Introduction: countering terrorism: integration of practice and theory.

On February 28, 2002, more than 70 academic scholars and researchers, and personnel from justice, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, met at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, for an invitational conference on "Countering Terrorism: Integration of Practice and Theory." The meeting was sponsored by the FBI Academy's Behavioral Science Unit, the School of Arts and Sciences and the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, and the American Psychological Association.

The participants, roughly half academic scholars and researchers and half law enforcement personnel, dispersed into seven small groups to discuss scenarios that had been developed before the conference by the FBI. These scenarios described some of the current problems that the FBI, other law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies are facing as they try to discover cadres of terrorists or those who harbor them, as well as deter support for terrorism by individuals, designated groups, and communities. Two hours of scenario discussions were followed by two hours of small group discussions centered on questions that had been developed before the conference by the academic researchers and scholars. These questions were about stereotyping and ethnopolitical conflict, risk perception and communication, education regarding fundamentalism in all religious traditions, analysis of intelligence data, and strategies to deal with bioterrorism. The whole group convened for a final meeting where issues and concerns raised in the small groups were described and further analyzed. Conversations continued at a dinner provided in the large atrium meeting room at the Academy. The proceedings and recommendations offered by the various discussion groups, after review by the members of the individual groups, are the substance of this document.

The ten or so discussants in each small group were likely to be:

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