November 17, 2016 –
FORT MCCOY, Wisconsin (November 17, 2016) – They came in waves, filling up row after row in session after session to listen to two Army Criminal Investigation Command special agents discuss the Army’s Threat Awareness and Reporting Program (TARP), November 17 and 18 at the Blue Devil Auditorium in the 88th Regional Support Command’s headquarters on Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.
For the Soldiers and civilians of the 88th RSC, as well as those from across Fort McCoy, the presentation offered first-hand accounts from currently serving special agents instead of the traditional online TARP presentation.
“The key behind doing the in-person presentation is that people get the interaction,” said Bella Hernandez, a special agent with the 752nd Military Intelligence Battalion out of Fort Meade, Maryland, who was one of two presenters for the training. “It gives people an opportunity to get a perspective based on questions that may ensue from when they’re hearing it from someone at the podium.”
That interaction allowed Hernandez and fellow presenter Jaymee Eckert to share their experiences as special agents and the investigations they have conducted involving insider threats and how to recognize them.
“The most important thing about this training is making sure that every military MOS knows that they have information that could be targeted,” Eckert said. “Just because you don’t have access to classified or sensitive material doesn’t mean you don’t know something that could be targeted.”
For the 88th RSC, which has a primary mission of providing base operations support to Army Reserve Centers across 19 states, the need to keep apprised of threats posed by both insiders and foreign adversaries’ remains a primary concern.
“The aggregation of multiple bits of information that are leaked or in any way can be gathered together,” said James Kearns, supervisory security specialist, 88th RSC. “When you gather them together and look at the total picture, it can sometimes be more damaging than classified information that gets out. It really is important, it doesn’t have to be classified to be safeguarded.”