John D. Cohen is the Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the Department of Homeland Security.
The Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention discusses why the agency and its partners need to focus on nimble, transparent responses to the problem, with an emphasis on prevention efforts via the newly formed CP3.
The following is an excerpt from Mr. Cohen’s prepared statement for the record. Download the PDF to read the full text.
In March of 2014, I sat down with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy to conduct a Policy Forum examining the Department of Homeland Security’s countering violent extremism programs, just one year after the horrific bombing of the Boston marathon the previous April. Those observations I made over seven years ago serve as a helpful datapoint for my remarks today. After all, many of the core challenges have stayed the same, but so much more of the landscape has since changed. Now, almost six months have passed since the events of January 6th and we are just three months short of the 20th anniversary of September 11th, so this is the perfect point to take stock of what we got right, what we got wrong, and where we are heading so we can ensure that these types of events come to an end in our country...
