Positioned in the middle of the United States, Nebraska has played an outsized role in disrupting terrorism across the country over the past 25 years, since the most significant terrorist attack in our nation’s history on Sept. 11, 2001. 

At 3:07 p.m., just hours after the twin towers and the Pentagon were struck by airplanes full of innocent passengers, then-President George W. Bush landed at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Neb. This destination was strategic — Offutt had the most secure communications that allowed Bush to assemble his full National Security Council simultaneously, to make sense of what had happened and to formulate a plan for the U.S. response. Greeted by Adm. Richard Mies, the then-commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, Bush was quickly moved to an underground bunker that was 40 feet underground and designed to withstand whatever enemy fire came next. 

President Bush was in Nebraska roughly an hour before he felt safe enough to fly back to Washington, D.C., to address the nation that evening from the Oval Office: “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack.” 

Since that fateful day, other Nebraska organizations have also joined the fight against global terrorism. 

In the Nebraska National Guard Troop A, 1-167th Cavalry’s first deployment since World War II, the global war on terror brought the unit to position its operations in arguably the most dangerous posting — Ramadi’s Sunni Triangle in Iraq in 2005. During peak years of combat, Nebraska’s Army National Guard soldiers have deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo. And in recent years, Nebraska’s Guard A\aviation units have been stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia to sustain counterterrorism operations. 

FBI Omaha has made investigating and mitigating terrorism the top priorities since 9/11. The office leads a Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is the mechanism that combines FBI agents with state and local law enforcement for counterterrorism investigations. In many ways, FBI Omaha’s Special Agent in Charge Eugene Kowel’s career prepared him to lead our state’s local JTTF. After joining the FBI, Kowel was assigned to the New York JTTF, followed by deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Once back stateside, Kowel served as a unit chief in the FBI HQ international terrorism section, providing him a robust background to oversee all the FBI’s counterterrorism, criminal, cyber and national security investigations in Nebraska and Iowa. 

While most disrupted plots are never publicized, FBI Omaha recently prevented a high-profile terrorist attack intended to wreak havoc on our nation’s capital. In June, FBI Omaha foiled a plan to attack the UFC event at the White House as part of the America 250 celebrations. The plot, allegedly orchestrated by Omaha resident Abraham Hermosilo Alvarez, included drone-delivered explosives and snipers with semiautomatic weapons that would have targeted civilians as they fled. This was intended to be a mass casualty terrorist attack, but Nebraska’s local partnerships and a strong JTTF network were critical to its disruption.

Shoring up Nebraska’s role in preventing violent attacks is America’s largest academic counterterrorism center headquartered at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Focused on characterization of terrorist actors, their technology-assisted tactics, and protection of both hard and soft U.S. targets, the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center has sponsored 151 research and education projects for the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate’s Office of University Programs since NCITE was founded at UNO in 2020. 

Although NCITE is an internationally known Center of Excellence, its priority remains translating scientific work to keep Nebraskans safe. For example, just last summer NCITE partnered with Nebraska Information Analysis Center to host a 300-person Nebraska threats conference where the Nebraska C-UAS task force met to define a shared agenda for managing the drone threat in our state. And students across UNO’s campus can take classes in business strategy applied to homeland security, illicit financing of transnational criminal organizations and the psychology of terrorism, all taught by leading experts recruited to Nebraska since NCITE was established. 

Nebraska has built a proud record of contributing to our nation’s security in the last quarter century — shielding President Bush on 9/11, serving through the Nebraska National Guard and Omaha FBI and leading counterterrorism research with NCITE. Our state has long been a quiet but steadfast presence in the homeland security and defense ecosystem, and that role will continue for years to come.   

Portions of this article are based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate under Grant Award Number 20STTPC00001-07. The views and conclusions contained in this article are those of the author and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or the University of Nebraska system.