The first episode of the CIB Intelligence Report, the television show that covers the latest developments in the Chanticleer Intelligence Brief, is now online. The 18-minute episode can be accessed on the CIB TV YouTube channel, here. The show was filmed at the new studio facilities of the Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts, located on Coastal Carolina University’s Conway campus in South Carolina. It is hosted by the CIB’s Community Relations Coordinator, Chryssy Katsikoudi, who is a CCU alumna with a Bachelors Degree in Political Science and a Master’s Degree in Middle Eastern Studies from King’s College in London.

This first episode of the CIB Intelligence Report provides background on how the CIB project began, the vision behind it, as well as the group’s current projects and activities. We speak with the founder and first Executive Director of the CIB, Ben Malone, and the group’s Faculty Mentor, Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis. Ben Malone is majoring in Intelligence and National Security Studies and minoring in Middle East Studies at CCU. In 2015, he founded and served as the first Executive Director of the Chanticleer Intelligence Brief for a year. He has also served on numerous student leadership committees and advised student organizations and initiatives relating to intelligence and national security. Joseph Fitsanakis is Assistant Professor of Politics in the Intelligence and National Security Studies program at CCU. Before joining Coastal, Dr. Fitsanakis founded the Security and Intelligence Studies program at King University, where he also directed the King Institute for Security and Intelligence Studies.

Malone, who is currently completing his training at the Advanced Technical Intelligence Center in Ohio, told Katsikoudi that the impetus behind the CIB was the students’ own desire to “do something more than just graduate” and to “stand out by doing more than simply classwork”. When asked to describe the qualities in a CIB analyst, Malone said that the students involved in the organization are some of the most active on campus, are typically “maxed out in credit hours” while “working two or three jobs” and on top of that are involved in “at least one or two other organizations on campus”. But, despite their full schedules, when they are given the CIB package, which is specifically tailored to the intelligence field, they love it and adopt it immediately, said Malone. Katsikoudi asked Dr. Fitsanakis to describe his long-term vision for the CIB. The organization’s faculty mentor explained that he wants to see future generations of students gain confidence: “I want to see students who can come to my class and correct me when I’m wrong”, said Fitsanakis. And continued: “I want to see my students who develop such specialized knowledge on different topics that they’ve covered in CIB, and have so much knowledge, that I see them as the experts”.

Our second episode will be out in late November. We will host a number of CIB analysts and speak with them about their area of specialization and research. In the meantime, watch this space!