What do you think?
Rate this book
Counterattack
This was the first book to be released to the general public that reveals in detail how the Western democracies are beginning to win the war against international terrorism.
Chapter by chapter it describes and analyzes dozens of operations from Entebbe to the siege of the Iraniafi embassy in London — often disclosing important new information for the first time.
But Counterattack includes much more than just spell-binding stories of specific operations; the authors describe exactly how special counter-terrorist units are organized, trained, armed, controlled and led.
Written by two journalists who have covered terrorism for the last 15 years, this is a vital and fascinating book for anyone who wants to understand the secret struggle behind the headlines in the war between governments and the terrorists.
Here is just a sampling of what you’ll discover in Counterattack:
Why, in an ironic coincidence, the toughest, most secret and most effective anti-terrorist unit of the British Army in Northern Ireland consists largely of Roman Catholics.
What the “Three T System” of the Los Angeles Polic SWAT team stands for.
That West Germany’s GSG9 unit always has some of its recruits trained in the fine points of being airline stewards in order to deceive hijackers in an emergency.
The twenty-five basic skills recruits must master before joining the American Blue Light anti-terrorist force.
Why so many of the West’s anti-terrorist forces rely on .22 Berettas.
That the movements of all Europe’s known terrorist suspects are constantly tracked by a computer at Weisbaden, West Germany containing over 10 million pages of information — an operation that costs some $50 million per year.
The tide has finally turned in the international battle between terrorism and democracy.
For more than a decade, the terrorists held the initiative, exploiting the unpreparedness and the tolerance of the Western democracies in an attempt to destroy the very values and institutions that shielded them. Meanwhile, invisible to all but a few observers, the West was gradually mobilizing its forces for a counterattack.
The full international scope of this mobilization is disclosed for the first time by Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne in Counterattack: The West’s Battle Against the Terrorists. With more than 25 years of combined experience in reporting on terrorism, these two journalists were ideally positioned to follow the increasingly effective Western response to the terrorist threat.
In this revealing book they describe in precise detail how the Western democracies have put the terrorists on the defensive — without the repression the terrorists were so anxious to provoke.
Country by country, the authors explain the evolution of the anti-terrorist forces. You’ll learn everything that can safely be revealed about these elite cadres and how they are protecting us — their training, tactics, armaments, leadership and operations.
For anyone who is angered, frightened or discouraged by senseless terrorist violence, Counterattackis an exciting and heartening book: the terrorists may not be crushed, but at last they are on the run.
Chapter by chapter it describes and analyzes dozens of operations from Entebbe to the siege of the Iraniafi embassy in London — often disclosing important new information for the first time.
But Counterattack includes much more than just spell-binding stories of specific operations; the authors describe exactly how special counter-terrorist units are organized, trained, armed, controlled and led.
Written by two journalists who have covered terrorism for the last 15 years, this is a vital and fascinating book for anyone who wants to understand the secret struggle behind the headlines in the war between governments and the terrorists.
Here is just a sampling of what you’ll discover in Counterattack:
Why, in an ironic coincidence, the toughest, most secret and most effective anti-terrorist unit of the British Army in Northern Ireland consists largely of Roman Catholics.
What the “Three T System” of the Los Angeles Polic SWAT team stands for.
That West Germany’s GSG9 unit always has some of its recruits trained in the fine points of being airline stewards in order to deceive hijackers in an emergency.
The twenty-five basic skills recruits must master before joining the American Blue Light anti-terrorist force.
Why so many of the West’s anti-terrorist forces rely on .22 Berettas.
That the movements of all Europe’s known terrorist suspects are constantly tracked by a computer at Weisbaden, West Germany containing over 10 million pages of information — an operation that costs some $50 million per year.
The tide has finally turned in the international battle between terrorism and democracy.
For more than a decade, the terrorists held the initiative, exploiting the unpreparedness and the tolerance of the Western democracies in an attempt to destroy the very values and institutions that shielded them. Meanwhile, invisible to all but a few observers, the West was gradually mobilizing its forces for a counterattack.
The full international scope of this mobilization is disclosed for the first time by Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne in Counterattack: The West’s Battle Against the Terrorists. With more than 25 years of combined experience in reporting on terrorism, these two journalists were ideally positioned to follow the increasingly effective Western response to the terrorist threat.
In this revealing book they describe in precise detail how the Western democracies have put the terrorists on the defensive — without the repression the terrorists were so anxious to provoke.
