Brig Barker

Brig Barker retired after 21 years as a counterterrorism agent with the FBI. He is now the President/CEO of Red Rock Global Security. During his FBI career he spent the majority of his time on a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) with extensive overseas deployments. Brig originally spent five years working as a case agent on a JTTF where he was a SWAT operator and FBI certified sniper. Further, Brig was a JTTF Squad Supervisor and Counterterrorism Program Coordinator in two separate divisions. In addition, he was selected and served as the embedded Senior FBI Advisor at DOD Special Operations Command.

During his career with the FBI, Brig conducted numerous counterterrorism deployments throughout Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the U.K. In 2015, he completed a deployment to Tunisia. He further deployed to Nairobi, Kenya and Kampala, Uganda in 1998 as part of the Al Qaida Embassy Bombings investigation, as well as to Cairo, Egypt immediately after the attacks on 9/11/2001. In 2006, Brig opened the Freetown, Sierra Leone LEGAT office.

He further was the primary Counterterrorism Interrogation instructor for the FBI Training Division for two years, during which he developed the RQRD Interrogation technique. During this time, he was also a primary instructor for the FBI National Academy program, where he taught a course on counterterrorism strategies for local law enforcement. Brig is an FBI trained Arabic speaker and is conversational in Farsi and German. He developed and has taught Survival Arabic for Law Enforcement for the past 10 years. He was further the Terrorism Finance Coordinator in his last duty assignment and has been the Correctional Intelligence Liaison regarding radicalization issues in two FBI offices.

He has 15+ counterterrorism articles professionally published in law enforcement and DoD publications, including the primary interrogation article for the West Point counterterrorism textbook, Terrorism and Political Islam. His master’s thesis, “Decoding the Language of Jihad,” a comprehensive study in Islamic statement analysis and exegesis, was published in Middle East Quarterly. Brig’s most recent articles include “ISIS: Nothing New Under the Sun” and “Salafi/Takfiri Micro-Theology: The Non-Illusive and Motivational Ideology Behind Jihadist Attacks in the 21st Century.”

Prior to the FBI, Brig spent five years as a Ranger and Jumpmaster qualified Army officer, with the majority of his time in the 82nd Airborne. During this time, he deployed as a Weapons Company Executive Officer to Northern Iraq in 1991 as part of a Low Intensity Conflict operation.

Barker is also the author of “The Dark Trajectory of Jihad: An FBI Agent’s Understanding of the Life, Mindset, and Intentions of Radical Extremists,” published in 2021.

Brig Barker is a trusted advisor and consultant to the Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC (ASPP™), and we work with him often. When a client’s threat picture crosses into terrorism — ideology, radicalization, pre-attack behavior, or interrogation — Brig is who we bring in. His counterterrorism acumen gives ASPP™ a depth of subject-matter expertise few prevention firms can claim, and his career reinforces the premise our work is built on: attackers telegraph. Behavior is observable before violence occurs, and prevention begins long before a threat is in the room. #NEVERHERE™