Key Reflections
* The proliferation and diversity of communication methods represents a real challenge to law enforcement today, who must keep up with the technology as it develops.
* Following the money is key to disrupting and dismantling serious organised crime groups. Much of the money being used to support the Taliban regime now has its origins in organised crime, spanning decades.
* There are parallels with law enforcement and the private sector security. This includes dealing with risk management and ensuring the safety of staff.
* Teamwork and interoperability are essential to counter-terrorism work, as is adaptability, since agencies have to collaborate efficiently and effectively in real time to foil potential attacks.
* Women in national security are increasingly taking on important roles and provide unique skill-sets to aid counter-terrorism operations and crisis situations.
* People from diverse backgrounds should be encouraged to work together in the field of international security, as sharing different perspectives and approaches allows for better operational ability overall.
Transcript:
SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel
TN: Terri Nicholson
SG: Hello, and welcome to DEEP Dive, brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. Each episode, we speak to experts and practitioners in international security and defence, counter-terrorism, and geopolitical current events to gain insight into the most pressing matters of global affairs.
In this episode, we speak with Terri Nicholson, Senior Vice President for International Security at Paramount, the global film and television production and distribution company. Prior to this, Terri had a 30-year career in British law enforcement serving in various high-ranking positions, including being the Deputy Senior National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism and Head of Operations at the Metropolitan Police’s SO15 Counter Terrorism Command. Terri is also a recipient of the Queen’s Police Medal (QPM) which is awarded to police officers for gallantry and distinguished service.
Terry Nicholson, thank you for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive.
TN: Good morning, Sajjan. And thank you for inviting me.
SG: It’s our pleasure. This is going to be a very interesting discussion in order to understand how one goes from being a very senior police officer to Senior Vice President at Paramount, which is one of the world’s largest film and production companies. So, in order to understand this journey, let’s start at the beginning. What made you want to become a police officer?
TN: So, it’s interesting 30 years on having to think about those reasons I probably spouted at my interview, but for so many people, the rationale for joining the police will be things like the expressed desire to help others, to support their communities, and create a safe working environment, to save lives, and all of those very good reasons why. But in truth, in my own formative years of my teens in particular, these were probably not the dominant factors in my own thinking. But caring professions and public service are in my DNA essentially, from my mother and sisters working in care, in education, in nursing, as senior nurses, and I also have the flip side of it in my family. I come from a very large family, as you may know, of eight children. I also have a brother who is in 24/7 care settings. So, I have the sense of public service on the other side and what good looks like there too.
My uncle had joined the police and was in quite a senior rank, but he never considered the police to be a job for a woman and in fact, my father didn’t either. I once floated the idea when I was quite young of joining the Police Cadets, and if I’m honest there too, my dad thought it was a crazy idea and it was much more about me being able to continue my sporting prowess than it ever was to do some good in the community at that time. But as one of a family of eight children and in particular, one of six quite powerful women in that setting, I needed to assert my own position within the hierarchy of that family, six fantastic sisters, as I say.
I was an inherently inquisitive child. ‘Downright nosy,’ my mother might say, always questioning, always asking ‘why?’ and frankly always wanting more information. That’s kind of stayed with me throughout my career, I must say. I would often sit on the stairs listening to those adult conversations, whether familial or visitors. I would pretend to be asleep when my sisters came home from their nights out, and they were debriefing what had happened. But another real feature of my childhood was that I was someone who believed in fairness. I could not tolerate injustice, I still can’t, in any shape or form and I was always a supporter of the underdog, encouraging them to do the best that they could within their settings. I also, quite surprisingly again maybe, I pushed a lot of boundaries when I was a youngster, I wasn’t a complete conformist. I describe myself as somebody who was very comfortable operating in grey, as well as in black and white, something that I think is crucial in exercising discretion within policing.
I was never afraid to speak, I was a tad defiant, and that manifested itself in me leaving school actually, a matter of months before I completed my A levels, which went down terribly well with my father, who was a highly intelligent man. I decided to join the bank. Why did I pick the bank? Not because I wanted particularly to join banking, but it was a racing certainty of me getting a job at that time. There were lots and lots of jobs in banking, very different, of course, from today. So, I went my own way and I had dabbled with joining the Police Cadets, as I say, that was really a crucial point. I think I reached a turning point after five years in the bank when I was interviewed, ironically, as a witness in a police investigation into a share fraud [case]. I decided there and then, quite impulsive again, that I would join, by now 22 years of age and much more worldly wise. And in particular, I vowed I would be a detective.
