Brian Jenkins knows terror. It's personal.
As a university student in Guatemala, he endured harrowing military interrogations because his friends and classmates included anti-government guerrillas. As a member of the U.S. Army's Green Berets, he served in Vietnam and witnessed terrorism up close as a tactic of the Viet Cong.
And as a young analyst for Santa Monica-based Rand Corp., he launched the think tank's terrorism research program nearly 40 years ago, tracking attacks around the world on 3-by-5 index cards. Today his database fills hard drives, and he has become one of the world's top authorities on the subject.
In some ways, Jenkins knows too much. He is immersed routinely in risk assessments and intelligence reports brimming with the stuff of nightmares. His assessment: "We are not going to end terrorism, not in any future I see."
Yet he exudes calm. His Southern California home -- neither fortress nor bunker -- is in a leafy, accessible neighborhood. He is a relaxed frequent flier, traveling more than 200,000 miles a year, much of it to terrorism conferences or briefings around the world.
And he thinks the country can cope as well.
"During the Cold War both the U.S. and Soviet Union spent a great deal of time and money understanding each other. To a great extent, that spared us from mutual annihilation," Jenkins says.
Similarly, he says, in the war on terrorism "we have to have a better understanding of what we're up against." Demonizing terrorists as "wicked and evil" plays into their hands, while learning about "their quantifiable goals and understandable motives" demystifies them.
Knowledge, he says, is the antidote to anxiety.
The challenge is complicated, however, by evolution. Terrorist methods, motives and members keep changing.
So he remains a full-time student of terrorism. For that, Brian Michael Jenkins, 65, relies not only on the latest classified reports but on his lifetime experience.
Guatemala City, 1965
As a 23-year-old student, Jenkins knew he was in trouble when Guatemalan authorities insisted that he answer a few questions about some of his anti-government classmates at the University of San Carlos.
Though not an activist himself, the young American knew many who opposed the military dictatorship. Some were political demonstrators, some were considered terrorists.
