing like it within the IC,”  said Seamus Hughes, a former NCTC analyst and now a senior researcher at the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center.

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