If you think back to those days, in the 1980s—late 80s—the nearest thing we had to a blue light programme was Z-Cars, I mean it’s that long ago. So, I therefore can’t even claim any sort of undue influence of media and television on my decision making. So, I joined with O levels, no degree at that stage, that came later, and went back to school, to Hendon, which I struggled with. I didn’t like the uniformity of the curriculum, I was never brilliant at it the first time around, why would I be at the age of 22? But it all changed when I had my first posting. Of course, the irony now is that I wouldn’t even be able to join the police with those qualifications, something that I feel quite passionately about. I feel that many people like me, who developed their academic interests later on in life would be excluded and still are, including many kids who come from deprived upbringings, who can’t afford to go to university. And I’m very proud to say that I served in every rank, from the rank of constable all the way up to assistant chief constable as a detective and that is probably one of my career highlights, I think.
SG: Well, it’s a very interesting story that you tell and shows how important family is in helping to shape your career and your interests and your moral compass as well. You said you had various different roles in law enforcement. In the 1990s, you worked in tackling organised crime. What were the main challenges back then and do some of them still exist?
TN: So, I think the first thing to say is, as an eternal optimist, I really view challenges as opportunities. I always have always will. My glass is always half full. I could talk for a very long time about this area, but let’s confine it to a couple of key areas. Let’s think about communication as a challenge then and a challenge now, for different reasons, of course. But today, of course, it might be said that the proliferation and diversity of communication methods is a real challenge to law enforcement and how can they possibly keep up—catch up, arguably—but certainly keep up with the amount of technology and apps that are out there with it all proceeding at such a pace. Well, communication was a challenge back then too, but for very different reasons. And it’s hard to believe when I first joined, there were no computers. We didn’t have desktop computers in policing. Crime recording was manual. It’s insane when I think about it now, there was no World Wide Web, it was not actually invented until 1989, at the time when I was joining policing. And we communicated on landline telephones, and I vividly recall my acquiring my first Hutchison telecom pager and stopping to make a call at a telephone box to call the office or call one of the victims of crimes that I was investigating.
And of course, the criminals faced equal challenges of communicating back then. Mobile phones were like the proverbial house bricks, very rare, and the fact that they didn’t exist actually presented opportunities for us really, in physical meetings that were then capable of being evidenced and there was no Zoom, hard to imagine that too really. So, virtually every trial that I ever was involved in featured physical surveillance evidence, which had been gained by virtue of their lack of communication methods, and then we step forward to now and, of course, the opposite is true and how on earth are law enforcement and other agencies keeping up with those advances in technology and developing them at the same pace as the criminals are exploiting them.
Certainly my children couldn’t swipe left or right on a mobile phone to look at photographs when they grew up, but my nephews and nieces most definitely can. And the use of the Internet as a tool by extremists, it’s not just, of course, in organised crime, but the use of the tool of communication by extremists remains a challenge where radicalization—there has been very recent articles on how many people are radicalised online before going on to commit terrorist acts. The use of the Internet as a tool by them, where radicalization occurs from the comfort of one’s bedroom in anonymity, often outside the purview of those key family members and influences that I relied on so much in my childhood for my moral compass, that limits the intervention opportunities, prevention opportunities, at the early earliest stages. And of course, so many investigations feature this as a factor.
And then that brings on quite nicely to the challenge of prioritisation with limited resources. And of course this is applicable also to organised crime and to counter-terrorism. Joining policing from the banking fraternity meant, ironically, I almost had a photographic memory for numbers. It’s sad to actually admit that I do remember many of my customers’ numbers still, from way back in the early 80s. And of course, I only wish that I had that same prowess in my mathematics exams at school. But I was always a financial investigator. As a very young DC I believed very passionately that following the money was key to disrupting and dismantling serious organised crime groups. Of course, they respond to demand for goods and services and to financially profit at the end of the day, from their criminal activities. This of course differs in terrorist cases where the motivation is often different. But in organised crime, that’s certainly true.
And this remains highly relevant in today’s context, as well. When we see on the news yesterday, the evidence of people smuggling and the utter misery of those who are exploited by serious organised criminals in that setting. But of course not everyone agreed with me at the time that following the money was the right course, it was far more sexy to seize guns and drugs and the focus was understandably on the commodities. My view was then and absolutely remains that it should always be a combined disruption and dismantlement strategy. And I was personally really pleased to see the recent Rusi paper published very recently which advocates this multidisciplinary, public-private sector collaboration to tackle economic crime as a national security threat. And I spoke about this at least 10 years ago, in a presentation and I remember it very well.
