Evan F. Kohlmann (born 1979) is an American cyberintelligence professional who is the founder and chief executive officer of Cloudburst Technologies. Before founding the company, he worked as a terrorism consultant for the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

, DOJ, SO15, and other government agencies.CTC Sentinel
, January 2008. Vol 1. Issue 2 (p. 9),

Combating Terrorism Center The Combating Terrorism Center is an academic institution at the United States Military Academy (USMA) in West Point, New York that provides education, research and policy analysis in the specialty areas of terrorism, counterterrorism, homeland ...

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...

(West Point) He is a contributor to the ''Counterterrorism Blog'', a senior investigator with The Nine Eleven Finding Answers Foundation, and a terrorism analyst for ''

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...

''. In his manifesto

Anders Behring Breivik Anders Behring Breivik (; born 13 February 1979), officially named Fjotolf Hansen from 2017 to 2025, and Far Skaldigrimmr Rauskjoldr av Northriki since March 2025, is a Norwegian neo-Nazi terrorist and mass murderer. He carried out the 2011 No ...

copied 25 pages verbatim from an ideological text by Evan Kohlmann and published by an institute led by Magnus Ranstorp.

Early life and education

In the profile for the ''Penn Law Journal'', Kohlmann said he spent summers in France while growing up, because his father studied there. Kohlmann graduated from

Pine Crest School Pine Crest School is a private preparatory school with campuses in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton, Florida. It was founded in Fort Lauderdale in 1934 by Mae McMillan, who also served as the school's first president. The ...

Fort Lauderdale Fort Lauderdale ( ) is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and most populous city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it ...

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

. He attended the

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...

Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he studied under Mamoun Fandy. Fandy's mentorship sparked his interest in Middle East politics. "When andylived in Egypt, he passed by the number two guy in

al-Qaeda , image = Flag of Jihad.svg , caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions , founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden , leaders = {{Plainlist, * Osama bin Lad ...

there every day. He really knew his subject." Kohlmann entered the

University of Pennsylvania Law School The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (also known as Penn Carey Law, or Penn Law; previously University of Pennsylvania Law School) is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Phi ...

in the fall of 2001, a few weeks before al-Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

Counter-terrorism career

Kohlmann worked as an intern at The Investigative Project, a Washington, DC, counter-terrorism

think-tank A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governme ...

. He wrote ''Al- Qaida’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network''. He is a Senior Terrorism Consultant for The NEFA Foundation. He is also a contributor to the ''Counterterrorism Blog'', and a terrorism analyst for ''

''. He has called

Anwar al-Awlaki Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki (; April 21 or 22, 1971September 30, 2011) was an American-Yemeni lecturer assassinated Drone strikes in Yemen, in Yemen in 2011 by a U.S. government drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki was th ...

"one of the principal ''jihadi'' luminaries for would-be homegrown terrorists. His fluency with English, his unabashed advocacy of ''jihad'' and ''

mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' (), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' (), an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in ''jihad'' (), interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the commun ...

'' organizations, and his Web-savvy approach are a powerful combination." He calls al-Awlaki's lecture "Constants on the Path of Jihad", which he says was based on a similar document written by al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia's founder, the "virtual bible for lone-wolf Muslim extremists." Guantanamo court room

He produced ''The Al Qaida Plan'', a 90-minute movie, to serve as evidence and stress relief during the

Guantanamo Military Commissions The Guantanamo military commissions were established by President George W. Bush through a military order on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of eight ...

,
mirror
which was sponsored by the

Office of Military Commissions The Guantanamo military commissions were established by President George W. Bush through a military order on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of eight ...

. According to

Carol Rosenberg Carol Rosenberg is a senior journalist at ''The New York Times.'' Long a military-affairs reporter at the ''Miami Herald'', from January 2002 into 2019 she reported on the operation of the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, at its nav ...

of the ''

Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by McClatchy, The McClatchy Company and headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1903, it is the fifth-largest newspaper in Florida, serving Miami-Dade, Broward County, Fl ...

'': "He modeled the video after The Nazi Plan, an instructional movie shown at the late 1940s Nuremberg tribunals for the most senior Nazi leadership." Initially

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

Keith Allred, the President of

Salim Ahmed Hamdan Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan (; born February 25, 1968) is a Yemeni man, captured during the invasion of Afghanistan, declared by the United States government to be an illegal enemy combatant and held as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to No ...

's Military Commission ruled that the film would be prejudicial, but he reversed this decision.

Expert witness

Kohlmann has served frequently as an

expert witness An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as ...

for the prosecution in terrorism trials. "There haven’t been that many cases yet, so sometimes the prosecutors are doing their first ones. I know how the courts work, so I am pretty valuable right now.” Despite being considered a terrorism expert, Kohlmann cannot read, write or speak Arabic. His expertise and neutrality have been disputed by defense attorneys and other experts, while his book ″Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network″ was declined by University of Pennsylvania Press. He testified as an expert witness in the following cases:

Publications

* * * * * * * *

References

External links

Flashpoint Partners
Archived fro
the original

Cloudburst Technologies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kohlmann, Evan F. 1979 births American male bloggers American bloggers American male writers Walsh School of Foreign Service alumni Intelligence analysts Living people Scholars of terrorism University of Pennsylvania Law School alumni