▶ Watch Video: Group leads nationwide effort to track antisemitic threats
Chicago — In the Chicago command center of the Secure Community Network, threats to the nation’s Jewish community are mapped coast-to-coast.
The command center is overseen by Brad Orsini, a retired FBI agent who helped investigate the 9/11 attacks.
“Most simply, the Secure Community Network is the Jewish community’s own FBI and Department of Homeland Security,” Orsini told CBS News.
SCN tracked over 5,000 threats last year, sending more than 1,600 tips to law enforcement.
“Who is that person out there that’s the next attacker, and that’s really what we’re looking for,” Orsini explains.
Director Michael Masters leads a team of analysts that don’t need warrants to follow leads.
“We can also have tools that are active in our command center to look at the deep and dark web,” Masters said.
Founded in 2004, SCN took off after the 2018 mass shooting attack at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
The tragedy is now seared into the mind of Tree of Life rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who heard 11 of his congregants gunned down.
“To some degree the pain never goes away,” Myers said. “It’s like a nightmare.”
He credits his own survival to security training by Orsini.
“I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for that training,” Myers said.
SCN now hosts active shooter trainings at synagogues and Jewish centers nationwide, and Orsini says threats have skyrocketed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. In an April report, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents in 2023, which includes harassment, vandalism and assault. That is the highest tally since it began tracking the number in 1979.
For Myers, the threats are a somber reminder.
“There is no such thing as sanctuary anymore. There is no house of worship that’s safe.”