And reflecting on your own presentations on Afghanistan and the Taliban leadership in place note there now, there are names and families that I recognise from the 1990s and 2000s, that were the subject of considerable international interest then, in various jurisdictions, some very widely publicised and others less so, and yet we still grapple with the challenge of proving that the money being used to support the Taliban regime now, has its origins in organised crime, which go back decades and continue into modern day challenges. So, you know, I could probably have picked 10 challenges out in this area, but I thought to look at those two, they are both highly relevant in today’s setting.
SG: ‘Follow the money,’ something that you were stressing on just now, I found that very interesting. Also, you brought in the Taliban. I know we’ve discussed this in the past. I was particularly curious that you once told me that, in the 1990s, a lot of your work involved investigating the Haqqani Network. And that just shows you how far back that movement goes, because they are the ones effectively now running Afghanistan and are, not just a proscribed terrorist group but they’re into organised crime as well. I’m just curious, what type of dynamics did you have to deal with when it came to investigating the Haqqani network?
TN: So, this was more, rather than specific investigations I was involved in, these were the investigations that were ongoing by others more so, and you can imagine a considerable interest from the United States in the activities of the Haqqani family and the listing of them in terms of sanctions, that was really my involvement, as a financial investigator, being aware of the considerable interest of many, many international locations, not just the United States, in the activities of the Haqqani family, and others of course. And I spent nine years of my service, nine very happy years, on the National Crime Squad, targeting the highest echelons of organised criminality. In virtually every one of those cases, there was an international dimension to them. And often in areas like Afghanistan, where, of course, the drug supply routes were an ongoing challenge for us in the United Kingdom, where we were on the receiving end of that. So, it was not specifically cases that I had worked on, but cases that others were working on that were part and parcel of the intelligence picture.
SG: That’s very interesting. Post 9/11, you had numerous roles and eventually became head of operations at the Metropolitan Police’s SO15 counter-terrorism command, which is the largest counter-terrorism unit in the UK, arguably one of the largest in the world. Looking at the terrorism threat back then, you were responsible for the disruption of numerous plots in the UK and overseas—plots that could have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. What were the most interesting and tense cases that you had to work on?
TN: So the first thing to say is—and I will reflect on this, no doubt, later too—but teamwork is absolutely the essence of success. I claim absolutely zero kudos for those disrupted plots. It was my team. And when I say my team, I mean, the policing team, the wonderful teams at the agencies that I had the pleasure to work with, and the commitment of all of those people to keeping the public safe. So, this was not the Terri Nicholson show. It was very much about the fantastic teams I had the pleasure to work with. I feel really proud to have investigated and led on so many really interesting cases, many of which had these tense moments that you refer to. And working as a senior leader in counter-terrorism means operating often in ambiguity, where the jigsaw pieces are not clear, and of course, the stakes could not actually be any higher when the lives of the public are at risk with the decisions that we are trusted to make.
I was head of operations at SO15. On one occasion where one of our surveillance teams was deployed on a subject of an attack planning priority operation, and the subject of that operation was planning an attack on a US Air Base, US personnel, and I recall receiving a phone call at about 5:30 in the morning by the very dedicated SIO, who was telling me that the surveillance team was heading south down the M1 at that very moment at ridiculous speeds, nearly impossible to follow the subject. It was hard enough to do that during the day with him…often quieter of course at that time of the morning, and so compromise was always a more likely outcome. And of course, to this team, losing him was not an option. They knew the intelligence of the imminence of an attack plan. They knew that the intelligence suggested he wanted to carry out an attack in the days that followed, and that he had openly supported other attacks as well, was in the advanced stages of planning himself and using these as his motivation to do one himself. And in fact, that morning, he’d actually gone to a food market to buy food and simply just returned home afterwards.
It was a really twitchy moment. I couldn’t help but think, in any market setting at that time of the morning, lots and lots of people going about their business and lots of weapons that could be used if he were to decide to execute his plan there and then. So that was a rather twitchy and tense moment to say the very least of it—one of many. He was actually arrested and charged a matter of days later. and he’s currently serving a life sentence. I’m very pleased to say it was a fantastic operation. Again, the dedication of the teams was paramount—excuse the pun with my new life of course.
And in fact, the attack that he openly supported was actually the murder of drummer Lee Rigby. And I was the on-call superintendent when Lee was brutally murdered in broad daylight in South London in what was one of the worst atrocities one can imagine—a beheading on the streets of London at any time. And in the hours that followed that attack, we needed to work at pace to be certain, of course, that the two murderers were not part of some wider network and that, for example, other attacks were not being planned. And of course with so many proactive CT operations, there are real pivotal moments, and split-second decision-making is required very often in the operations room, and you rely very much on the skills and experience that you have acquired to make good decisions, always with the overriding objective of protecting the public. And that is a huge responsibility on one’s shoulders and one that I never took lightly.
