The report explores the natural histories of Al Qaida and ISIS members as well as their social network structures leading up the November 2015 Paris and March 2016 Brussels attacks.
It also gives details of how the attacks unfolded and the
current state of ISIS external operations capabilities. The information in this report is a culmination of face-to-face interviews with
1) AQ and ISIS members who were directly or peripherally involved in the events and networks described,
2) Their lawyers, friends, family members, and acquaintances,
3) Belgian, French, British, and Spanish counter-terrorism police, federal prosecutors, interrogators,
4) Various CVE officials, mayors, social workers, teachers, community leaders, imams, journalists, anthropologists, historians, and researchers of the places from where the networks emerged, and
5) Over 10,000 pages of court documents and hundreds of pages of police files and interrogation transcripts regarding AQ and ISIS networks spanning over 20 years.