John Perren Describes the WMD Directorate's National Improvised Explosives Familiarization Course
John Perren describes the WMD Directorate's National Improvised Explosives Familiarization (NIEF) course.
Video Transcript
Countermeasures is the capital “P” in the WMD directorate for prevention. That’s key. That is liaison, outreach, tripwire initiatives. That’s where we sit down with academia, we sit down with the private sector, we sit down with the scientific community and what we do is we describe to them what we view as the threat. Then together we decide what are the gaps, what are the vulnerabilities. How do we mitigate these gaps and vulnerabilities?
I’ll give you a good example of one of our tripwire initiatives. It’s called NIEF. National Improvised Explosive Familiarization course, And what we do is we train regionally. We go out with our, to the bomb techs and the WMD coordinators—and this is state, local, and federal bomb techs—and we put on a course: what explosives can you buy commercially off the shelf—precursors. Mix them up into an explosive. And what kind of damage it can do?
That’s a three-day course. First day is classroom, second day they are mixing these recipes together, and the third day we bring in CEO’s and heads of security of all the companies that own these products and we take them down to a demonstration range. And we show them what their products, mixed in the right recipe, can do. Everything from blowing up mailboxes to vehicles and the damage it causes.
And that resonates with these folks. They see that and they go, “wow.” What they do is they talk to their CEOs to send all that information out to all of their shops and all of their folks out there.
And what that does is they know who to call if they see suspicious purchases of certain precursors or certain equipment bought with precursors. And they give us a call. And those are our tripwires that we set in place. And that’s just one example of many of the initiatives that we have.
Video Download
Video Source
Recent Video
- 05.21.2025 — Ahead of the Threat Podcast: Episode Ten - Hugh Thompson
- 05.21.2025 — Parents of Overdose Victim Describe Darknet Dangers
- 05.20.2025 — FBI Seattle Police Week Message 2025
- 05.14.2025 — Inside the FBI Podcast: Protecting Chinese Students from Scammers
- 05.12.2025 — FBI Director Kash Patel's National Police Week Message
- 05.08.2025 — FBI Search Targets Darknet Drug Networks
- 05.08.2025 — What Makes Darknet Marketplaces So Dangerous
- 05.07.2025 — FBI New York: Operation Restore Justice
- 05.07.2025 — FBI Cleveland - Operation Restore Justice
- 05.07.2025 — Operation Restore Justice
- 05.06.2025 — FBI's CJIS Division Meets the Mission 24/7
- 05.01.2025 — FBI Columbia Citizens Academy 2025 Recruitment Video
- 05.01.2025 — Inside the FBI Podcast: Transnational Repression
- 04.30.2025 — Ahead of the Threat Podcast: Episode Nine - Meredith Griffanti
- 04.29.2025 — Inside the FBI Podcast: Joint Terrorism Task Forces
- 04.24.2025 — Joint Operation Targets Sextortion Suspects in Nigeria
- 04.24.2025 — Flags at EFCC Office in Lagos, Nigeria
- 04.23.2025 — Inside the FBI Hazardous Devices School
- 04.15.2025 — Retired Detective Barry Berglund Describes Role of FBI Kansas City JTTF
- 04.15.2025 — Retired Special Agent Describes Role of FBI Kansas City JTTF
FBI Weekly Newsletter
Subscribe to our email newsletter for news on the FBI, sent out every week.