Another occasion that I recall, when I was again head of operations, chairing a straightforward internal senior leadership team meeting without my mobile phone next to me, but with a television screen—we had screens in our office for obvious reasons so that we were able to watch the news as it was coming in, particularly things that were happening internationally—and there was a news flash on the news, it was Sky News, I recall it well, from a beach in Sousse in Tunisia, where a gunman had open fired and killed a large number of people on the beach who were holidaying at that time. Clearly at that early stage, no nationalities were given, but I could see on the screen in front of me British-branded clothing worn by British people, and I immediately concluded that there were going to be British victims on that beach. Helpfully sitting next to me was one of my SIOs. I immediately mobilised my team to deploy to Tunisia that day. And the reason for doing that was so that we could achieve the repatriation of any of our victims back to the United Kingdom as quickly as possible because it was quite clear the casualty count was rising by the minute. This was an incredible example of cross-government collaboration. We were able to use RAF Brize Norton for their return. Clearly, they have just enormous expertise in dealing with military repatriations, and this felt fitting. In fact, there were 30 British victims. It was no mean feat to negotiate with the Tunisian authorities’ access to our victims, and to ensure we were able to have post-mortems done as quickly as possible so that they could be returned back to their loved ones.
To stand on the tarmac with the families who had lost their loved ones, every single one of them with their own stories was utterly humbling. I found myself having to pull myself together in the toilets. I have not confessed that to others until now. Having met one of the families in particular, that literally was a mirror image of my own, a very close family. Their bravery and humility was simply astonishing, and I will never ever forget being with them in the family room while they recounted stories of their wonderful mum who had gone on holiday for, I think, one of the first times in her life without the kids and found herself deceased on the beach, just tragic. But I was immensely proud of my team working with the authorities literally through the nights in Tunisia to ensure that people could have their loved ones back as soon as possible. And the resilience and professionalism they showed was just quite astonishing. I remain proud to this day of some of those. And of course, there were very, very many more. I was involved going back to 2001 in the 9/11 response and assisting the FBI in those days to investigate some of the cases that had links back to the UK. So my roots go back a long time into the investigative world within CT, many a proud moment, but equally, and this is really important to say, some devastating moments, particularly in 2017 when we had attack after attack, and that felt very personal, and I still to this day feel very, very strongly about the impact on so many victims during that time in particular.
SG: You’ve brought up so many important past case studies of terrorism. It takes me back to what I was doing at that time as well. And it’s interesting to see how engaged you are in dealing with them, as well as the fact that you identify teamwork being a very important tool, both within the UK and also internationally as well. The other thing, Terri, is you’re very humble. I know that you have been very important to the disruption of these plots. A lot of your colleagues have always mentioned you as being so intrinsic to that, and your humility is, of course, a very important characteristic. The other thing is that, as a woman in law enforcement, you’ve served with distinction. We’ve seen that women actually are absolutely essential when it comes to counter-terrorism, to intelligence gathering, to international security. You’re a very clear illustration of that. Where are we at when it comes to women attaining senior positions now in international security? And what is it that women are able to provide and add that is different to men? It’s perhaps maybe an obvious question, but I guess we don’t really talk about it enough.
TN: Absolutely, and it’s a subject I have always been deeply passionate about. And in fact, about underrepresented groups full stop, actually, not just women, but particularly women, because I happen to be one of them. So I’m going to start with, let’s recognise that huge amount of progress has been made in this area. We see, certainly when I was in counter-terrorism in the in the latter part of my career, large numbers, the Senior National Coordinator, Helen Ball, was a female, we had a female assistant commissioner, we had a female deputy assistant commissioner on the Protect and Prepare side, I was head of operations at SO15. So there were some large numbers of females in influential and senior positions. And I made it my mission when I was in that world to recruit many, many more into the world of CT and to also take chances on some who didn’t necessarily have the right profile or the right track record, or whatever that looked like, because some of them were immensely talented and needed encouragement, and that’s often a feature I find of women.
