The Financing of Terror; Behind the PLO, IRA, Red Brigades, and M-19 Stand the Paymasters

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/Very good. 24 cm, x, 293, [1] pages. A Glossary of Terrorism. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Ink underling and knowledgeable comments noted. Bookplate inside front cover. Mark on bottom edge. Inscribed to Noel Koch by the author on fep. Inscription reads: Noel: This is only the beginning, Special Forces is much more interesting. With Kind Regards. James Adams October 1981. Signed, handwritten note laid in as well. Koch was Special assistant to President The White House, 1971-1974, Deputy Assistant for Africa United States Department Defense, 1982-1986, director special planning, 1981-1986, and was principal deputy assistant secretary for international security affairs, 1981-1986. James Adams is an American author and entrepreneur. Adams was born in Newcastle, England, where he spent his childhood. In 1991, he immigrated to the United States, becoming a citizen in 1997. Adams founded the Ashland Institute for Strategic Studies, a virtual intelligence organization, and iDefense, a cyber intelligence agency. He also served as CEO of United Press International. Adams is an expert on warfare and intelligence, and has written 13 best-selling fiction and non-fiction books on the subjects. They include The Next World War, The Financing of Terror, and Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA. In 2019, he wrote (with Richard Kletter) Artificial Intelligence - Confronting the Revolution. Adams has also served on the board of the NSA and as chairman of its technology oversight panel, as well as on special task forces for the White House on psychological operations and cyber warfare. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: Adams takes a close look at the financial resources of several terrorist groups including the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Irish Republican Army and Italy's Red Brigade, and reaches startling conclusions. The PLO, he maintains, does not depend on Arab governments for its survival nor has it ever received funds from the Soviet Union. Operating on worldwide investments that provide an annual income of $1.25 billion, the PLO, according to the author, is the most financially successful terrorist group of all and well on the way toward fiscal independence. As to the Red Brigade, Adams describes their kidnap-and-ransom form of financing as developing into "something resembling an art form.'' He argues that the U.S. raid on Libya was a serious mistake politically, militarily and morally, and that the supposed godfather of international terrorism, Muammar Khadafy has supplied almost no money to terrorist groups for at least five years. His proposal, that the way to reduce the power and influence of terrorist groups is to stop their economic growth, is convincing.