About

Chris Sampson is an journalist, author, researcher of terrorism, cyber, and geopolitical politics. With appearances on MSNBC, CTV (Canada), BBC, GCTV (Chinese TV) and CheddarTV, in radio interviews on BBC, LBC, KPFT, and Canadian radio stations, and quotes in Washington Post, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, BBC and Snopes, he also gives presentations on terrorism and propaganda for organizations and law enforcement.

ACTIVISM
First and foremost, Sampson considers himself an activist for justice and accountability in the world. He stood as a young man in the mid-80s with Houston’s anti-Apartheid activists unaware of the future path ahead that would include attending protests, vigils, and eventually broadcasting. The causes included police accountability, gentrification, environmental issues, voter disenfranchisement, women’s rights, death penalty, animal abuse, and torture.

STARTING IN RADIO
Mr. Sampson started his journalism work at Pacifica radio station, KPFT 90.1FM in Houston, TX in the late 1990s. He was active in the rebuild of the station’s news department, oversaw dozens of important live broadcasts of special events and served as producer of several weekly programs. He was executive producer and host of Music Beyond Borders, a daily 2-hour program focused on music from around the world. He was executive producer for Noticiero, a weekly Spanish language news program.

TRACKING THE EXTREMES
By mid-2000s, he became more focused on the news coverage of terrorism and launched VeracityRadio.com to harness the interviews he was conducting with specialists in the field. This included interviews with Guantanamo judge, Col. Morris Davis, Brig. Gen. David Irving, Interrogator Tony Camerino, Chaplain James Yee, Attorney Joseph Margulies and others.

He is the co-author of Hacking ISIS, an exploration of the tools and actions of ISIS online. Additionally, he has written the intro for The Jihadi Next Door by Dr. Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco and Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security the report published by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from Skyhorse. 

As a researcher, Sampson has been actively tracking the online and real-world activities of terrorists around the world both past and present. He is active in monitoring and collection of terrorism data gathered over decades including authentic materials gathered directly from terrorist forums, groups and channels and metadata and reports from cyber-attacks.

Sampson has dedicated years to studying how hackers operate online including their targeting, methods and the data dissemination they use to profit from their exploits. Additionally, using online tracking methods, he has helped locate and in some cases, destroy portals used by terrorist groups like ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, NeoNazis and others.

PHOTOJOURNALISM
As a photojournalist, Sampson has covered protests, local feature stories and most recently the war in Ukraine. He is currently based in Ukraine and gathering footage of war devastation and culture. His photography work can be seen at sampsonshots.com

ON MUSIC & CULTURE
In addition to his passion for news coverage, Sampson is an enthusiast of music and culture from around the world and has both studied and performed with musicians from dozens of countries and traditions. From India, Morocco, South Africa, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Italy, Ukraine, and many other countries, he has both performed with, recorded, explored these traditions with an eye on the story behind the music. He is a recognized enthusiast on Indian classical percussion and frame drums from around the world.

He was the executive producer of several music concert and instructional materials with top artists from these traditions. He plays a wide range of instruments from around the world and still adds new gems to his personal collection.