But look, there are multiple case studies, which indicate that women tend to have high levels of self-awareness. This in turn encourages, of course, greater team collaboration and support to colleagues. We often facilitate collaboration and information sharing, which is absolutely critical in the CT space when you are working with partners and communities. Women often also, I feel, contribute different perspectives, whether that’s as a wife, as a partner, as a mum, as a sister, as an auntie, and we often offer alternative approaches to behaviours, which I think increase opportunities for intervention and increase opportunities to create harmony where there are disputes. And I definitely speak from personal experience there. Our interviewing styles, I often think, can be a little bit more emotionally driven, empathetic, and more compassionate. It’s not to say that we’re not shrewd individuals, but our way of displaying it sometimes can be different. Many women have really strong soft skills, balancing a team, often during highly emotive, highly charged investigation, where the stakes, I’ve already said, are really high, and people are working at pace to do the right thing. We encourage, I certainly do encourage, information sharing. And of course, the other important dynamic here is when we are engaging with witnesses, family members, who come from very paternal sometimes misogynistic dominated environments, gaining their confidence is absolutely essential, whether that’s in CT or in the investigation of any crime.
And in fact, it’s applicable, I think, in law enforcement writ large, but I also want to be really clear that I really advocate mixed teams. The more diverse in all aspects, the better for me. Diverse teams, in my view, are the absolute key to success, better decision-making, better outcomes, and of course, women are essential component parts of that. Some of my greatest supporters throughout my policing career have been males. And they have pushed and encouraged me to get to where I got to, and I shall never forget that too. But often, women need more encouragement to get out there and apply in the first place. And I saw it as a personal responsibility to make that happen for many of them.
SG: Thank you for explaining that in such important detail. It sums up a lot of what the significance of women is in international security and why they’re so important and why more needs to be done to encourage more women to engage in international security and provide an environment where they will want to be part of it as well. A few years back, you changed your career path and took on a very interesting role, which is your current position as Senior Vice President at Paramount. What does your job role entail? And how did your background in law enforcement help you in your current work?
TN: I used to say almost daily, I literally have the best job. At times, I actually used to say, I can’t believe I’m being paid to do this, I had such satisfaction from dealing with so many of those cases. And I was incredibly lucky to land some really fabulous jobs along the way, leading brilliantly dedicated men and women alongside some of the best agency partners. And I honestly never intended to retire, although I had completed 30 years of service, it was literally not on my radar. But now I truly have the best job, I really do have the best job. And I head up the international security, production, and event safety for all of the brands that sit underneath the Paramount umbrella. Of course, Paramount itself needs no explanation to people. It’s a really diverse mix of brands, from Channel Five, to Nickelodeon, to Network 10 in Australia, to Telefe in Argentina, to Television in Chile, MTV, Bellator, and many, many more underneath that.
And there are real parallels, I think, in my previous life. Look, risk management involves everything from ensuring the safety and security of our executives and staff travelling, to our talent filming and performing, to our vulnerable contributors, and of course managing the odd crisis along the way, including keeping programming on air during the middle of a global pandemic. We are a public service broadcaster too, and there were some real challenges, of course, but we did it and did it well. And there are so many similarities albeit the context differs rather from CT. And I do remember saying right at the start of this that my ability to operate in the grey area as well as in the black and white is absolutely critical, and I absolutely remain on that point. I’m often advising on high-risk programming, as we must tell stories in my current role that need to be told, however uncomfortable that might be for some and how risky that might be. But I literally love every second of what I do. Four and a half years coming into my fifth year has absolutely flown by. Paramount is a great organisation that really truly embraces diversity and the values that I consider to be important, and that was a real factor for me in the decision-making to move from one to another. Coming from a life of public service, I was never going to leap into the first job that was put across my radar, it had to be the right fit, and I had to be the right fit for them too. I’m really proud to hold such a senior position in an organisation that truly cares for its employees and genuinely wants to make a difference to communities across the globe. And I really feel, and this has always been important to me, that I make a difference every day to somebody. And that was important way back in my policing and counter-terrorism career, and it’s equally important to me now.
SG: It’s worth also mentioning, in case people didn’t know, that Paramount was the distributor for some of the biggest Hollywood movies, such as Top Gun 2, to which Terri happened to have access to the premiere. I was very jealous when you told me that!
TN: Indeed, it comes with very many privileges, and we make some fantastic content, that’s for sure.
SG: Well, selfishly, I hope when it comes to content, you may think about when my book on al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri comes out that potentially Paramount may want to turn that into a mini-series of some kind.
TN: We should talk…
SG: Definitely! Let me just thank you again, Terri, for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive, for providing so many different perspectives about your career and how it evolved, and providing a lot of life lessons to people that are going to be listening to this. I’m very grateful, Terri Nicholson, for you joining us on NATO DEEP Dive. Thank you.
TN: Thank you so much.
SG: Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive.
Disclaimer: Please note that the views, information, or opinions expressed in the DEEP Dive series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of NATO or DEEP.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.