The_Info_Web/20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.md

category	aliases	tags	summary	start	location	relations	created	updated
Government Agency	CTC West Point Combating Terrorism Center CTC Sentinel	Organization WestPoint Counterterrorism ThinkTank Military	Privately funded counterterrorism research center at the U.S. Military Academy, founded in February 2003 with backing from Vincent Viola, which publishes the CTC Sentinel and releases captured al-Qaida documents.	2003-02	West Point, New York	type with reverse start fn founded Vincent Viola true 2003-02 1 type with reverse fn funded Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation true 1 type with reverse fn funded Morgan Stanley true 1	2026-09-22	2026-09-23

The Combating Terrorism Center was created at the West Point in February 2003 "thanks to the vision and generous support of Mr. Vincent Viola, former Chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange and a 1977 graduate of West Point," with General (ret.) Wayne Downing and Brigadier Generals Russ Howard and Cindy Jebb. It is housed in the academy's Department of Social Sciences and describes itself as "privately funded," supported by named endowments from George Gilmore and several graduating classes and by the Audia Group, Morgan Stanley and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. It has provided counterterrorism education to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the New York City fire department, the Army War College and "specialized Department of Defense units."¹

Harmony Program

The center launched the Harmony Program in 2005 to release and analyze documents from the Defense Department's Harmony database, captured "in the course of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan" and elsewhere, among them letters from Ayman al-Zawahiri and Atiyah Abd al-Rahman to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and a letter by Osama bin Laden. The center cautions that the documents "were collected on the battlefield unscientifically."²

CTC Sentinel

The center's monthly CTC Sentinel published H.E. Upchurch's "The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the 'Skull Mask' Neo-Fascist Network" in December 2021, on the history of Iron March and the groups that formed around it, including National Action and Atomwaffen Division.³

Footnotes

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1. Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, "History." https://ctc.westpoint.edu/history/ ↩︎

2. Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, "Harmony Program." https://ctc.westpoint.edu/harmony-program/ ↩︎

3. Upchurch, H.E. "The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the 'Skull Mask' Neo-Fascist Network." CTC Sentinel 14, no. 10, December 22, 2021. https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-iron-march-forum-and-the-evolution-of-the-skull-mask-neo-fascist-network/ ↩︎