Looking for background/info on Cofer Black

I've come across his name before, and reference to him popped up in an editorial to the Orlando Slantinel (registration required). This one's crying out for a response:

It doesn't matter who's president
Published May 24, 2004

WASHINGTON -- After listening to a succession of top U.S. officials here, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, I do not envy George W. Bush, John Kerry or anyone else who would aspire to the American presidency.

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So would it matter if one plucked George W. Bush out of the White House and replaced him with Kerry, Elizabeth Dole, Al Gore, Ross Perot, Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader or Arnold Schwarzenegger (in the event that the foreign-born won the right to contest the White House)? Would global challenges diminish, threats recede and the illusory post-Cold War promise of widespread peace and prosperity re-emerge?

No. Those other political figures almost certainly would have paid less attention to Iraq than Bush has. But Iraq is just one of a dozen nettlesome conundrums that, collectively, will directly affect the future of the United States.
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Cofer Black, coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department and the target of an al-Qaeda plot to kill or capture him in the mid-1990s, knows the value of confronting terrorists with the proper resources and operational flexibility. But even as he discusses the high percentage of al-Qaeda leaders killed or detained, the thousands of network operatives in custody and the dozens of disrupted attacks since 9-11 -- thanks in great part to the efforts of American allies -- he soberly sets his eyes on the future. He describes counterterrorism as an "uphill slog," one that will never be fully over.

Black also has a specially informed perspective on Iraq, stating categorically that if the United States had not intervened, this nation eventually would have been bloodied -- badly.

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