Trifle Not With a Litigator

The home of what a "senior counter-terrorism official at the FBI" described as "the best database on Islamic terrorism in the world" is not in a government intelligence fusion center or a federally-funded thinktank. It's in the offices of an American plaintiff's lawyer.

The database is the pivotal tool in what those involved say will be the biggest class action in history: a $1 trillion lawsuit on behalf of the families of 1,431 of the people killed on 9/11 and 1,325 of the injured.

An article in the Sunday Times describes the remarkable discovery efforts of the law firm in question, Motley Rice. The investigative effort reportedly has benefited from "government help in 19 countries, from Afghanistan to Syria," and has personnel on the ground in some out-of-the-way places, as the Times reporter discovered:

I first got an idea of the scale of the operation last year when I ran into two Americans in the home of an Afghan warlord. The sunglasses and bulging briefcases made me think CIA. But it emerged that they were a retired FBI agent and a former special forces officer, working as investigators for Motley.

It is a stretch, of course, to call something like this an OSINT effort. But it illustrates the changing character of where "intelligence" can be found in this modern age.