Country by country, the authors explain the evolution of the anti-terrorist forces. You’ll learn everything that can safely be revealed about these elite cadres and how they are protecting us — their training, tactics, armaments, leadership and operations.
For anyone who is angered, frightened or discouraged by senseless terrorist violence, Counterattackis an exciting and heartening book: the terrorists may not be crushed, but at last they are on the run.
Unknown Binding
First published June 1, 1982
2 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 8, 2016
Counterattack: The West's Battle Against the Terrorists is my first endeavour in the non-fiction genre after a long time and it was well worth it.
The book was written in 1982 for the first time and describes and analyses different operations, disclosing facts that were not previously known and how special counter-terrorist units are organized, trained, armed, controlled, and led and how the fight against the terrorism started.
The book starts with an insight in those times, how the terrorism was developing across the globe and where the "conflict areas" were located on the map: Northen Ireland, Israel, and Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Egypt to name just a few.
It was very well written and insightful and It brought to me a different understanding of the operations and how conflict is handled.
I have learned a lot about how different countries deal with terrorism and a little bit about those people - elite trained- who are fighting on the first front.
Now I have a different appreciation and respect for them.
This book is outside my normal day to day reads but well worth it and I am highly recommending it.
I received an eARC, from NetGalley and the publisher Endeavour Press, in exchange for an honest review
The book was written in 1982 for the first time and describes and analyses different operations, disclosing facts that were not previously known and how special counter-terrorist units are organized, trained, armed, controlled, and led and how the fight against the terrorism started.
The book starts with an insight in those times, how the terrorism was developing across the globe and where the "conflict areas" were located on the map: Northen Ireland, Israel, and Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Egypt to name just a few.
It was very well written and insightful and It brought to me a different understanding of the operations and how conflict is handled.
I have learned a lot about how different countries deal with terrorism and a little bit about those people - elite trained- who are fighting on the first front.
Now I have a different appreciation and respect for them.
This book is outside my normal day to day reads but well worth it and I am highly recommending it.
I received an eARC, from NetGalley and the publisher Endeavour Press, in exchange for an honest review
June 4, 2016
This is a very dated book, first published in the UK in 1982. So it precedes the events of modern terrorism: 9/11, 7/7 and 21/7, al Qaeda and ISIS. That said, it is an interesting read, not least as a gauge of the thinking of the time.
The IRA, PLO, and state-sponsored terrorism were the order of the day and this book details the early and tentative approaches the Western powers (countries covered include the United States Britain, France, West Germany - the book was written pre-unification - and Israel) took to counter the threats they faced.
Much of what is included in these pages appears in today’s world to be rather quaint. For example, in the section on West Germany we learn that there was a computer system centred in the town of Wiesbaden, nicknamed “The Komissar”, which logs every item of information - addresses, contacts, etc, of every terrorist and other serious criminal. This is divulged to the reader in breathless tones, and to be fair, it probably was a big deal at the time. But now of course this is commonplace, every police force in England has access to the HOLMES system, which does just that, and in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations we can be sure that the world’s security services do much, much, more.
But this book is not just historical trivia. Much of the pages detail the emergence of the counter-terror units that in today’s world we sadly take for granted. The section on the birth of Germany’s GSG9 (the federal police equivalent of the SAS) in genuinely interesting, as is the section on the French experience with Algerian terrorism.
In conclusion, this is a dated but interesting read, well worth the investment if you have a real interest in the origin’s of today’s architecture of counter-terror.
The IRA, PLO, and state-sponsored terrorism were the order of the day and this book details the early and tentative approaches the Western powers (countries covered include the United States Britain, France, West Germany - the book was written pre-unification - and Israel) took to counter the threats they faced.
Much of what is included in these pages appears in today’s world to be rather quaint. For example, in the section on West Germany we learn that there was a computer system centred in the town of Wiesbaden, nicknamed “The Komissar”, which logs every item of information - addresses, contacts, etc, of every terrorist and other serious criminal. This is divulged to the reader in breathless tones, and to be fair, it probably was a big deal at the time. But now of course this is commonplace, every police force in England has access to the HOLMES system, which does just that, and in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations we can be sure that the world’s security services do much, much, more.
But this book is not just historical trivia. Much of the pages detail the emergence of the counter-terror units that in today’s world we sadly take for granted. The section on the birth of Germany’s GSG9 (the federal police equivalent of the SAS) in genuinely interesting, as is the section on the French experience with Algerian terrorism.
In conclusion, this is a dated but interesting read, well worth the investment if you have a real interest in the origin’s of today’s architecture of counter-terror.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews