About Hamilton Trading Group, Inc.

A Virginia registered corporation founded in 1987, with office in McLean, Virginia. Hamilton Trading Group, Inc. (HTG) has provided surveillance awareness and surveillance detection training courses over the past fifteen years to clients in both the public and private sectors.

Beginning in 1993 and up to the present time, HTG has provided training in surveillance detection to the U.S. intelligence community as both a prime contractor and a sub-contractor. For the field exercise portions of training, HTG has provided project management and training of role player surveillance teams of up to twenty-four team members at a time. As a sub­contractor, HTG supported over twenty training programs relating to surveillance detection and other force protection methods (average three per year from 1994 to 2002). For the past four years, HTG has been supporting a US defense contractor in the training of surveillance detection methods, to an entity in US intelligence community.

HTG has trained surveillance units of the FBI in over a dozen cities large and small, teaching them the street tradecraft used by opposition intelligence officers to carry out intelligence operations. More recently (2003-2006), HTG provided role players and instructors for FCI training courses of the FBI Academy, Quantico.

In 2005-2006, HTG designed and developed a month-long training course for DOD's counterinte1ligence training academy (JCITA). This course consisted of training in HUMINT operations, including pro-active operational security measures used to recruit positive intelligence sources, including surveillance and surveillance detection.

HTG currently is providing training courses to the US public transportation law enforcement sector, from recognizing international terrorism origins, to their motivations, to how they are trained to travel to target cities on casing and target collection missions as ordered by Islamic-Jihadist terrorist organizations.

Instructor Jack Platt

John C. Platt is one of the founders and Vice President of Hamilton Trading Group (HTG), and the director the firm's Corporate, Government and Personnel Support Services Division.

Mr. Platt retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1987. He was an operations officer with an extensive information collection and counterintelligence background.  In the course of various assignments overseas, he lived and worked in Germany, Austria, Laos and France. He also traveled extensively in Latin America, the Caribbean and to a lesser extent in Eastern Europe. For five years he directed a CIA training program which was awarded a Unit Citation for excellence. This program was successful in preparing U.S. personnel and their families to live and work productively in hostile countries. Upon retirement, Mr. Platt was awarded the CIA's Career Intelligence Medal for exceptional performance and commended by the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for his professionalism, zeal and vital assistance to the FBI.

Since retirement from CIA, Mr. Platt has acted on behalf of HTG as both training course designer of and instructor in surveillance, surveillance detection, personal security and safety measures for private sector employees and at various US Government institutions. In one stint of contract work, for three years Mr. Platt traveled to 18 American cities and trained surveillance units of the FBI in discovering what hostile intelligence officers might be up to while visiting their turf.  More recently, he assisted in the development of a month-long training course in pro-active operational security measures and recruitment of positive intelligence sources and other “HUMINT” operations at the counterintelligence training academy of the Dept of Defense (JCITA).

From late 1993 to the present, Mr. Platt acted as HTG’s project manager and chief trainer of role player surveillance teams (up to 24 people) in support of training in surveillance and surveillance awareness mandated by the CTC. Hamilton Trading Group was the sub-contractor to bigger companies that had training contracts with U.S. intelligence organizations. For one company, HTG supported about 30 training programs (four per year from 1994-2002). 

With the assistance of experts in the study of international terrorism, Hamilton Trading Group developed a training program on recognizing international terrorism origins, motivations and tactics.  The most recent example was providing an intensive ten-day course in recognizing Islamic terrorist methods of casing public transportation installations world-wide.

Mr. Platt is a graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts and a former U.S. Marine Corps officer. He speaks German and French.