Episode 328 – Violence abroad rarely stays abroad
Well, the world is in a state these days, isn’t it? War in Iran. War in Gaza. War in Lebanon. Closure of the Straits of Hormuz. An ongoing civil war in Yemen. And that is just the Middle East! When it comes to terrorism in the West, acts usually – if not always – spreads far and wide as Western involvement in these conflicts is seen as interference which must be published. We have already seen acts carried out and more are likely to occur. How bad can this get? I talk to former FBI special agent about this threat.
About my guest
Jeff Parsons is a Senior Research Fellow with the George Washington University Program on Extremism. Prior to joining the Program on Extremism, Mr. Parsons served as a FBI Special Agent with more than 20 years of experience leading complex counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations. While assigned to the Chicago Field Office, he led the investigation that identified and prosecuted the conspirators responsible for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and a planned attack in Copenhagen, Denmark. He also recruited and managed human intelligence networks to detect and disrupt threats from the Afghanistan–Pakistan region. Following his tenure in Chicago, Mr. Parsons served as a Unit Chief in the FBI’s International Terrorism Operations Section (ITOS) within the Counterterrorism Division, where he provided oversight, direction, and operational support to 10 FBI field offices — including support for the FBI’s investigation of the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack. He subsequently served as a Supervisory Special Agent in the Washington Field Office, leading investigations of terrorism threats to the National Capital Region. Mr. Parsons is a recipient of the FBI Director’s Award for Outstanding Counterterrorism Investigation and the FBI Director’s Award for Excellence in the HUMINT Program. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a Master of Arts in National Security Studies from Georgetown University.
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Canadian Intelligence Eh
In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counter-terrorism and other threat areas in the national security world.
In these half-hour podcasts, 32-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski is joined by a fascinating array of individuals with something meaningful to say about these issues as they provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
About Phil Gurski
Phil worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East. He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013, focusing on community outreach and training on radicalisation to violence, until his retirement from the civil service in May 2015, and as consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) from May to October 2015. He also ran Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting from May 2015 to May 2025.
He was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the SecDev Group from June 2018 to July 2019 and the Director of the National Security Programme at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute from 2020-2022. He has also taught on national security issues at George Brown College, the University of Ottawa and Georgian College. Mr. Gurski has presented on violent Islamist-inspired and other forms of terrorism and radicalisation across Canada and around the world and is actively sought by Canadian and international media on national security and intelligence issues. He has written hundreds of op-eds on these matters for several Canadian media since 2016
He is the author of The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West (Rowman and Littlefield 2015) Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), The Lesser Jihads: Taking the Islamist fight to the world (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), An end to the ‘War on Terrorism (Rowman and Littlefield 2018), When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith (Lynne Rienner 2019), The Peaceable Kingdom? A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present (self-published: 2021, republished by Double Dagger in 2022), and the forthcoming The Fenians: Brotherhood of fools or Canada’s first terrorist threat? (Double Dagger: 2025). He regularly blogs and podcasts (Canadian Intelligence Eh!), and posts on Bluesky (@borealissaves.bsky.social) on terrorism and intelligence matters.
