Metis Group

Robert Fein is a forensic and national security psychologist with a specialty in threat assessment and the prevention of targeted violence. For almost forty years he has worked with law enforcement and intelligence organizations to understand and prevent targeted violence, such as assassination, workplace violence, stalking, school violence, and terrorist attacks.

Dr. Fein worked at Bridgewater State Hospital from 1976 to 1985, conducting forensic evaluations and treating mentally disordered offenders. From 1985 to 1991, he served as the first Assistant Commissioner for Forensic Mental Health of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.

From the 1980’s to the early 2000’s, Dr. Fein worked with the United States Secret Service. In his work with the Secret Service, he reviewed and consulted on several hundred protective intelligence cases concerning the assessment and management of persons who might present harm to the President and other national leaders. He co-directed two major Secret Service operational studies of targeted violence: one on assassination; the other on school attacks. In the first of these studies, the Secret Service Exceptional Case Study Project, Dr. Fein helped analyze the pre-attack behaviors and thinking of 74 persons who attacked or attempted to attack a prominent public official or figure in the U.S. from 1950 to 1996.

From 2003-2010, Dr. Fein served as a member of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s Intelligence Science Board. As a member of the Intelligence Science Board, from 2004 to 2009 he chaired the ISB Study on Educing Information (a study of the future of interrogation and intelligence interviewing). From 2011-2013 he was a member of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Advanced Technology Board.

Dr. Fein is a consultant to the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit 1 and to the FBI’s Behavioral Assessment Program. He is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Intelligence Community Studies Board.

Dr. Fein received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1974 in Clinical Psychology and Public Practice. He received the American Academy of Forensic Psychology's Award for Distinguished Career Contributions to Forensic Psychology in 2003 and the Association for Threat Assessment Professionals’ Distinguished Achievement Award in 2014. He holds an appointment at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Fein is the author or co-author of more than thirty publications on assassination, school shootings, workplace violence, stalking, threat assessment, and other work on preventing targeted violent attacks.

John Berglund is a retired Special Agent of the United States Secret Service where he served as Assistant to the Special Agent in Charge in the National Threat Assessment Center and as the Resident Agent in Charge of the Milwaukee Office. Mr. Berglund also served as Acting Deputy Director, Office of Security and Investigations, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and District Commander, Federal Protective Service, within the United States Department of Homeland Security. In addition, Mr. Berglund served 12 years as a sworn law enforcement officer in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Mr. Berglund has significant experience in evaluating and developing programs for the prevention of targeted violence. While with the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, he was charged with developing training and operational strategies for protective and threat assessment activities. Mr. Berglund has provided consultation and training to numerous law enforcement agencies, governmental entities, and private concerns on targeted violence including terrorism, violence directed at public officials and public figures, school-based violence, stalking, and workplace violence. Mr. Berglund served as a Subject Matter Expert on Counterterrorism for the Homeland Security Institute and was a grant reviewer/evaluator for the National Institute of Justice (DOJ/NIJ). He previously served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Threat Assessment and on the Executive Committee, United States Attorney’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force.

Mr. Berglund received his BA in Psychology from Bethel College (now Bethel University), St. Paul, MN in 1981.

Mr. Berglund is the co-author of Threat Assessment: Assessing the Risk of Targeted Violence, published in the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 2015m Vol. 2; Evaluating risk for targeted violence in schools: Comparing risk assessment, threat assessment, and other approaches, published in Psychology in the Schools, 2001; and Defining an Approach for Evaluating Risk of Targeted Violence, published in Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 1999.