Understanding the Threat of Islam: Interview with John Guandolo

Former FBI Special Agent and counterterrorism expert John Guandolo is the Founder of Understanding the Threat, an organization dedicated to providing threat-focused strategic and operational consultation, education, and training for federal, state and local leadership and agencies.

Mr. Guandolo is a 1989 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and took a commission as an Officer in the United States Marine Corps. He has served in combat Operations Desert Shield/Storm, in Adriatic/Bosnia one year as the Unit Leader for the CINC’s In–Extremis Force, directly reporting to a Combatant Commander in a classified mission profile and was a combat diver, a military freefall parachutist, and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Ranger School to name a few.

In 1996, Mr. Guandolo resigned his commission in the Marine Corps and joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), serving at the Washington Field Office. From 1996–2000, he primarily conducted narcotics investigations domestically and overseas. In 2001, he served for one year as the FBI Liaison to the U.S. Capitol Police investigating threats on the President, Vice President, Members of Congress and other high–level government officials. Shortly after 9/11, Mr. Guandolo began an assignment to the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI’s Washington Field Office developing an expertise in the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Doctrine, the global Islamic Movement, and a myriad of terrorist organizations to include Hamas, Al Qaeda, and others.

In 2006, Mr. Guandolo created and implemented the FBI’s first Counterterrorism Training/Education Program focusing on the Muslim Brotherhood and their subversive movement in the United States, Islamic Doctrine, and the global Islamic Movement.

LS: Thank you for granting PolitiChicks this interview.  I was recently at an event where you talked about the hostile information campaign controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Please explain that to our readers.

JG: The hostile information campaign is the crux of what the Muslim Brotherhood is doing here. We think of the threat as the guys who are shooting, people blowing things up, battling on the battle field, and that kind of warfare, but this is a different kind of warfare. This happens with guys who wear suits, tell us they want to help us, they’re friendly to us, and yet the facts on the table and the evidence is that they are not, whether they’re in an advisory role inside the government or what not.

So to break the hostile information campaign down, two things: Anytime inside the government, whether it’s the FBI, DHS or the military, where there are people who are able to articulate the threat—the threat from the Muslim Brotherhood, the threat from the global Islamic movement—what ties them together is Sharia, then the hostile information campaign kicks into action. They then tell the White House or their international security staff or the college president or the local police chief or an elected official that they’re offended and everything stops.