Patriot counterterror officer who ‘understood the real threat’ dies

As America’s intelligence agencies suffer a series of reputational hits, the passing of former CIA officer and counterterrorism adviser Bruce Tefft presents an opportunity to spotlight the contrasting people of character who, unbowed by political and ideological currents, serve faithfully and courageously behind the scenes.

Tefft was a CIA station chief in clandestine services, a founder of the CIA’s counterterrorism center and an adviser to the New York Police Department’s intelligence and counterterrorism divisions who trained thousands of law-enforcement and intelligence officers. He died July 11 at the age of 73 after suffering a prolonged illness.

He was a go-to contact on homeland security matters for WorldNetDaily, particularly when unvarnished analysis was conspicuously lacking in the wake of an attack bearing “the hallmarks” of Islamic terrorism.

In 2007, for example, Tefft spoke to WND when an FBI spokesman told reporters that the dispassionately executed murder of five people at a Salt Lake City mall by Bosnian Muslim immigrant Sulejman Talovic was “just unexplainable.”

“It’s almost a joke in any counterterrorism circles,” Tefft told WND, “that within half a day of most unexplained incidents the FBI comes out and says it isn’t terrorism. They’ll come out with a conclusion based on no information.”

‘People sleep peaceably’

Tefft, who is survived by his wife, was a true servant who put others above himself in his personal as well as professional life, said J. Michael Epstein, who partnered with Tefft in humanitarian and security-oriented operations in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East. Together they formed a charitable organization to assist and mentor the surviving children of military and law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty.

“He was doing things you could not imagine in service of our nation,” Epstein said. “As kind and compassionate as he was, there was another side to him. When I think of Bruce, I think of that quote, ‘People sleep peaceably in their beds at night,’ because people like Bruce were willing to do hard things, ‘rough’ things, on their behalf.”

Epstein has set up a GoFundMe page to help Tefft’s family with medical and other expenses.

A native of Colorado, Tefft earned an M.A. in history and a juris doctorate in international law from the University of Denver. From 1975 to 1995, he served as a CIA field chief and operations manager in Africa, stationed in hotspots such as Mogadishu and Angola. Seventeen of those years overseas were in clandestine services. In the following decades, Tefft distinguished himself as a foreign affairs, counterterrorism and intelligence analyst, training officials in local and federal agencies in major Allied intelligence organizations and U.S. government departments, including the Departments of Defense, Justice and State, the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, Defense Humint Service, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the U.S. Marine Corps. Tefft also developed graduate level curricula for homeland security and terrorism studies and lectured at the U.S. Marine Corps University, Defense Intelligence Agency and George Mason University.

In all, Bruce Tefft trained more than 20,000 law-enforcement and intelligence officers as well as diplomats, judicial and government officials.

What are the signs?

Tefft spoke to WND in 2017 after Uzbek-native Sayfullo Saipov slipped through the cracks of four U.S. law-enforcement systems designed to prevent terrorism before plowing through cyclists and runners in a three-ton truck on a path along the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people and injuring many more.

Tefft pointed out at the time that a crucial flaw in each of those systems was the unwillingness to make adherence to the teachings of Islam part of the criteria law-enforcement personnel use to judge whether a person should be regarded as a threat.

If perpetrators such as Saipov “say they are motivated by Islam, then it’s Islamic terrorism,” he said.

“The idea that we as Westerners can define Islam for Muslims is ludicrous,” Tefft added.

He recalled to WND that shortly after 9/11, when he was a counterterrorism adviser to the NYPD, the department responded to intelligence reports of possible attacks on New York City being carried out using Zodiac inflatable boats. The NYPD contacted outlets for the boats, instructing employees to look out for atypical renters or buyers, such as people who don’t demonstrate knowledge of how to operate the boat or who want to hire or buy a large number of them.

“It was pretty simple, and they got a lot of callbacks; but not one of them panned out,” noted Tefft.

Asked whether the NYPD’s criteria for determining a threat included any religion-related indicators, he replied: “Oh no, not at all.”

Disturbing verses

Tefft’s frank assessment of the connection between Islam and terrorism – as one who “understood the real threat,” as some put it – had professional consequences.

In 2006, for example, Tefft became a defendant in a lawsuit against New York City by an Egyptian-born Muslim analyst for the NYPD counterterrorism cyber unit. The analyst, whose name was not disclosed in the suit, claimed he was subject to a regular stream of “anti-Islamic” messages from an email list run by Tefft. The opt-in list, meant to inform domestic law enforcement and intelligence officials, consisted mostly of unclassified material and news reports from around the world related to terrorism and Islam. In a small fraction of those dispatches Tefft added his own comments, some of which became a focus of the complaint.

The Muslim analyst complained that the emails “ridiculed and disparaged the Muslim religion and Arab people, and stated that Muslim- and Arab-Americans were untrustworthy and could not reliably serve in law enforcement positions or handle sensitive data.”

Tefft did not apologize for what was, in his view, simply relaying relevant facts and background to law-enforcement and intelligence officers about a serious global threat.

“I’m not a sentimentalist, and I’m not hate-filled either,” he said. “Hate is an emotion. I don’t feel emotional about it at all. I feel analytical and logical.”

Tefft insisted there clearly is a link between fundamental Islam and terrorism.

“There is nothing un-Islamic about Osama bin Laden,” he said of the al-Qaida leader. “If there were, he would have been declared apostate, non-Islamic.”

The Muslim analyst who brought the lawsuit told the New York Times in an interview that the emails were “racist,” but Tefft argued that he didn’t consider Islam a race.

“So, to call me racist is ridiculous. I have good friends who are Egyptian officials. I’ve worked all over the world,” he said.

Tefft noted that during his time at the NYPD, the Muslim analyst approached him face-to-face and complained he was being harsh on Muslims. Later, Tefft sat down with him over coffee and pointed out chapters and verses in the Quran that are regularly cited by terrorists as motivation and justification for their actions.

The analyst, according to Tefft, answered that his imam had never told him about those verses. Tefft then asked, “Now what do you think, after seeing the Quran?”

“Well,” the analyst replied. “I’m very disturbed.”

Please make a donation to help Bruce Tefft’s family with medical and other expenses via GoFundMe.