Richard Barrett

Richard Barrett, Senior Advisor to The Soufan Group, is a former British diplomat and intelligence officer who from March 2004 to January 2013 headed the United Nations Monitoring Team concerning al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

He is a recognized expert on violent extremism and the measures that can be taken against it. While at the United Nations, he helped found the Counter Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF), a coordinating body that aims to ensure effective counterterrorism cooperation within the UN system. He led Working Groups for CTITF on terrorist use of the internet and on countering the appeal of terrorism and was known for his work on countering the financing of terrorism. Before being appointed to head the Monitoring Team, he worked for the British government in the Security Service (MI5), the Foreign Office, and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). He was Director of Global Counter Terrorism Operations both before and after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. He has served abroad in Canada, Jordan, Turkey, and the United States.

Richard is a board member of the International Center for Counter-Terrorism–The Hague; the Transnational Crisis Project; the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation in Washington, DC; the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, and the Center for the Study of the United Nations Systems and the Global Legal Order in New York. He is a fellow of the New America Foundation, Washington, and of the Royal United Services Institute, London, and an adjunct professor at Case Western. Richard was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in 1992, and a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) in 2013.