CAROL TABER, PUBLISHER OF FSM RECEIVES SPECIAL AWARDS FOR TENACITY AND RESOURCEFULNESS: W. THOMAS SMITH
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11067/pub_detail.asp
Carol A. Taber, president of the Family Security Foundation, Inc., and publisher of familysecuritymatters.org, was awarded both the U.S. Counterterrorism Advisory Team’s (USCTAT) Winston Spencer Churchill Award (for tenacity and resourcefulness) and the Combatant’s Cross (the highest recognition by the USCTAT) during ceremonies at the S.C. State House, Friday.
Approved and signed by Clare M. Lopez – retired CIA operations officer and today deputy national director of the USCTAT– Taber’s awards were presented for her personal sacrifice and tireless work since Sept. 11, 2001 in promoting and supporting both public awareness of national security and the importance of public participation of the same.
Taber’s awards were presented by former White House advisor DeWitt Zemp to Lt. Col. Bill Connor, U.S. Army (Res.) who accepted the awards on her behalf. Both Zemp and Connor are USCTAT advisors.
Connor, an infantry officer (Ranger) who also served as senior U.S. military adviser to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, is a S.C.-based attorney. He too received an award, the USCTAT’s William Barret Travis Award for heroic leadership while in command of a vehicle convoy that was ambushed in Kandahar Province, Aug. 21, 2007. Though the convoy was surrounded by suicidal insurgents – armed with automatic weapons, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades – some closing to within 10 feet of the vehicles, not a single American life was lost.
Additional recipients in absentia included Dr. Walid Phares (both the Travis Award and the Churchill Award), Tom Harb (Churchill Award), Chris Carter (Churchill Award), and Christopher Holton (Churchill Award).
The USCTAT, which celebrates its two-year anniversary on Monday, Dec. 19, is a 20-plus member council composed of nationally recognized military, counterterrorism, and intelligence experts. The team is an initiative of the Family Security Foundation, Inc. (FSFI), a national security non-profit. The team also serves in ongoing affiliations with both the American Public Policy Alliance and the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy among other national security initiatives.
The USCTAT’s expert advisors and analysts include retired CIA officers, two former U.S. Deputy Undersecretaries of Defense, the former commander of U.S. Army Special Forces, and the founder and first commanding officer of SEAL Team Six (known today as DEVGRU).
Since 2009, the USCTAT has provided analysis to military units and many of the world’s leading news agencies. Additionally, the USCTAT’s Task Force India has tested and reviewed tactical equipment with reviews appearing in general consumer and law enforcement publications.
The Churchill Award is named for the late British prime minister, whose own tenacity and resourcefulness is the model by which all great leaders aspire.
The Travis Award is named for Lt. Col. William Barret Travis, the S.C.-born commander of the ill-fated albeit heroic garrison at the Alamo during the Texas War of Independence. Travis perished with his command – including Kentucky knife-fighter Col. Jim Bowie and Tennessee frontiersman and legislator Davy Crockett – when a numerically superior Mexican force stormed the Alamo on Mar. 6, 1836.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor W. Thomas Smith Jr. is a former U.S. Marine rifle-squad leader and counterterrorism instructor, who writes about military/defense issues and has covered conflict in the Balkans, on the West Bank, in Iraq and Lebanon. Visit his website at uswriter.com.
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